I’m hoping I’m posting this in the correct forum–I’m really hoping there is a factual answer to this.
I have recently come to discover that I have an internal focus problem. There are some tasks on which I am unable to mentally focus–mainly these are driving, sex, and a few other scenarios. I find myself with this overwhelming inner dialogue that just will not quit. I rehash conversations, review things that happened during the day, plan my grocery list, whatever. It’s this constant mental chatter that I’m unable to rid myself of.
A friend is teaching me how to sing and caught me doing it a couple times when we were practicing where I’d start listening to myself and mentally “discussing” what I was doing and the sounds I was making. She is the one who described it as a focus issue and pinpointed the inner monologue spot on. I’d never told anyone about it or thought of it as a problem until that moment… and I’m not sure how to fix it.
It’s not as simple as just redirecting my thoughts to concentrate on the task at hand. For example, (and sorry if this is TMI but it’s the most glaring example of it happening and the one I’d most like to get rid of) having sex with my husband I’m constantly thinking a million other things, and when I catch myself and start thinking about focusing I’ll get something like this: “okay, I’m doing it again. I should focus. Think about what he’s doing. That feels good. Wait, that doesn’t. Why is he doing that? Shouldn’t he know not to do that? Hmm. This is like that one time where…” and on and on and on until I’m microscopically analyzing a conflict with a co-worker last week, catch myself doing it again, and the conversational cycle starts again.
I tried to work my google-fu and ended up with the only relavent articles found on a bunch of schizophrenia support sites :eek:!
I don’t know how to clear my mind, or what I should be thinking about to actively direct my thoughts into something useful.
Can anyone help me? I don’t know if this is something that falls into the realm of any one profession to deal with. My friend says it comes up a lot with singers and musicians and that it’s a performance issue–but who knows about this problem and how to fix it?
I too have the same inner chats with myself, including the political causes of WW2, the effect that U.S. Grant had when he took over the Army of the Potamic, how Transporters from Star Trek might work, and so on.
Why do you think it’s a problem?
I think it’s healthy to have an active mind.
(Obviously, if you are getting so “distracted” that you become a real danger to yourself while operating a car, it’s time to learn to focus. Othwise, I repeat my question.)
If this interferes with your life enough that you want to have it dealt with, I suggest being screened for learning disorders. Inability to pay attention is a symptom of LD.
I have one friend who, after years of meditation, claims to have no inner monologue. Is that weird or what? Strange thing is, I believe him. He says he used to, but not anymore. He says it’s very quiet in his head.
I was whining to him about how much I hate meditation, because I just can’t get that monologue to shut the hell up, and he suggested, since I’m so word-oriented, the following meditation:
Imagine yourself in the middle row of a darkened movie theater. There’s no one else with you, just you and a blank movie screen. As your monologue kicks in (yep, that’s it right now going, “This’ll never work…”), see the words in print on the screen, scrolling by from right to left. Let them just trail off the edge of the screen and disappear when they get there. If, like me, you have multiple monologues, or dialogs, see them in different fonts or colors, just scrolling by.
Soon, he promises me, there will be large gaps in the writing on the screen where you’re really not inner monologuing. The more your brain gets used to being quiet, the better able you are to do it while not meditating.
Some people, I guess, think in pictures, and those people he encouraged to “see” their thoughts as oil paintings, and then let the paint drip to the bottom of the canvas and just melt right off. I’ve also heard of tactile thinkers who think in touch, and their thoughts can get put into balloons in their hands which float away. It seems that finding the right meditation match for the way you think is key to being able to succeed at the whole “quieting your thoughts” bit.
I’ve been successful in meditating by just listening. Every time the grey matter starts to squeeze out a thought, I shush it and go back to listening w/o inner remark. It seems to be fairly easy and extremely relaxing.
Sorry if this is a hijack, but I too am distracted by my inner monologue. It frequently prevents me from listening to another person, even if they are responding to a question I asked. As I think this is incredibly rude, I’d like to be able to stop, but I can’t. On the other hand, having an active inner monologue is quite nice sometimes, especially if I am stuck waiting for something. I’d like to be able to turn it on and off at will. Can this be done?
mlees–it’s not always a problem, per se, but it is when I need or want to be concentrating on some other task at hand, whether it’s a conversation on the phone or driving or any other task. I solved the driving issue by listening to books on tape. It seems the element of my brain usually occupied by inner monologue is satisfied with listening to a story, leaving me free to focus on the task at hand, which is driving. Otherwise, it’s a problem because I can’t have an orgasm since I’m too busy repeating an earlier conversation word for word in my brain to pay attention to the task at… err… hand. Or I’ll realize that I haven’t heard the last thirty seconds of what you were telling me, so on and so forth. And it’s not as easy as “just concentrate on what you’re doing” because I start focusing on how I’m not focusing and the things I should be focusing on and how I can do that and what I missed and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
I do like the meditation exercise, thanks so much, and will look into learning disorder folks to see if they have any ideas.
I have this problem when I’m trying to go to sleep. Other times, too, but that’s when it’s really a problem. I like the meditation WhyNot posted, and will try it. Something that helps me with the sleeping thing is to go through the alphabet thinking of the first word that comes to me for each letter. It just takes my focus off of whatever stupid thing was occupying my mind and doesn’t take any actual concentration. I’m not sure if this will help with the sex thing, though.
I might suggest teaching your husband better technique.
My suspicion would be that this is somewhat less an issue that your mind is too active to enjoy yourself (though of course, I’m sure that that’s part of it), and more than you are bored, and so your brain is filling in. Stop being bored, and the problem goes away.
While that may or may not be true (is this going to sound stupid? I’m not sure, but I probably already sound like an idiot anyway), if that were the problem I wouldn’t have any idea what to teach him to do differently. I sort of always assumed that the problem was that I couldn’t relax and concentrate and enjoy myself. We’ve done nothing but experiment to try and find the “right” technique to do it for me, and he’s more than accommodating to direction in that regard, but we’ve never managed figure it out. Therefore, I’m left with the assumption that it’s my problem rather than his.
Often, I have a song going through my mind and just repeating and repeating until I find something constructive to do. But this is a frequent happening, usually with different songs from the 40’s throuth the 70’s. Usually it is just the music without words, but sometimes my mind provides words. I can’t seem to get rid of this mental music.
The OP is describing hyperactivity/attention-deficient disorder. Get a copy of the book * Driven to Distraction*, I bet you will find it describes you perfectly.
I don’t know if this will truly hit the OP’s nail squarely on its head, but there might be some value in becoming familiarized with the ideas of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D. I’ve never actually read the guy but his ideas have been very influential for many years… and former football coach Jimmy Johnson used to swear by him.
[The first concentration exercise might well be to learn how to pronounce his name!]
Very approximately, it is Meehi Chick-sent-meehi (long i sounds). Mihaly is the Hungarian equivalent of Michael, I don’t know what csik means here (an online dictionary says ribbon or stripe, which doesn’t make much sense) and szent means saint.
