What to Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming OCD (What-to-Do Guides for Kids) (What-to-Do Guides for Kids Series)

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This toolbox can include activities you enjoy, like reading, solving puzzles, crafting, or listening to music. Adding sensory experiences can be very calming as well. You can try stress balls, fidgets, soft blankets, and more. Earworms” are unwanted catchy tunes that repeat in your head. These relentless tunes play in a loop in up to 98% of people in the western world. For two-thirds of people they are neutral to positive, but the remaining third find it disturbing or annoying when these songs wriggle their way into the brain’s memory centers and set up home, threatening to disrupt their inner peace. Which songs become earworms?

Other techniques found to be helpful include those from cognitive behavioral therapy, such as replacing dysfunctional thoughts like “These earworms indicate I am crazy” with “It is normal to have earworms.” A less intuitive cure for earworms is chewing gum. It interferes with hearing the song in your head. Grounding techniques can offer an immediate release from the weight of distressing thought loops. 6. Create a toolbox of distractions. Many parents with children who worry obsessively think that OCD only applies to frequent concerns about germs (the obsession) and then washing hands all the time (the compulsion). By selecting activities that captivate your attention and require active involvement, you effectively redirect your thoughts away from the loop’s intensity. Some people try to distract themselves from the song, and it works. In one study, the most helpful “cure” tunes were “God Save The Queen” by Thomas Arne and “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club. Others seek out the tune in question, because it is commonly believed that earworms occur when you remember only part of a song; hearing the entire song may extinguish it.Did you know that people have brain sorters that keep their brains from getting cluttered with unnecessary thoughts? Sometimes these brain sorters get mixed up, though, and brains get clogged with thoughts that really bother kids.

Certain personality features also may predispose you to being haunted by a catchy tune. If you are obsessive-compulsive, neurotic (anxious, self-conscious, and vulnerable), or if you are someone who is typically open to new experiences, you may be more likely to fall prey to an earworm. Why might earworms be good for you? Behaving anxiously activates the stress response. Because of the many changes the stress response brings about, stress responses stress the body, and especially the nervous system, which includes the brain.In every undistracted moment you find your mind replaying the unwanted thought, concept, melody, or song over and over again. Building a toolbox of distractions is a great way to stop thought loops by offering yourself a variety of activities to divert your attention. When you’re drowning in repetitive thinking, turning to these distractions provides an alternative focus that helps break the cycle.