How do you get rid of a bad thought that lingers and haunts you for weeks on end?

I’ve always found apologizing face to face helps. If you genuinely feel you have nothing to apologize for then a little introspection to be certain you harbor no guilt for the bad feelings caused just to be certain. If you find none, you should discover it’ll pass pretty quickly now that you’ve acknowledged it to yourself.

Like anything else in your head, it’s how you react to it that matters. You don’t have to wrestle with it as if it is such a terrible, horrible thing.

Depression does that to you. The thought that I’m a worthless sack of shit keeps cycling through my head. Constant battle.

Good god, is she so starved for ideas that one (and one that she doesn’t even like!) will linger for so long? My problem is holding onto them…

No, some people just aren’t happy unless they’re pissed off about something. And I understand the oxymoronic nature of that thought.

Good question! How many times have we all said or done something that was completly misinterpreted, and the more we tried to explain ourselves, especially in writing, the worse we made it. What I’ve taught myself to do when I knew I didn’t mean to offend or hurt someone and an apology didn’t help is to will the bad thought about myself and my inadvertent mistake away. Dwelling on it is like—pardon the illusion—picking at a scab.

Sometimes obsessive rumination can indicate a form of OCD. I’m not saying yours does, but it might.

Do you want to stop obsessing over it, or stop thinking about it?

Simply observe it.

I’ve been told and told that the way to deal with obsessive thoughts is to acknowledge their presence in your mind and then to let them go. Easier said than done but a technique worth trying. (Similar to what @SABOTEUR just said, too; “Oh, there’s that negative thought again.”)

re: “Oh, there’s that negative thought again.”

Don’t label thoughts.

Don’t acknowledge it at all.

Just observe it without feeding it energy (as much as you can).

When you find yourself thinking about, talking about, pondering, labeling or doing anything with the thought, gently but firmly return to SIMPLY observing the thought.

Do this as many time as it takes. You have to exert as much persistence (or more) as the thought itself.

As you become successful at not feeding the thought new energy, it will dissipate like a fire deprived of oxygen.

I agree with @wonderingwhy about apologizing to the person’s face. I often make social mistakes (saying the wrong thing, etc) and tend to kick myself for a long period afterward. However, when I do talk to the person openly about my mistake, I realize that it really wasn’t that big of a deal after all, and I can move on with my life.

If you can’t (or really don’t want to) talk to your student, just try to think about other things. Or talk to friends about the situation. Often times getting things out in the air and having people understand your dilemma is enough to stop that nasty thought from haunting you.

And if those don’t work, well… Find another, stronger thought to think about!

If this is the only bad thought that you have that consistently bothers you then you should probably talk to the student, apologize to her. You probably have a guilty conscience. If other thoughts do this it could be a symptom of OCD.

Okay, I missed that it was you with the ‘bad thoughts’.

Well, surely you have other thoughts, right? I mean, you could think of her… and her… and certainly her… well, you know.

Hey, it was just a thought. (With all of these thoughts I never have room for ‘other’ bad thoughts.) This is how my thoughts run, anyway.

I usually try to focus on something else when the thought pops up… tell myself “Let it go” and move on to whatever is immediatly infront of me at the time. It takes a day or so to forget but it works for me. Now… getting an IMAGE out of my head is much harder.

I like the answers that say, essentially, acknowledge it, and then let it drift away. That is classic “mindfulness” as described by the great Marsha Linehan.

I have on going problems with that and hope to learn from this thread what to do about it.

One technique is to spend an extended period of time focusing on the thought that bothers you and making sure not to avoid it. You can do this once or twice a day. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it has been known to make it easier to let obsessions go.

Have you apologized?

You mean I’m not supposed to be tortured by obsessive, repetitive thoughts about stupid and embarrassing things from the past? I always figured this was normal; that it happened to everybody and was supposed to. I think of it as penance for being such a goddamn idiot and there we go again… and as self-training to keep myself from opening my big mouth. Hm. Hadn’t thought of this as a symptom of my depression and OCD before. Thanks guys.

@mowens both.
edit: Pandorra: no I haven’t. I would have to go out of my way to even find her now, and truthfully I don’t think I have to apologise as she decided to take it the wrong way, never giving me a chance to explain myself. I persoanlly hate it when someone who knows you – even a little – decides to misunderstand something, and feel ‘insulted” or offended by it – walking away rather than “confronting” – I would’ve simply said something on the spot, like, “what did you mean by that?” or simply, :you know, that could be interpreted as… – which would have allowed me to explain.

Even good people make mistakes in language, especially in an ESL environment, which is extra sensitive (ESL= English as a second language); she should’ve spoken up.

@pd = I am not ocd – saw the movie As Good as it Gets – and I am not like that. ;-)

I just felt bad that it was a miss because of something silly – but it’s all hers – not mine. I’d apologise in a New York minute – to anyone – that I have offended, either inadvertently or even intentionally – if the situation arose and was required. In that, I prefer not to “offend.”

If I think someone is an a-hole, then I’ll tell him so – or just ignore him – but I do not believe in insulting or offending just for its sake.

@Zen_Again, The only way to put it to rest is to apologize. The issue is unresolved until you do. That being said, what you apologize for is wide open to interpretation. You don’t have to apologize for what you said, you do have to say that you are very sorry that she misinterpreted what you said, because you would never deliberately say anything to upset her.

Your distress should end with the apology. You will have done all you could to make the situation correct, and it’s now in her court to put it to rest. Apologizing is far more productive than letting it linger and trying to justify what happened. I

To err is human.

Never forget it – experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted. You need to remember what you did, so you don’t make the same mistake again.

@PandoraBoxx et al; lovely, intelligent answers. Look how different they all are – I shall have to think about it and decide what approach I will take (psychologically speaking) – but nevertheless, it has been serious food for thought – even those answers I disagree with. Merci.

I try not to answer their questions, of which this will certainly be the last.