# Thought Silencing Techinques



## voidofform (Jan 31, 2005)

please forgive me if i'm intruding here - i'm not DPd/DRd, but i 'm an avid lucid dreaming student.

i also find it very hard to fall asleep. which of course doesn't help - hard to lucid dream when you're awake (if you're lucky...). my insomnia springs from having too many thoughts running around in my head, stupid things like imaginary conversations (always gibberish of course), constant analyses and meta-analyses of what i'm thinking, feeling, how i can fix my problems, my friends problems, what happened during the day, what i'm supposed to do tommorow, why i can't sleep etc etc etc.

anyway, to cut a long story short, i decided to try some stuff to cure my insomnia and be able to sleep on demand, and the thoughts and voices seemed the major obstacle. i've had some success with a couple of techniques, which i thought might possibly be of some use to DP/DR sufferers:

1) the "turning the radio dial down" technique. the voices and thoughts just won't budge, but if i stop trying to force them away, i do seem to be able to slowly force the volume down on them, eventually silencing them. eventually new ones come along to replace them, which i can eventually turn down too.

2) the "explode the thoughts" technique. just by visualising a roadside sign of the words running through my head shattering and the pieces flying in random directions seems to disrupt the generation of the thought. once again new ones come along which i then explode too

the tricky bit with both of these is to do them with vocalising "i am now turning down the volume on this thought" etc, because that's just replacing one thought with another, the idea is to do it purely audially for 1) or visually 2).

i think its all about thinking visually and instinctively, rather than via language.

ive been practising this quite alot during the day too, and its had an amazing calming effect that seems to be relatively persistent. i'm left in a peaceful state, with only my tinitus to break the silence. its like i'm forgetting how to "commentate my life with my inner dialog". this is an exceptionally good thing. if i can continue to live this way, that's my anxiety and depression gone for good.

(pity this whole thing doesn't seem to help sleeping though, now i just lie in bed devoid of thought staring into space wide awake)

enough rambling, i hope someone finds something here useful.


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