How To Deal With Negative Thoughts

If you are beleaguered by negative, destructive thoughts, there’s an easy way to banish them. Tear them to shreds and throw them away.

In a study at Ohio State University, researchers found that when people wrote down their thoughts on a piece of paper and then threw the paper away, they mentally discarded the thoughts as well.

In contrast, the research shows that people are more likely to use their thoughts when making judgments if they write them down on a piece of paper and tuck the paper in their pockets.

“However you tag your thoughts — as trash or as worthy of protection — seems to make a difference in how you use those thoughts,” says researcher Richard Petty, a professor at Ohio State.

“The more convinced the person is that the thoughts are really gone, the better,” Petty adds. “Just imagining that you throw them away doesn’t seem to work. Of course, even if you throw the thoughts in a garbage can or put them in the recycle bin on the computer, they are not really gone — you can regenerate them. But the representations of those thoughts are gone, at least temporarily, and it seems to make it easier to not think about them.”