How Your Brain Responds to "Not Thinking" About Sex
An expert explains how to navigate through intrusive thoughts.
Dr. Julie Smith, a psychologist on TikTok, shared an interesting mental health hack that can help you refocus when having intrusive thoughts.
She begins her TikTok post with the prompt: “Try not to think about sex for the next twenty seconds.” It probably didn’t take you longer than ten seconds to realize that trying not to think about sex only intensifies the thought. “That’s because your mind doesn’t deal with negatives that well,” she told her followers.
This is a great example of how your brain responds when you try not to focus on something. Your brain goes haywire and hyper-focuses on the very thing you asked it not to. Dr. Smith shared that this is what makes patterns, like addiction and intrusive thinking, hard to break.
Instead of pressuring yourself to stop thinking about something, simply let the thought pass by “actively [filling] your attention with the things you want to be thinking about,” she says. This helps you refocus effectively, without shame or pressure.
View more details on the hack below:
