不要想太多

Have you ever been troubled and people advise you 不要想太多(don't think too much). Tall order isn't it. Surely if you can you wouldn't be troubled in the first place. Such advice is as useless and unhelpful as telling a bereaved person not to feel sad. Especially for a person prone to worries the tendency to ruminate could have become a habit over the years.

What can be more helpful is either teaching the sufferer techniques on how not to ruminate or better still explain the logic behind the 不要想太多advice.

So under the first method you share with the person ways to literally block the ruminations, like being engaged with some activity that requires total absorption eg. gardening, reading, exercise, chanting, meditation or whatever hobbies a person is passionate about. Being immersed in such activities hijacks the person's bewildered mind and provides relief and a feel good effect. It may then dawn on the person that problems can co-exist side by side with states of well-being in life.

A more steadfast solution could be to cultivate the habit of being aware of one's thoughts and emotions, although this needs hardwork and commitment. Observing one's thoughts and emotions first recognises that they exist before being lost in them. Like a bystander watching the relentless flow of thoughts rising and receding, one notices how the thoughts affect the emotions and vice versa in a witch dance. The conditions giving rise to them like certain self beliefs and social / cultural conditioning then become evident. One then understands why thoughts can creep up without  effort and how they can likewise just fade away if one does not attend to them. It also dawns on one that the world created inside one's head is unreal and changes with different thoughts and emotions. If one does not think 'that' way, 'that' world does not exist. Given how thin and tenuous the world created by thoughts is, one should therefore Not Think too Much 不要想太多.