{"id":1019,"date":"2020-05-12T23:15:06","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T23:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2020-05-12T23:15:06","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T23:15:06","slug":"thoughts-and-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/en\/some-cases\/thoughts-and-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts and anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Did you know that most people would rather experience physical pain than spend time alone with their thoughts?<\/span><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-397 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/www.solucionesintentadas.com\/wpcontent\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Conejo-Aburrido-242x300.jpg\" alt=\"Conejo-Aburrido\" width=\"242\" height=\"300\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Conscious and oriented thinking, one of the cognitive functions, defines us as human beings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">But to what extent? Why do we find it unpleasant to be alone with our thoughts? What would we do to avoid it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">These and other questions were addressed by psychologists at the University of Virginia and Harvard in a study recently published in the journal Science.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/news.doccheck.com\/en\/blog\/post\/1562-wandering-thoughts-are-they-more-uncomfortable-than-physical-pain\/\">Here is the\u00a0link to the\u00a0original article<\/a>\u00a0followed by\u00a0a\u00a0surprising summary\u00a0:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">In the research participants were required to\u00a0spend between 6 and 15 minutes alone in an empty room.\u00a0During this time, they should simply deal with their thoughts, without phones or other resources at hand.\u00a0Then they commented on\u00a0their experience, how it had been nice or complicated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The\u00a0conclusion\u00a0was that most participants had difficulty concentrating and also did not enjoy the experience.\u00a0To improve conditions, it was again the study but in a friendlier environment: the home of the participants.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">It was even more difficult because a third of people could not avoid doing\u00a0other activities!\u00a0And they did not seem to\u00a0enjoy the experience more than in the laboratory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">So a third phase was completed:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">What would people do to avoid being alone with their thoughts?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">This new group was offered the option to either hang out doing nothing, or to be \u201centertained\u201d by receiving an unpleasant electric shock when they pressed a button.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">In the end, 67% of men and 25% of women\u00a0chose to\u00a0suffer that pain over having nothing to do!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">How can we have that much anguish with our thoughts?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Are we not able\u00a0just to be with ourselves\u00a0for a few minutes time?<\/span><\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-1019\" data-postid=\"1019\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-1019 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you know that most people would rather experience physical pain than spend time alone with their thoughts? Conscious and oriented thinking, one of the cognitive functions, defines us as human beings. But to what extent? Why do we find it unpleasant to be alone with our thoughts? What would we do to avoid it? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[205],"tags":[301,509,475],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psicoterapialisboa.com\/psicoterapialisboa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}