Imagine an ancient person: if he constantly thought about the beauties that surround him, he would soon become a victim of some predator. Therefore, he had to think about this very predator, to imagine how to deal with him, and so on. Exactly the same mechanism works for modern people: sorting through awkward (count, dangerous) moments of life, we focus on them and, as it were, learn. This helps us to avoid similar situations in the future or with dignity to leave them.

If you pay attention to the thoughts that torment you, you can understand yourself a little more. For example, some kind of nuisance happened to you and it doesn’t get out of your head-it probably means that professional activity really worries you. If you involuntarily think about some awkwardness perfect in the company of friends, then, apparently, you are worried that people may not accept you.

Such pessimistic thinking is called the bias of the brain to negative events. The point is that failure can teach us more than success. In any case, in those very prehistoric times it was, and now, as it is believed, this brings more harm than good.

This mental process intensifies if you do not have free time during the day. For example, this happens in young parents. They simply do not have a single minute in the literal sense of the word to reflect on what is happening in life, and before sleeping the brain “catches the moment” and literally bring down a flurry of various thoughts and memories on them. This is absolutely normal. But, if in the evening an abundance of negative thoughts bothers you in the evening, you need to try to find a little time in the afternoon to relax, then it will be a little easier at night

Remember the bad before bedtime, but for some people it can be too traumatic
The problem, as a rule, is not thoughts themselves, but a person’s reaction to them. Someone recognizes negative images, but quickly forgets them and moves on. And others get hung up and begin to twist it in thoughts constantly. In the latter case, we can already talk about some pathology that you need to fight.

At risk, people with sleep disorders, post -traumatic disorder and mental problems (depression, increased anxiety, and so on) fall into risk. Many of them try to suppress negative thoughts. Unfortunately, this does not work, but causes the exact opposite effect: there are even more involuntary memories of various troubles.

In order not to get into the number of these people, you need to stop interacting with negative thoughts: they remembered something bad or shameful-think about something else. Do not attach great importance to this, do not analyze your behavior in the situation that took place a couple of years ago - just “pass by” her.

The worse you sleep, the more such thoughts will come to you
At one university, they conducted an experiment with the participation of 100 students: they tried to determine the dependence between the quality of sleep and repeated negative thoughts. And they found out: the less a person sleeps, the more such thoughts come to him. True, there is a small snag: scientists could not understand whether a bad dream leads to anxious thoughts, or whether anxious thoughts lead to poor sleep. Be that as it may, the dependence between these two things exists.

It is known that the lack of sleep enhances the emotional reactions of a person, especially to negative stimuli. If you regularly do not get enough sleep, the connection between the emotional centers of the brain and the part of it, which is responsible for the inhibition of emotions, weakens. That is, the less you sleep, the more actively react to the negative. If in normal condition you have a thought that you are not a lot and actively work, then in insomnia, you can literally get hung up on this.

You can easily check if you are sleeping enough. Make an alarm so that from the moment you fall asleep, exactly 8 hours have passed. If you wake up a few minutes before he calls, then sleep a little more than you need. If you wake up by the sound of the alarm clock and feel broken, the next time increase sleep time by 15 minutes - do this until you start waking up exactly along the alarm clock and feel slept.

If you afford to think about bad today, tomorrow these thoughts will double
If at night, looking at you remembered that you were in an awkward situation, and scrolled it in your head several times, then the next day with a high probability you will think about it again. The point is that the thoughts on which we concentrate before bedtime are deposited in memory. This can work as a life hack: to learn a poem, you need to teach it in the evening, and not in the morning or day.
To get rid of negative thoughts before going to bed, you can focus on tactile sensations. This should work almost like meditation: feel how soft or rough your sheet is, how your head is in contact with a pillow and drown in it, or just focus on your breath.

There is a more “exotic” tool: plan yourself for thoughts during the day. 10-15 minutes per day will be enough. Just sit down and think or write down everything that worries you. This will allow the brain to unload, and in the evening bad thoughts will be less or they will not appear at all.

Are you falling asleep quickly? What do you think before going to bed?