Relieve Your Anxiety by Singing It
Some therapists are using Songify, a music app, to have patients make recordings of their worried thoughts—and get rid of them.
The underlying principle is that singing your thoughts separates you from their meaning. Almost all people (something like 80 to 90 percent of the population), experience intrusive thoughts—weird little niggling things they don’t particularly want scrolling through their heads.
.. The underlying principle is that singing your thoughts separates you from their meaning. Almost all people (something like 80 to 90 percent of the population), experience intrusive thoughts—weird little niggling things they don’t particularly want scrolling through their heads.
.. By telling yourself not to think about something, he says, “you’re increasing the number of associates that remind you of it.”
.. Songify was only released four years ago, and it’s even newer to the therapists who use it. But the process behind the Songify technique, called cognitive defusion, has been around for decades. Before the app came along, therapists would have their patients sing their worries to common melodies.
.. “As you try not to think that, you have to remind yourself of it to see if it’s gone away,” Hayes said. “And there it is again.”
.. “As you try not to think that, you have to remind yourself of it to see if it’s gone away,” Hayes said. “And there it is again.”
.. He said it tends to work best with people who realize their fears are slightly irrational, or at least are being over-thought. (Someone who just lost his job and is facing very real worries about making rent, for example, might not be the best candidate.)
.. He said it tends to work best with people who realize their fears are slightly irrational, or at least are being over-thought. (Someone who just lost his job and is facing very real worries about making rent, for example, might not be the best candidate.)
.. Other people put their worst thoughts on t-shirts, or send themselves emails that say, “Did you know you’re unlovable?” “You start playing with your own dark side and give yourself some distance from it,” Hayes said.
.. The point isn’t to suggest that the person’s worries aren’t scary, says Winston, it’s to develop “a different relationship with the thought.”