Accept your anxious thoughts

the brain keeps reminding you of the thought in order to remind you not to think about it. 

Acceptance is crucial. These thoughts are not in your control, and not something you should expect to control.

The idea behind this is behavioral habituation. If you stop fighting the thought and start experiencing it as often as possible on purpose, the thought will eventually become less stressful (and possibly even boring).

If it's something that you simply think to yourself, like violent thoughts, then try to have the violent thoughts on purpose until you accept that they have no meaning and allow yourself to find them less irritating.

Nevertheless, it's been shown that the more you accept the anxieties, the easier they may be to handle.