It is very common that throughout our lives we meet directly or indirectly people who are able to capture our full attention.

There are human beings who simply attract our thoughts to them , either because of their own personality and characteristics or because of the situations we have lived through with them. However, there are times when this is a problem. At that point, how do we stop thinking about a person?

Related article: “Why can’t I stop thinking about my ex-partner?”

Possible causes

The reasons why we may want to stop thinking about someone are very varied.

For example, we may try to leave behind the intrusive and constant thoughts about an old relationship that jump into our consciousness all the time and without us being able to help it, or we may try to avoid thinking about someone with whom we will never have the relationship we would like, or we may try to leave behind the sadness produced by the death of a person.

The human mind is so complex precisely because there are an infinite number of experiences that can leave an imprint on it, and this applies to personal relationships as well.

Make those thoughts go away

No, dreaming many times about the same person does not mean that we have an internal conflict related to him. However, if when we are awake those thoughts linked to someone who has been important in our lives do not disappear and constantly intrude into our consciousness despite the fact that they cause us discomfort, we do have a problem . One that can affect our ability to concentrate, and that if prolonged for a long time can increase anxiety levels.

But… How can we solve this problem? What can we do to stop thinking about someone all the time, if this seems to be something independent of our will ? Even if it doesn’t seem so, there are strategies that, once implemented, can help us “unhook” from this unconscious and annoying habit.

The idea is to prevent our mind from being trapped in the same kind of memories, to stop thinking about the same thing constantly. Here are some strategies and guidelines to follow in order to adopt healthier psychological habits.

1. “Not thinking about it” is an ineffective method

No matter how varied our motives may be, the truth is that there is one method that simply does not work. And it is the simplest and most intuitive method, the one we would all try to implement if we knew nothing about how intrusive thoughts work. It is the option of trying to suppress these thoughts voluntarily, that is, to try to make them disappear.

Thought suppression is known to be a totally unproductive option. In fact, it will make us think more about that person. In this regard, the research of Daniel Wegner is famous, in which he asked a number of volunteers to think about a white bear. Then, of course, they were asked to prevent this thought from being repeated. The result was that all participants started thinking about something as unusual as white bears much more than before .

So, trying to suppress these thoughts and memories voluntarily not only doesn’t work, but keeps us thinking about what we want to keep out of our minds, which makes us feel more stressed out. This is a full-blown rebound effect: the very fact of avoiding thinking about that person keeps us from reproducing the way we think about him or her.

2.Accepting intrusive thoughts

One of the strategies to follow can be to practice accepting these thoughts, that is, not fighting to make them disappear from consciousness. There is evidence that people who follow these acceptance strategies experience fewer problems than those who try to suppress these thoughts.

However, the benefits of this method have more to do with how these thoughts make us feel than with how often they appear. In other words, the acceptance of memories and fantasies related to certain people does not make us stop thinking about them in the short term , but it does make us feel less stressed about them.

3. Managing Care

So we have one method that does not work and another that works partially. But… what’s the best way to stop thinking about a person for good?

From what has been researched in this regard, the most effective way to get rid of intrusive thoughts is to focus one’s attention on a series of actions and thoughts that we can lose ourselves in and that, of course, have no relationship with the person we want to stop thinking about. Getting rid of someone, then, has more to do with proposing alternatives to those obsessive thoughts than with trying to eliminate them.

4.Fantasizing with the wrong people

One of the examples of the effectiveness of this strategy can be found in an experiment whose results were published in 2008 in Evolution and Human Behavior. In this experiment we wanted to explore the best alternatives when it came to making people who were in a stable relationship stop fantasizing about a person they considered attractive and who was outside the couple.

To do this, the research team presented a series of images of attractive people to each of the participants in the experiment and asked them to choose the one they found most appealing. Then, they were led to imagine what it would be like to live through a series of situations with these people, as they were asked to explain in writing why they thought this person was attractive and to describe what they thought the perfect date with this person would be like.

Then some volunteers were asked to stop thinking about that person. Of course, they didn’t succeed : they couldn’t get the other person out of their minds and, in fact, they thought more about him/her than the participants who hadn’t been asked to stop thinking about him/her.

5.The solution to these fantasies

What did work was to focus attention on the couple: to think about them, why they are with them, and especially why they love them. This type of thinking, which has the ability to capture attention, was the reason why participants were able to stop thinking about the other person. Furthermore, the most effective thoughts in “capturing” the attention of the volunteers were not those related to the sexual attractiveness of the couple , but those related to the love felt for her.

After practicing this strategy, the volunteers gradually forgot the details about the people they had previously been unable to stop thinking about.

You might want to read: “Types of Love: What Kinds of Love Are There?”

Getting someone out of your head

So , the trick to stop thinking about someone is to find something that is capable of making our attention go towards it naturally , without effort, so that little by little the thoughts we want to avoid become more blurred until they can come to not invade our consciousness constantly.