When it comes back

It will come back. A write-up doesn't erase a groove that's been worn for eleven years. Sometime in the following week you'll be at the washing line and the corridor will appear. That doesn't mean the method has failed. It's what you'd expect, and what matters is how you respond.

First, here's what doesn't work, since you've probably tried it. You can't order a thought out of your head. Daniel Wegner's experiments in the 1980s asked people not to think of a white bear. They thought of it more, and it rebounded afterwards. Telling yourself "stop thinking about the photocopier" is an instruction that contains the photocopier. It also turns each arrival into a failure, and that adds a second layer of misery to the first.

So you're not going to try to stop it arriving. You don't control that. What you can decide is whether to go in. The scene shows up, and that's an event in your head like any other. Then there's a small gap, and then the replay proper begins, with the walk down the corridor and the trying out of other lines. That gap is where you have a choice, and it gets wider with practice.

The response has three parts and takes about ten seconds.

You name it. "That's the photocopier." Use a plain label, in the tone you'd use for a bus going past. This does more than you'd think. It moves you a step outside the scene, to the observer's position from chapter 11.

You remind yourself of its status. "It's been written up. The lesson was to say I'm sorry and stop." The scene has been appearing all these years because it was filed as open, and you're telling your mind that it's closed and what the result was. Think of an email you've already answered turning up in your inbox a second time. You recognise it and leave it, and you don't write the reply again.

Then you put your attention on something outside your head. It needs to be specific and physical. You might notice the feel of the wet cotton, the pegs and the blackbird on the fence. Or you take up the actual problem of how to fit two more shirts on the line. The studies in chapter 3 showed that a few minutes with attention turned outward restored people's mood and their problem solving, while dwelling made both worse. The 2008 review reported that dozens of experiments show positive distraction relieving low mood. This isn't running away from the work, because the work is done and it's in the folder.

If it comes back thirty seconds later, do the same again, without irritation if you can manage it. Early on you may do this five or six times in one session at the washing line. Each time is a repetition of a new habit, and you're not making the old one any deeper.

It helps to know your idle moments. Replays arrive when your hands are busy and your mind is free. For a few weeks there's no shame in giving your mind something to hold at those times. Put the radio on in the kitchen or have a podcast at the washing line. In the shower, plan the day. This isn't for ever. It stops the old habit getting free rehearsal while the new one is still weak.

Bed is the hardest place, because it's dark and quiet and there's nothing to turn your attention to. The three parts still apply, with the last one adapted. Name it, remind yourself it's written up, and then give your mind a dull, concrete task. Go through the rooms of a house you used to live in, or the stops on a train line you know. If you lie there arguing with the replay, the replay wins, because arguing with it is going in.

One objection comes up. "This feels like dismissing something that matters." If you've done the write-up honestly, you haven't dismissed it. You've given it more careful attention than it ever got from the replays. What you're declining is the four-hundred-and-first pass through material you've fully examined. You can take something seriously and still be finished with it.