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Hi. I don't know if anyone can relate to this or not, but I have been having really bad intrusive thoughts. In my head I recite prayers and during that something bad always pops in like wishign things that I don't mean and then I have to go back over them and recite it agan with the good thoughts. I know that this might sound crazy - I am aware of that. I'm really scared and it's getting me so stressed out doing this. Even driving by a church panics me because of the thoughts and I feel like I need to go back to there and recite it to make sure it doesn't happen. Please can anyone relate to this and I hope that no one thinks I'm an idiot. Thanks x
Hi Natalie,
this is so so incredibly common, try searching NMP for "intrusive thoughts" and you'll find many people (myself included) who have been through the same thing.
It's a completely normal part of anxiety and i found the best way to deal with them is with acceptance. It's easy to attach so much significance to an intrusive thought, the thought comes as a natural feature of anxiety, it's when we add worry and more worry about the first thought that we make things harder for ourselves.
Dr. Claire Weekes had alot to write about this stuff, i couldn't recommend her books enough.
good luck :)
Thanks for your reply. Do you happen to have the whole prayer problem? I'm so scared that something will happen and it'll come true and that's why I always have to go back and sort it x
I have intrusive thoughts a lot. My worst are when I feel disconnected from reality and that I don't know why I'm here or what everythings about and then I have an anxiety attack
i know god undersands its not your fault say a short prayer first for help and if thay come in your mind just pray though them god bless and dont worry
An old thread of mine but maybe it'll help you in some small way...
An intrusive thought
I can remember once I was putting a jumper on and the collar went into my eye. Immediately I got an intrusive thought saying "what if I went blind" which made me feel anxious. I then had this "flash" of how I'd cope and what life would be like. I started questioning why I was getting this thought.
I wanted to take the jumper off and put it on again to counteract the thought but I felt if I did that, each time I put this jumper on, my mind would replay this intrusive thought so I'd then be afraid of wearing it again.
I decided just to ignore the thought and not react to it. I left the jumper on, the anxious feelings gradually subsided and the thought never bothered me again because I just forgot about it.
If we repeat actions due to intrusive thoughts, we leave an imprint in our mind so that the same intrusive thoughts will occur each time we perform a particular action. They'll keep coming back.
If we carry on, reminding ourselves that they are Just a frightening thought, the thoughts gradually become less frightening because we begin to realise they can't actually harm us and nothing bad will happen.
No one knows what our thoughts are except US. If you see someone putting a jumper on then taking it off again only to put it on once more, you'll think to yourself why are they doing that? If you then put yourself in that persons position and pretend looking at yourself, you'll see the thoughts are "invisible" to the world except you.
The more we repeat actions, the more we try to control our thoughts and the more they'll keep coming back to scare us. They'll only stop frightening us when we stop attempting to control them and stop reacting to them.
Yes, I've suffered OCD in a Bad way where thoughts controlled my day to day actions but I realised that we have to allow ourselves to think them But not react to them. They then eventually lose their fear factor, our confidence builds, we take control of our anxiety and we start to enjoy life again.:hugs:
hi natalie this also sounds like ocd im the same i cant leave things half way through ainterupted ihave to start again and if i get interupted i have to strat again but then again i think this is just another symptomof anxiety :ohmy:
pm anytime xxxx:bighug1:
I discovered something very interesting this week when I went for a CBT session. I was talking with the counsellor about the things that I want to achieve through CBT, and one of the them was to be able to have better control over intrusive thoughts and flashbacks (as I suffer from these a lot as well). The thing he said that really surprised me is that actually *everybody* gets them, not just anxious people, but the difference is the way that anxious people react to them, as we hold on to them.
Blue Angel - that is exactly what my counsellor said too. He said it's the importance that we (us here!) attach to them that's the difference. That's then followed by the 'worry on the worry' therefore feeding the anxiety. I find it quite (no, very) difficult to not bother about the thoughts because I think that if I don't worry about them it'll happen. So typical of anxiety/ocd. Isn't it frustrating when you know it all in theory (probably most of us on here could get a PhD in it!!!!!) and can't put it into practice?
Take care x
Ha - that's very true jilly - we're all bloody experts but we can't get our acts together!! :roflmao:
The thing he said that really surprised me is that actually *everybody* gets them, not just anxious people, but the difference is the way that anxious people react to them, as we hold on to them.
I'm quite sure it's true that everyone gets intrusive thoughts but we react differently to them by holding on to them.
Just to add...why do we hold on to them and why do the same thoughts or thoughts on a similar theme keep coming back whereas others will get constant random thoughts that just pass through them?
Answer....Fear.
Our intrusive thoughts are created by our fears. We hold on to them and they keep coming back Because they Scare us. This is why people say about "acceptance" because by accepting them as just thoughts created by fear, we don't tense up to them and don't panic so then we allow them to pass through us like any other intrusive thought because they then no longer induce a state of fear within us.
Everyone gets intrusive thoughts but we don't give them a second thought when they don't frighten us so they then don't keep coming back to bully us because they've then lost their power.
I think the trick to dealing with frightening repetitive intrusive thoughts is to remember to keep relaxed and not tense up when they come in, and try to let them go as you would about a thought of a cream cake which brings me to a controversial theory I have!:blush:
Something else which I don't think therapists would agree with and I'm not even sure myself that it's a good approach either but if you can't accept thoughts, I've found there is another way of dealing with them. I'm sure though that some people will disagree with this theory though....
One day I was having a shower and as I stepped out I had an intrusive thought. I ignored it and just carried on. However, the next time I had a shower, the same intrusive thought came back without me even consciously thinking it.
I thought afterwards that this thought didn't really bother me and I managed to carry on and ignore it and yet, it still came back. I think my subconscious mind had brought the thought back because the stepping out the shower triggered the memory of the intrusive thought I had the first time.
It got me thinking and I thought to myself if my mind could program itself to think of an intrusive thought at a specific time then maybe it would be possible to program the mind to think of a happy thought when an intrusive thought surfaced.
I actually found it worked. It didn't matter what the happy thought was...it could be a face, a place, a voice, a word or a happy memory but it Had to stir a real feeling of happiness. If I then made sure I thought this happy thought each time a bad intrusive thought surfaced, my mind then became programmed to automatically think this happy thought as a happy intrusive thought without me even having to make myself think it when a bad intrusive thought surfaced.
For instance, when I go to bed and can't sleep, I think of driving down roads as it helps me get to sleep but now I don't have to remind myself to think about it. I close my eyes and no matter what worries I have, the roads appear.
The reason I know some people will disagree with the theory is because it goes against acceptance. We should allow ourselves to think thoughts and just accept them but by programing the mind to think of a happy thought it could be construed as creating a barrier to block bad intrusive thoughts. Blocking means resisting which leads to tension because we're not accepting a bad thought as just a thought so I can therefore understand why the theory would be opposed.
However, blocking is normally done by consciously resisting a bad thought whereas the theory is creating a subconscious automatic programmed response. Also. if you can learn to accept bad intrusive thoughts as just thoughts but then also program the mind to think of a particular happy thought when bad thoughts surface, the mind then tends not to dwell on bad thoughts because you're too busy thinking about the programmed happy thought....if you see what I mean.
I do realise this probably won't go down too well with some on here and I'd be the first to agree with them but personally, it's just something I found that helped me whether it's a right or wrong approach. I really don't think therapists would even suggest it to be honest and I'd understand why.:blush: Penny for your thoughts!:unsure:
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