Try not to think about that animal. Try it hard: don't think of a white bear. What can you not avoid? This is the experiment that Daniel Wegner, a Harvard psychology professor, subjected his students to. Then he asked them to talk for five minutes about whatever came to their minds. "They mentioned a white bear right away," says Wegner. "If I later asked them to think about anything, they mentioned a white bear more times than I told them to think about it."
An experiment as simple as this reveals how difficult it is to fulfill what we have consciously and freely chosen.
Wegner's white bear experiment – which has been repeated even with impossible animals like a green rabbit – is included in what is known as thought suppression, to stop having certain ideas in mind. As a mind control technique, it can create obsessions.
In other words: if we spend the day removing from our minds the image of who has broken our heart, we will not be able to stop thinking about it and it will even be more present. It is much worse than having it in your head all day: "You can get tired if you always think about something. Trying not to do it is what keeps it in our head," says Wegner, a physicist who is a psychologist who collects glasses with noses and Groucho Marx's mustache.
Therefore, if we want to get rid of that love that broke our hearts, we have to do the opposite of what our friends usually recommend. Because if you don't force yourself to forget it, it will end up leaving.
