Step 8 - Understanding The White Bears

Understanding White Bears and Obsessive Thoughts

https://www.restoredminds.com/5-Rules-For-Recovery

Daniel Wegner was a famous social psychologist who conducted some fascinating research throughout his career. Specifically, in the mid to late 1980’s, Wegner conducted research regarding thought suppression and obsessive thoughts, which generated some fascinating results.

To breifly summarize, the participants in his studies were given the following instructions, “For the next five minutes, don’t think about White Bears.” Sounds pretty simple right? Yet, for some reason participants reported continuously thinking, even obsessing, about white bears during the whole five-minute period.

The participants reported trying to distract themselves from thoughts of White Bears, or trying to force other thoughts in their heads, but almost universally Wegner’s research concluded that the participants in his study had little success not thinking about White Bears. The thought seemed to just keep popping up again and again in their mind. Sound familiar? (1)

Now white bears held no real significance to the participants. It’s not as if any of the participants considered white bears a real threat or fear during the study, but they couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Now how could this be? Why were these people not able to simply stop thinking about the one thing they were told not to think about?

One possible answer is what Wegner called The Ironic Process.

The Ironic Process

Wegner’s research showed that trying to suppress or avoid something doesn’t work well when applied to human thoughts and emotions.  By pushing thoughts away there is actually a paradoxical or reverse effect that occurs.  By pushing thoughts away, you actually make them stronger and more frequent in your mind.

His research also indicated that by trying to suppress thoughts, a person was more likely to dream about those thoughts. Consider this, if you are dreaming or having nightmares about your obsessions. Based on this theory, if you are having obsessive thoughts replay in your mind repeatedly there is a good chance you are trying to suppress your obsessions.

And by using the information from this study, we understand that trying to stop, block, or suppress thoughts (however horrible or scary they might be) actually makes the thought replay and repeat in our minds more frequently.

Just like when a parent says to their child that they can’t love or be in a relationship with someone, it only seems to increases their desire and love for that forbidden person. The same idea holds true with your obsessions. If you tell yourself not to think something, you will only increase the frequency and intensity of that forbidden thought.

So when we are talking about Obsessive Thoughts and OCD….How can we use this knowledge to help stop those annoying thoughts?

Well….according to Wegner’s research, the solution to overcoming the ironic process is to “Stop Stopping” your thoughts. You see once you stop trying to control your obsessions, they will stop controlling you.

By simply giving a thought, any thought, permission to be present in your mind, it has no reason to try and fight its way back. (2)

Just as Abe Lincoln famously said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”  This principle applies perfectly to obsessive thoughts and getting around the ironic process.

Therefore, a fundamental part of achieving victory over obsessive thoughts is becoming able to allow the obsessive thoughts to be in your mind and to co-exist with them. You do not have to agree with the content of the thought, but you don’t need to keep trying to push it out of your mind. For as you know, this will only make the thought come back even stronger.

Resources

1. Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S., & White, T. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 5-13.

2. Giuliano,R. J., and N.Y. Wicha. “Why the White Bear IS Still There: Electrophysiological Evidence for Ironic Semantic Activation During Thought Suppression.” Brain Research 1316 (2010): 62-74.