Alexander search Posted February 3, 2019 Share Posted February 3, 2019 I liken my intrusive thoughts to a visual “ear worm”. Does anyone have any tips on how to deal with a constant “visual worm” of , without going into too much detail, an unpleasant scatalogical nature? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jt07 Posted February 3, 2019 Share Posted February 3, 2019 One thing that has helped me is to keep in mind that they are only thoughts. Thoughts are not reality. So I let them happen and don't put emotional weight on them. Together with medication I have found that this causes them to go away after a while. It's kind of like some bullies - once they see they can't get to you anymore and you ignore them, they go away. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CeremonyNewOrder Posted February 3, 2019 Share Posted February 3, 2019 Use of CBT skills and like jt said, reminding yourself that these are just thought distortions and do not represent reality 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexander search Posted February 4, 2019 Author Share Posted February 4, 2019 at an intellectual level i can understand the idea of cognitive distancing. I appreciate and know the truth of what CBT says about the nature of thoughts, but it doesnt seem to lessen the impact of them. They can still punch me in the gut and leave me winded. Must try harder i guess. thanks for replying Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
de414 Posted September 10, 2019 Share Posted September 10, 2019 One thing that is helped me, is instead of trying to fight the thoughts, let them happen and let them pass. This was initiated by my psychologist. Ive noticed now two years later I barely have intrusive thoughts at all. Its very hard at first because our natural reflex is to push the intrusive thoughts away. Over time though it becomes easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sugarsugar Posted September 12, 2019 Share Posted September 12, 2019 I’m not a master at this but I learned one thing from a nurse in a Drs office. She said “if someone tells you not to think of an elephant, all you’ll think about are elephants “. And meaning trying to not think a thing just seems to cement the thought there, which is true for me. So what I have is a thought to substitute for the intrusive ones and I switch my mind to that as best I can. That usually works for me. (I usually think about my dog, which is a neutral thought, but everyone will have something unique to them). Any time I try to ignore an intrusive thought or try to just watch it go by or one of those techniques, it’s not effective for me. Maybe you could find something like my plan helpful, I don’t know, but it’s totally been the key for me. I have never done cbt so I don’t know if they use that or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sming Posted October 9, 2019 Share Posted October 9, 2019 an extension of the above suggestions is ACT - Acceptance Commitment Therapy. It basically asserts that life is not meant to be fun and that we're likely to suffer and hence we should embrace the bad stuff (I'm paraphrasing, probably quite badly). One exercise for example is to imagine you are driving a bus. The intrusive thought is a noisy, horrible passenger seated behind you. You can try and not let them get on the bus (i.e. let them in your head) and then have to listen to their shouting, under duress and end up not going where you wanted to go. Or you can welcome them (the intrusive thought) onto the bus (into your head) with open arms and just treat their shouting and disrupting actions as background noise, and carry on to your desired destination. It's that sort of thought exercise. I've had moderate success with these exercises. HTH an extension of the above suggestions is ACT - Acceptance Commitment Therapy. It basically asserts that life is not meant to be fun and that we're likely to suffer and hence we should embrace the bad stuff (I'm paraphrasing, probably quite badly). One exercise for example is to imagine you are driving a bus. The intrusive thought is a noisy, horrible passenger seated behind you. You can try and not let them get on the bus (i.e. let them in your head) and then have to listen to their shouting, under duress and end up not going where you wanted to go. Or you can welcome them (the intrusive thought) onto the bus (into your head) with open arms and just treat their shouting and disrupting actions as background noise, and carry on to your desired destination. It's that sort of thought exercise. I've had moderate success with these exercises. HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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