AthenaErdmann
Silver Member
Thanks for this thread, it is weirdly comforting that so many others have the same type of problem.
I have had many persistent/intrusive/repetitive thoughts, and started working on them while I was in my first long therapy and had bought my first copy of "The Courage to Heal" in mid-1990ies. Both the therapy and especially the book helped me realize how many of my thoughts and feelings were not really my own ('cause these self-berating thoughts almost always are echoes of my parents long-gone words). My husband (then boyfriend) helped a lot by insisting that he would rather have a ghost in front of him than behind his back, i.e. he would rather hear anything bad as soon as possible and straight from me than have it hovering in the background, affecting us anyway.
My approach is a mixture of techniques, the most important of which is realizing (becoming aware of) that I am having a thought that is not genuinely mine (or experiencing a feeling that was caused by such a thought). In the beginning this was hard, I had to do a mental/emotional "stop, rewind" several times a day, to figure out why I was feeling so lousy about myself, often quite out of the blue. It was exhausting.
After I have caught that there is something fishy running about in my mind, I externalize an image of it, and sort of talk to that image, asking "who are you and what are you doing here?". Nowadays I do this almost automatically, it has become a strong habit. The effect usually is that the offending thought/memory tries to hide, change it's form, and generally tries to avoid identification. It's like cockroaches when the lights are turned on, they just don't want to be there.
So my strongest weapon against weird thoughts is looking them as straight into the eye as possible, genuinely wanting to know what they are about. That already takes away much of their power. And once I manage to identify what a weird thought is about (what is at its core), that particular thought usually is history, or such a weak echo of itself that it does not manage to really bother me anymore.
It's a lot of work, but it's SO worth it!
I have had many persistent/intrusive/repetitive thoughts, and started working on them while I was in my first long therapy and had bought my first copy of "The Courage to Heal" in mid-1990ies. Both the therapy and especially the book helped me realize how many of my thoughts and feelings were not really my own ('cause these self-berating thoughts almost always are echoes of my parents long-gone words). My husband (then boyfriend) helped a lot by insisting that he would rather have a ghost in front of him than behind his back, i.e. he would rather hear anything bad as soon as possible and straight from me than have it hovering in the background, affecting us anyway.
My approach is a mixture of techniques, the most important of which is realizing (becoming aware of) that I am having a thought that is not genuinely mine (or experiencing a feeling that was caused by such a thought). In the beginning this was hard, I had to do a mental/emotional "stop, rewind" several times a day, to figure out why I was feeling so lousy about myself, often quite out of the blue. It was exhausting.
After I have caught that there is something fishy running about in my mind, I externalize an image of it, and sort of talk to that image, asking "who are you and what are you doing here?". Nowadays I do this almost automatically, it has become a strong habit. The effect usually is that the offending thought/memory tries to hide, change it's form, and generally tries to avoid identification. It's like cockroaches when the lights are turned on, they just don't want to be there.
So my strongest weapon against weird thoughts is looking them as straight into the eye as possible, genuinely wanting to know what they are about. That already takes away much of their power. And once I manage to identify what a weird thought is about (what is at its core), that particular thought usually is history, or such a weak echo of itself that it does not manage to really bother me anymore.
It's a lot of work, but it's SO worth it!
