Obsessive thoughts like "Did I turn off the iron?" visit me often enough. But I found a solution for myself.
Surely it often happens that in the middle of the day, usually during an important meeting or when you are very far from home, a thought suddenly flashes in your head: "Have I turned off the iron?" or any other similar. I usually get puzzled by the thought of whether I closed the front door.
What I just did: I wrote notes on the front door, and checked ten times whether I turned off the iron and the stove, and pulled the front door after locking it with a key. But half an hour after leaving the house, an obsessive question crept into my head: "Have I closed the door?"
And just recently, I found for myself a completely effective way to stop worrying about it. It is important not just to check, but to fix the fact of verification in the brain. At this moment, I am fixed on “here and now, ” that is, I close the door consciously, and not by inertia, as usual. How I do it: I stop for a couple of seconds, remove extraneous thoughts and extraneous sounds from my head, and concentrate on closing the door. In this state, I close it, check it and say out loud "the door is closed." For fidelity, I also fix it in a visual way: I put my open palm on the door, as if sealing it. After that, you can return to your head everything that was there before. And when after half an hour the seditious thought of an open door creeps into my head, I remember the words “the door is closed” and calm down, because I could only pronounce them after I closed the door and became convinced of it.
But back to the iron. Of course, to put a palm on the iron and, looking at the burn, to understand that it is turned off is unproductive and painful. I get rid of the obsessive thought about the unmounted iron as follows: when I finish ironing, I turn off the iron and carry it to cool in the kitchen, firmly fixing the picture of the iron on the kitchen table in my head. So when the question arises, I recall it and understand that the iron could appear there only if I turned it off. Calming comes by itself.
If you have similar difficulties, try on my “recipes” for yourself, of course, with the necessary adjustments. And if you also share the results, then I will be very grateful to you.
