How can I turn off the constant noise of thoughts?

Thank you for your question!

Having many and intense thoughts in your mind can be due to several different things, and without knowing more about you it’s difficult to give specific strategies. But a good starting point is that even though the flow of thoughts feels disturbing, the goal is rarely to “turn off” the thoughts completely. Instead, it’s about changing your relationship to the thoughts so that they don’t affect you as much or take up as much space.

Examples of factors that can give rise to frequent and intense thoughts include stress, lack of sleep, or a demanding life situation. We also differ in how our attention works — in terms of activity levels, distractibility, and how well we can inhibit impulses. This influences how intense the stream of thoughts may feel.

Emotions consist of three parts

To introduce some general strategies, we can start by defining what emotions consist of. In all emotional reactions, there are three components: thoughts, behavioral impulses, and bodily sensations. If we take anger as an example, a typical thought might be “That’s enough!”. A behavioral impulse might be to confront someone or walk away. Bodily sensations can include an increased heart rate or feeling warm.

In your case, it sounds like you're focusing a lot on the thought component, while perhaps paying less attention to the bodily or emotional aspects.

Identifying what you feel

One way to practice getting a clearer picture of your emotions is to pause and become aware of the three parts of the emotional experience by asking yourself:

What am I thinking right now?

What do I feel an urge to do?

What do I feel in my body?

When you do this, it often becomes easier to name the emotion — for example “worry”, “guilt”, “sadness”, or “anger”.

We can have several emotions at the same time, and sometimes they may feel conflicting or confusing. This often happens when we’re uncomfortable with certain emotions and other emotions arise in reaction to the original one (for example, feeling shame about feeling anxious). This is why it’s helpful to adopt an open and accepting attitude toward all feelings, without judging or evaluating them.

Constant mental noise — what’s what?

Intense thoughts often stem from worry (future-oriented thinking), rumination (repetitive thinking about the past), or cognitive overactivity, which may be stress-related.

It’s valuable to notice what type of thought pattern you’re in, because that influences which strategies are helpful.

Attention training

If your attention is too often drawn inward toward your thoughts and their content, you can practice:

Noticing when thoughts show up without engaging with them

Letting the thoughts pass

Then shifting your attention back to what you’re doing or what is happening around you

You can do this by taking the role of an observer and reminding yourself:
“Here comes a thought… and here comes another one…”
Or by labeling the thoughts:
“Here comes a worry thought… Here comes a thought about not forgetting my laundry time…”

These kinds of exercises don’t remove thoughts, but they help prevent you from getting pulled into them too deeply.

Shifting attention outward

You can also practice directing your focus outward through your senses. Notice what is happening around you — for example:

What can you see right now?

What do you hear?

What do you feel against your skin?

This increases your presence and your ability to get “out of your head” by returning to what’s happening here and now.

Breathing exercises

Doing a breathing exercise can help because focusing on the breath anchors you in the present moment, and calmer breathing can have a regulating effect if you’re often physiologically activated.

You can find various breathing exercises online (e.g., breathing anchor or body scan), and the key is simply that your breathing becomes a bit slower and that the exhalation lasts at least as long as the inhalation.

Goals and expectations

Thoughts will continue to appear — this is completely normal. But the hope is that with awareness and practice, you can relate to them differently and increasingly choose which thoughts to engage with. They can then feel less overwhelming and take less energy.

If your mental noise is so intense that it affects your sleep or quality of life, it may be helpful to seek support through your healthcare centre or student health services.

I hope this answer has given you some helpful perspectives for understanding and managing the noise of your thoughts.

Licensed psychologist