Your brain naturally presents you with thoughts of scenarios that would bring danger or great distress to you or your loved ones. There’s an evolutionary purpose in it that isn’t necessarily a secret or slight desire for it to happen.
And, of course, if you have OCD, the feature is broken and plays like an uncontrollable spam-fucking stream of intrusive thoughts that escalate as you try to dismiss them. Also isn’t an indication of secret desire or anything like that. Just that specific mechanic of your mind being on the fritz due to a lack of serotonin.
Yep, it’s a warning.
If you want the intrusive thoughts, the calls-of-the-void to go away, simply acknowledge the thought, thank it for keeping you safe, and move on.
Yes, you can talk to your thoughts, you can freeze them and interrogate them, ask them why they’re there and what they’re doing. This is called cognitive diffusion, part of ACT therapy. Eventually, you will find a reason to thank the thought and move on, it’s strange but hugely effective. Works on any type of thought.
Nothing changed my perspective on intrusive thoughts like learning they are directly related to mental exhaustion. If you notice them, you need mental rest.
Sleep is helpful but just not doing anything for a little while is helpful too. Sitting around staring into space or looking our a window, no TV, no phone, no book, no shampoo bottle instructions; rawdog reality. Not for super long, 2 or 5 minutes is enough, don’t need to push thoughts away or think of nothing or meditate if that’s not your thing. Just try doing nothing at all for a little bit, let your brain rest.
the thing that mentally exhausts me the most is guilt - guilt of undone chores, guilt of unfinished projects, guilt of unfulfilled “potential”. attempting to rest when surrounded with guilt is exhausting too
i’m working on it of course, but it’s a rather slow climb, with plenty of holes on the way. and if it was just internal that’d be half the problem it is, because on top of all the personal guilt i also need to push back against the culture of grind and constant productivity (which is, in itself, a big source of guilt)
the only way is through
unless i give in to the temptation, fake my death, and join a buddhist monastery in tibet or something idkI’m sorry mate but I’d be resting 24/7 then. I just kinda let them flow and not act on them
That’s just not true. I have intrusive thoughts whether I am rested or not.
Little tip for all others getting a 24/7 stream of this trash: do not fight them, instead “dismiss” them. “This is a useless thought, Maybe later, I will think about it tomorrow, etc.” The more resistance and discipline you present, the stronger the next ones are. By dismissing them, you take their energy away and protect your own mental energy, as they are now super easy to get rid of. Don’t think hard mental discipline, let them come and dismiss them, it is still an active thing, but simpler and lower resistance, kind of like Zen meditation.
Edit: typo
I’m a system and can confirm that any direct suppression is gonna go wrong. I have the benefit of actually being able to directly talk to those background thoughts’ origin points, and work things out from there instead of chaining the regions down. It’s how solving a lot of personality disorders works (mostly BPD in our case). It’s how we even turned a lot of those regions into forces for good.
Be kind to yourself–not just others.
I always saw it as our minds considering all possibilities.
Yeah it’s one of those "things that separate us from (most) animals. We can ask “what if” and simulate the probable result with a decent amount of accuracy completely internally. It’s a really cool feature if you know what to do with it, it’s just sometimes it runs some really weird simulations “just in case.”
If anyone’s having thoughts like this; it’s completely normal. Rest assured, I have thoughts like this multiple times a day, and I don’t even have a newborn.
Call of the void
I mean who hasn’t thought of a baby in the blender at least once, right?
Trump just acts on the intrusive thought.
Trump’s intrusive thoughts are looking at him, horrified.
*Throw, the word is throw.
