[InCityDreams]

>an even surer way to prevent being punished for your ideas is to prevent yourself from even thinking them in the first place.

Genuinely intrigued: could you expand on this? I'll start by asking: is it possible to not think of something once you start thinking about it? And that realy is the best i can phrase the question at the moment.

[Delk]

At the more extreme end there's thought suppression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_suppression

I there could be milder versions as well: catching oneself getting into thoughts that lead to something you don't want to think about and consciously divert from that. I think I recognize that.

[noisy_boy]

This is purely subjective, not sure if others share the feeling: there is a sense of "pre-thought", like hairs standing on your neck in the anticipation of something. I have stopped at that point and diverted my mind to something else to avoid the full formation/visualization of a thought that was on its way and I didn't want to fully experience it.

[burnished]

Sure. I used to play a game with friends called "Rule number one is 'dont visualize', rule number two is 'dont visualize'" where we would make up awful shit and the only defense was to not think about it.