Many people are familiar with situations where negative thoughts and images regarding our health or relationships with other people simply haunt us, causing unnecessary anxiety and giving us no peace. Or sometimes doubts and fears creep in about the success of an event. Or we constantly think about the person who hurt us or irritates us in some way. How to get rid of unpleasant obsessive thoughts? It is important to take into account the fact that the establishment of prohibitions such as “not to think about this” will be equivalent to the parable of the white monkey from “The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin” (author L. Solovyov), in which the cunning Khoja promised to make the hunchbacked old moneylender Jafar a young handsome man , however, for this purpose he ordered his relatives to walk around the fire three times with prayer, in no case thinking about the white monkey. Despite all efforts, the notorious white monkey did not leave the minds of the ritual participants. Despite conscious efforts, our brain concentrates directly on the object of our attention, regardless of whether we want to think about it or not. With each new effort to prohibit turning to the object of your thoughts, you can thereby deepen and intensify its imagery and brightness, which will only contribute to the deterioration of the situation. Moreover, traces of thoughts are stored in our subconscious, which prevents us from completely taking control of our own thinking. The best way to get rid of obsessive thoughts is to write them down on paper and then crumple this sheet into a ball or tear it into small pieces, which additionally helps relieve nervous tension, and directing this lump into the trash can. An analogue of this action could be creating an electronic text with printed thoughts and then dragging such thoughts with the mouse into an electronic basket. It is the manual manipulation of the file that is important - dragging and dropping; this helps to cope with negative thoughts better than performing the “save as” and “send to” operations. It should be borne in mind that if you simply imagine how an imaginary piece of paper is sent into an imaginary basket, bad thoughts are unlikely to leave you. So, a simple manipulation of writing annoying thoughts on a piece of paper and throwing it into the trash can will weaken their annoying whirling, which leads to states of anxiety , anxiety, irritation, and ultimately will make it clear whether it is worth paying attention to them at all. If you are unable to use a pen and paper, it will be useful to redirect your attention to another object of interest to you, neutral or having a positive color for you, and concentrate on it, while using your sensory sphere. At the same time, it will be useful to imagine the new object of your attention in full glory, while imagining the sounds and smells emitted by it. A new wave of thoughts and sensations will not only take you away from the past, but will also allow you to relieve stress and relax.