Struggling with intrusive thoughts? Use the ‘blue dolphin’ rule

Struggling with intrusive thoughts? Use the ‘blue dolphin’ rule

It’s your turn for a presentation and all you can think about is your fidgeting leg, the cold sinking feeling in your chest and literally everything that could go wrong. Or it’s time for a diet, but the very food you’d like to avoid the most keeps magically popping up in your head throughout the day. There’s a term for this - the ironic process theory, ironic rebound or the ‘white bear’ problem. The more you try to suppress a thought – say the image of a white bear, the more it appears in your mind. Dr Laxmi Saranya, clinical psychologist at Dubai-based Modern Polyclinic says, “It’s like being told, ‘For two minutes, do not think of a red rose.' Your brain will actually remember all the associations with red rose in your life – whether in a garden, in a bouquet… “Our brain has an innate capacity to associate stimuli with different things in our daily life. There are more than 60,000 thoughts per day, based on our different experiences and sensory modalities in our real life – what we see, touch and feel. Even though you say that you don’t want to think – you are definitely going