Healing Space | The Bullet train of barreling thoughts

The process of locating yourself in the present moment is called Grounding, and it helps by shutting out the past and future. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

Can’t sleep at night because the thoughts keep racing? Or can’t concentrate because your mind keeps wandering back to a particular incident or conversation? Broadly, intrusive thoughts occur when you have a heightened state of general anxiety, and all the associated factors that inflame stress apply. However, sometimes we cannot change an anxiety-inducing situation, but we can gain a grip over these thoughts by understanding their nature and how and when they occur.

For instance, after your child is born, you may be overwhelmed by thoughts of protecting them. You may be having entire arguments with your boss in your mind over an ongoing project. Or maybe you cannot get a particular news image out of your head. It could also be something as simple as the Akbar-Birbal story in which the courtier Birbal tells Emperor Akbar not to think about mangoes, so of course, all the Emperor can think about are mangoes.

Regular intrusive thoughts can occur in the form of words, images, and impulses. The thoughts can feel ‘compulsive’ or ‘obsessive’, though these are loosely used words in common speech. What you may typically mean is they’ve been recurring for a few days. If their occurrence is long-term, violent, deeply disturbing, or bizarre, it is advisable to get sustained mental health intervention for the anxiety or disorder they result from as a whole.

However, also note that it is common to have a disturbing thought once in a while, imagine a bomb attack, or someone falling from the stairs, or being pushed or hitting someone. Such thoughts can be sexual, violent, aggressive, or just inappropriate about people we know, death, and safety. They can be memories you don’t want to deal with or that trigger old wounds. The mere fact of an occasional thought does not make you ‘abnormal’, however recurring thoughts, and an accompanying impulse and urge for harm to oneself or others, and an interference to your regular functioning, does require mental health intervention.

For most of us, these everyday thoughts are repetitive, racing, feel uncontrollable, and influence our mood, especially when they are uninvited guests. They can give us a headache and trigger other symptoms of stress like high blood pressure, light and noise sensitivity, irritability, anger, insomnia, and a feeling of helplessness. We all experience this at some point.

One of the first identifiers of common intrusive and racing thoughts is that they are typically compound sentences. Your mind is telling you ‘this happened and then that happened and then this should have or did happen and then that will happen and then that will happen’. It’s a linked chain or causality.

The problem with this chain is the past is already done and gone, and the future is not predictable. Your thoughts are giving you options to change a past that you cannot and erecting worry about a future you cannot guarantee. Both are futile. It helps to remind yourself of the present moment alone which is in your hand.

The process of locating yourself in the present moment is what is called Grounding, and it helps by shutting out the past and future.

There are a number of ways to ground yourself. The first and easiest way if you are able to do it is to locate and focus on your in and out breath. There are also a number of apps that give you a focal point, to help you inhale and exhale to a countdown. A second way to achieve grounding is quite literally to go outdoors if you are able to and stand on the earth barefoot. It is a tactile way to put your skin in contact with a new sensation which immediately draws your attention away from thought to sensation. Walking on grass, or in a forest, surrounded by nature, draws us away from our thoughts by offering us soothing sounds, smells, sights, and touch, pulling our attention from mind to body. A hot or cold bath or shower will work just as well for the same reason, if you cannot go outdoors. As will any form of exercise, running, swimming, even just skipping in place, a yogasana or even a vigorous round of jumping jacks.

Mindfulness and grounding are just some of the tools by which you can interrupt the train of thoughts. Once you interrupt it, you can address what is in your hands. The end goal is to stop feeding the anxiety, live in the present moment and to feel empowered again by addressing what you are able to in the now.