In daily life, we often encounter situations where the more you don’t want, the more you will occupy your mind, and the thoughts you try to drive away may return to your mind in a stronger way.

In daily life, we often encounter situations where the more you don’t want, the more you will occupy your thoughts, and the thoughts you try to drive away may return to your mind in a stronger way. For example, some people have to check the door lock at home repeatedly every time they go out. They know that they should not check it repeatedly, but they just can't control themselves to check the door lock repeatedly. Moreover, if they do not intervene properly, the behavior of checking the door lock will become more and more serious. This is the dilemma of Bai Xiong. The white bear here refers to those unwanted ideas, including all kinds of emotions you don’t want or problems you want to avoid. This book studies how to treat ideas we don’t want so that we can face life more calmly.

Everyone has unwanted ideas, but ideas are different from things. They are not something that can be thrown away. Whether it is serious psychological problems such as fear, compulsion, addiction, or small troubles in daily life, they will affect our emotions, so we will think of any way to control our thoughts? This is the problem that self-mind control needs to be solved. The focus of the White Bear experiment is to control one's own mind.

In the White Bear experiment, the people participating in the experiment were isolated in a laboratory and sat in front of a table with a microphone and a call bell. In the first five minutes, the experimenter asked everyone to say whatever they thought; in the second five minutes, the experimenter asked them not to think about the white bear, and if someone thought about the white bear, they would ring the bell. The result is that on average everyone rang the bell 6 times in five minutes. One of the women rang the bell 15 times while trying to restrain themselves. Some people can indeed not think about the white bear by diverting attention and other methods, but immediately after the third five minutes began, the experimenter asked everyone to think about the white bear again. These people who suppressed themselves in the second five minutes and did not think about the white bear in their minds were occupied by the white bear in the third five minutes. One of them rang the bell 16 times and mentioned the white bear 14 times. This is the dilemma shown in the White Bear experiment: the more you don't want, the more you will occupy your mind, and the thoughts you try to drive away may come back into your mind in a stronger way.

1. To figure out why the white bear dilemma occurs, we must first figure out how our brain works. Let’s discuss it from the perspectives of cognition and ideas.

First talk about our brain cognition. The biggest difference between humans and machines is that the human brain can not only think, but also think about its own thinking. The judgment of our own thinking is the metacognition of our brain. What role does metacognition play? It is responsible for giving your cognition. For example, when you see a flower, Metacognition will come out and say, "This flower is good, I like it very much." For example, if you find a white bear, Metacognition will jump out and say, "I don't want a white bear." Flowers and white bears are all your cognitions, while metacognition is a voice that expresses your likes or doesn’t like them, supports them or does not support them. It is your personal preference. The point of view is not whether we want a white bear, but that before we make this decision, the concept of a white bear already exists in our cognition. No matter how many times your metacognition says "I don't want a white bear" is useless. This repeated emphasis actually strengthens the impression of a white bear in your heart. If the white bear is not eliminated from the cognitive level, the white bear will not disappear.

After knowing the relationship between metacognition and cognition, we will continue to study the ideas. If ideas are compared to independent software installed in our brains, then our consciousness can be understood as the operating system that runs these software. The operating system of consciousness can connect many ideas together. For example, when talking about "tomatoes", you will think of "eggs", and when talking about "rain", you will think of "umbrellas". When you talk about "paintbrush", you will think of painting. These are the links between the obvious ideas and ideas that everyone can see.If you think of "crawlers" from "umbrellas", and then think of "old people", "retirement", "social insurance", "national policies", etc., now when you look back, you will find that "rain" can actually be associated with "national policies". Psychologists call this series of ideas diffusion activation. There is a very vivid metaphor for diffusion activation. Suppose that all the ideas in a person's mind are a large group of people. The strongest idea is the thief among this group of people. When the thief was discovered, he began to run wildly and rush along the way. Many people on the roadside were influenced by him, and the crowd began to stir up. In other words, the process of the thief's escape activated a series of influences, and these influences were passed into everyone's mind, forming the person's thoughts.

You see, all your ideas are connected together by a network-like structure. As long as one idea is particularly active, some related ideas will also be activated. This is why sometimes a small thing that is not worth it can cause you to feel depressed for a long time, because that small thing activates many other ideas in your brain’s reaction.

After understanding the two brain functions, cognition and thoughts, we know why the white bear in our hearts is so difficult to get rid of. Because when we are trying to drive away the white bear, the brain will first activate cognition, tell you "This is a white bear", and then activate metacognition tells you "I don't want a white bear". Once you want to deny something, this thing will definitely appear in your mind. What's more serious is that our ideas will be connected to each other. Even if we don't think about the white bear directly, once we encounter something related to the white bear, the white bear in your mind will still be activated. So you see, it's so difficult to get rid of the white bear in your heart.

There are many people who will say who hasn’t had some unsatisfactory things yet. When you encounter troubles, you either force yourself not to think about it, or do something else to distract yourself, right? Be careful, you must not do this. Force yourself not to think about it and divert attention is indeed a method that most people will use, but psychologists have proved through many experiments that neither method works very well, and if you don’t pay attention, you will become more and more upset. What's going on? Through research, it was found that many people with depression may actually prevent it themselves before they get sick, but unfortunately, they often feel worse and worse because of the wrong method. There are two main types of their mistakes: one is thinking repression, and the other is self-distraction, which is what we usually call forcing ourselves not to think and divert attention.

Let’s first talk about thinking repression, which means suppressing ideas you don’t like, and the price to pay is particularly high. From the perspective of brain science , deliberately suppressing yourself and not thinking about certain things will consume a lot of brain energy, which means that your brain willpower will be consumed in vain. Any decisions made by the brain without willpower will basically become an emotional choice, which will lead to a strong rebound in your previous suppressed thoughts. In the White Bear experiment, researchers asked those who participated in the experiment not to think about the White Bear. As a result, these people not only could not stop the White Bear from invading the brain, but also thought about the White Bear more times in the next stage of thinking about the White Bear. This is the rebound effect after suppressing their own ideas.

is not only a white bear experiment, but many related studies and experiments have proved the existence of rebound effect. For example, many scientists who study dieting have discovered that the more people eat, the more people they eat, they are often those who keep telling themselves to "eat less". This theory is called the restriction theory and is an important basis for studying obesity. Similar depressive situations include quitting smoking. People who smoke should know that it is always difficult to stop, but it is always very easy to start over. Once you fail to quit smoking and start smoking again, it is easy to smoke a lot of cigarettes in retaliation.Because many things such as smoking or eating sweets will cause our body to become physiologically dependent. In this case of weight loss or quitting smoking, self-control will be very burdened, which means that the brain's willpower will be consumed quickly, and it will be difficult to succeed in the end. Mark Twain once said: "It's so easy to quit smoking. I've quit a thousand times."

We're talking about "self-distraction". Many people think that the cost of suppressing thinking is so high, so we might as well ignore the white bear. This method of consciously distracting ourselves is called "self-distraction", which is also the second misunderstanding that we are prone to fall into. Self-distraction is a psychological first aid technique, and the key is that if we want to suppress one idea, we must focus on another idea. Procrastination, which we are all familiar with, is a typical escape from self-distraction. When we face challenges or feel extremely anxious and fearful, self-distraction can effectively alleviate these psychological discomforts. For example, if you fail the exam, go to the park for a walk and relax; if you don’t go well in your work, you will ask your friends to have dinner after get off work. These are the ways we often use to relax, and it can really cool down the uncomfortable feeling quickly. In this sense, self-distraction is particularly useful in a short period of time and can quickly stay away from fear and anxiety.

However, there are many restrictions on self-distraction. First of all, the white bear can't be too powerful. For example, if the thing you want to forget is the pain of losing a loved one just now, it is difficult to do it by just diverting your attention. Secondly, things used to distract you must be very attractive to you. If you don't like listening to music at all, it's unlikely to divert attention by listening to music, but if you can make you forget to eat and sleep, playing games is your best distraction.

has the most important third point, and in the long run, there is danger of self-distraction. Because the motivation for self-distraction is negative, after all, this is a way to escape. Because self-distraction is a desire to not think, feel, do, or exist. Logically, self-distraction causes us to lose our true self. We cannot sincerely say who we are or what we want to be. Everything we use to distraction is a substitute. There is a state in psychology called self-avoidance. Simply put, it means that you want to escape your own image, or deny your existence and behavior, which will bring about a series of problems, such as hating yourself, unwilling to mention your own affairs to others, and may even develop into suicide. Self-distraction is likely to develop into self-avoidance without control. So you see, although diverting attention can help you, it may lead to loss of yourself. Once self-distraction is out of control, many mental illnesses will follow.

Now you know, the way we usually face the white bear problem is to suppress our thinking and distract ourselves. Repression of thinking can cause a strong rebound in thinking. It is like a swamp, which makes us struggle the deeper we fall. Self-distraction, as a fast reaction, is a good first aid strategy in emergency situations, but in the long run, it is dangerous and can easily cause people to fall into psychological diseases such as self-avoidance. Since neither of these methods is very reliable, how should we deal with it? There are two ways here, one is the external way and the other is the internal way. The external method of

is environmental help. The key to the environment helping us overcome the white bear problem is that the environment can provide clues to thinking, which are things that can prompt ideas to emerge. The principle is the relationship between thieves and crowds we just mentioned. By increasing or decreasing thinking clues, you can control what you think of or forget to a certain extent. For example, if your family can bring you courage and encouragement, that family photo is very suitable for placing it on your desk. On the other hand, if a person breaks up, the two people's common friends, the places they have been together, or the pair of rings they bought together on Valentine's Day can all evoke his memories. So if you want to get rid of the pain of breaking up, you should reduce the frequency of these clues appearing in life.This is the same as if you can't remember the names of elementary school classmates, because there is no longer any intersection and you will gradually forget them.

There is another reminder here, that is, if you want to truly overcome the White Bear, you don’t need to completely cut off all thinking clues, you only need to change a little or you may succeed. The white bear experiment mentioned just now reminded me of the white bear more later because of the idea of ​​suppressing the white bear. The experimenters made some modifications to the White Bear Experiment just now: At first, people were asked not to think about the White Bear, but five minutes later they were asked to think about the White Bear. In these two links, one group of images projected on the wall by the experimental staff’s room has not changed, both classroom scenes, while the other group of people at the stage of being asked to think about the white bear, the images projected on the wall have changed from classroom scenes to household appliances. With just such a small change, the experimental results are amazing. Those in the room where the wall picture remains the same as those in the first experiment, with obvious rebounds more likely to think of the White Bear, while those in the room where the wall picture has changed have no obvious rebound. This proves that changes in the environment, even just changing the background PPT, can effectively alleviate our repressive state. This shows that many people like to travel alone with their bags after breaking up or after major setbacks. The environment in front of them changes, and their mentality changes accordingly.

After talking about the external method, let’s discuss the internal method, which is also a method that is highly praised. Many white bear ideas are not because we do not have self-mind control, but because we are over-controlled. In one study, a obsessive-compulsive disorder patient who had been afraid of going crazy for a long time received a poison-fighting treatment. The doctor encouraged him not to fight against his obsessive-compulsive thoughts, but asked him to describe his thoughts in detail, and even exaggerate this idea. The patient described in detail how he would go crazy and how many stupid behaviors he would do after he went crazy. Six weeks later, a miracle happened, the patient's condition improved significantly, and many patients similar to him also improved significantly. The same approach is also useful for depression and phobia. Psychologists allow patients to get in touch with what they fear little by little while the body is relaxed. At first, they just imagine, but later the patient can directly experience and feel what they fear. For example, some people are afraid of dogs. After he relaxes his body and mind, psychologists encourage him to imagine the dog in his mind. When he gets used to it, they will take him to see a real dog, and even encourage patients to touch the dog's head. This method also cures a large number of patients. You see, if you always use confrontation or escape methods, then compulsive thinking will become a nightmare that keeps chasing you and will never be eliminated. Facing the white bear directly can increase our experience with the white bear. When we embrace the white bear, it is no longer our problem.

In short, there are two feasible ways to deal with white bears. One is external methods and use the environment; the other is internal methods. Embracing white bears with your own souls may be the fundamental way for us to get liberation. Confucius The old man said more than two thousand years ago that "there is no in the line, but it is not enough for oneself." We basically cannot control the external power, and the only thing we can control is ourselves. We control ourselves through various methods, and then we can face our limited lives more calmly.

Ji Xianwei

2022-12-1