I've never really been a fan of thought-control.

Take the stream-of-consciousness: words pop in there, start conversations, and eventually fade. My form of "thought-control" has usually been just to pop counter words in the conversation, or argue with myself. So for example, if I wanted to stop thinking about how much I hate someone, I'll usually try to argue myself out of it.

Other forms of thought-control are distracting yourself, which I have come to employ lately.

Others are just letting the conversations fade. The conversations fade ultimately in the end, but you can accelerate the fading by just not stoking the flames of the conversation.

A form of thought-control that I haven't had much success with is nipping the thought in the bud, before the words pop in there. I think I should do this because from what people tell me, they seem to do it well. Like if I explain my over-the-top worries to people, they tell me "don't think about it!" I usually balk at those suggestions and dodn't trust when people say that. I always write them off like, "maybe they just don't have these thoughts."

Yeah, I should try to inhibit thoughts from popping up in there that I don't need, like jealousy, comparing myself to other people, or rehearsing what I say to people.

See, before I used to harbor this fear of repression. I don't want to blame my education, but from TV shows and what little we learned in psychology classes, it seemed like repression would lead to really terrible effects for the user, like schizophrenia.

Really, I have no idea how repression works, and I think I let that bogeyman bother me.

Because there's a difference between repression and suppression. Suppression is more like not listening to interfering voices in your head, or in trying to distract yourself out of the thought, or trying not to think something. Repression is more like an extreme version of suppression, where you really try to squash a thought out of existence.

I tried recently to do some suppression, and basically I think it's safe to do so as long as you use a moderate touch. You keep on trying to withold yourself from a thought, but if after a reasonable effort, it bubbles up again, then you just have to let it speak and hopefully the conversation fizzles out or maybe it requires attention.

Eventually nature will out, so you can trust that if you try to suppress too hard, you'll get plenty of feedback that what you are experiencing is repression. Suppression usually takes a little bit of up front effort, but once it's done, you're usually thankful afterwards.