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Info abt typng styl on prfle.
- Sep 26, 2021
- 2,927
Hve bn talkng 2 1 or 2 ppl recntly abt intrusve thghts & agn sme therpsts hve bn uslss
Ths = sme infrmatn tht slf discvrd a whle ag/ tht helpd 2 xplain own intrusve thghts & rduce th/ shme arnd thghts tht wre s/ shmeful & jarrng
Hpe = helpfl 2 sme1 els
conscious-transitions.com
"Many of my clients suffer from the hell-realm of intrusive or unwanted thoughts. Thoughts like, "What if I'm a pedophile?" or "What if I'm a mass murderer?" or "What if I contract a deadly disease?" or "What if I don't love my partner enough (or at all)?" parade through their brains day and night without reprieve creating a state of perpetual misery. The irony about people who are prone to intrusive thoughts such as these is that they're among the most gentle, loving, sensitive, kind, creative, and thoughtful people you'll ever meet. The thought is so far from reality that it's almost laughable, except that it's not funny at all because my clients believe the lie which, of course, creates massive amount of anxiety.
Or maybe it's not ironic at all. Perhaps it's precisely because of this high level of sensitivity and empathy that their mind has gravitated toward an alarming thought as a way to try to avoid the intensity of feeling with which they respond to life. Highly sensitive people were once highly sensitive children, which means their nervous systems were wired at birth to respond to the sights, sounds, and experiences of life at amplified levels. And because most highly sensitive children were raised by parents who had no idea how to teach their kids to value and feel their difficult feelings in a manageable way, they learned early in life to try to control the external world as a way to attempt to manage their inner one.
Lately I've been using a model with my clients that helps them conceptualize the formation of anxiety and the addiction of intrusive thoughts. I call it the A-B-C model and it goes like this:
Once you take hold of the seductive thought-vine, you're on your way down the black hole of anxiety. The further you go down the hole, the darker it gets and the harder it becomes to find your way back out to the light of day.
If you can understand the alarming thoughts as a flare sent up from the Inner Child to try to get your attention, you will learn to slow down and listen. Your Inner Child doesn't always know how to say, "I'm hurting. Please pay attention to me," so he or she sends out a jarring thought because she knows it will get your attention. Once you start to pay attention to your feelings and trust that you can handle your emotional experiences, the intrusive thoughts begin to diminish. Again, the thoughts are a distraction, a first-layer attention-getter designed to force you to turn inside and attend to your inner world. Thus, when you're perseverating on an anxious thought, the question to ask yourself is, "What am I trying to control, avoid, or fill up?" or "What is this thought trying to protect me from feeling?" and see if you can connect to the softness of the human heart, knowing that what you find when you bring your loving attention to the quiet places is always, always, a pearl."
"most therapists have never heard of intrusive thoughts, so when they encounter them in their therapy office they either try to dismiss them by telling their poor clients to stop thinking those thoughts (as if that's possible) or they take them at face value: "Oh, you're wondering if you're with the wrong partner? That probably means you're with the wrong partner [because everyone knows that doubt means don't]." Or: "Oh, you think you might be gay? Well, then maybe you're gay." Ack! There's no faster way to send the anxious mind into obsessive, self-hatred overdrive then to confirm that an intrusive thought is categorically true."
Ths = sme infrmatn tht slf discvrd a whle ag/ tht helpd 2 xplain own intrusve thghts & rduce th/ shme arnd thghts tht wre s/ shmeful & jarrng
Hpe = helpfl 2 sme1 els
The Architecture of Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts
conscious-transitions.com
"Many of my clients suffer from the hell-realm of intrusive or unwanted thoughts. Thoughts like, "What if I'm a pedophile?" or "What if I'm a mass murderer?" or "What if I contract a deadly disease?" or "What if I don't love my partner enough (or at all)?" parade through their brains day and night without reprieve creating a state of perpetual misery. The irony about people who are prone to intrusive thoughts such as these is that they're among the most gentle, loving, sensitive, kind, creative, and thoughtful people you'll ever meet. The thought is so far from reality that it's almost laughable, except that it's not funny at all because my clients believe the lie which, of course, creates massive amount of anxiety.
Or maybe it's not ironic at all. Perhaps it's precisely because of this high level of sensitivity and empathy that their mind has gravitated toward an alarming thought as a way to try to avoid the intensity of feeling with which they respond to life. Highly sensitive people were once highly sensitive children, which means their nervous systems were wired at birth to respond to the sights, sounds, and experiences of life at amplified levels. And because most highly sensitive children were raised by parents who had no idea how to teach their kids to value and feel their difficult feelings in a manageable way, they learned early in life to try to control the external world as a way to attempt to manage their inner one.
Lately I've been using a model with my clients that helps them conceptualize the formation of anxiety and the addiction of intrusive thoughts. I call it the A-B-C model and it goes like this:
- A. A difficult or "unwanted" feeling arises: fear, grief, vulnerability, loneliness, helplessness, doubt, uncertainty
- B. You push the feeling away and resist it because you think you shouldn't be feeling this way, that you're "too much" or "too emotional", and/or you can't handle the feeling.
- C. You attach on to an intrusive thought as a way to cover up or avoid the difficult feeling, thereby creating the illusion of control. Now you can focus on the thought, "What if I have a terminal illness," instead of attending to the initial feeling
Once you take hold of the seductive thought-vine, you're on your way down the black hole of anxiety. The further you go down the hole, the darker it gets and the harder it becomes to find your way back out to the light of day.
If you can understand the alarming thoughts as a flare sent up from the Inner Child to try to get your attention, you will learn to slow down and listen. Your Inner Child doesn't always know how to say, "I'm hurting. Please pay attention to me," so he or she sends out a jarring thought because she knows it will get your attention. Once you start to pay attention to your feelings and trust that you can handle your emotional experiences, the intrusive thoughts begin to diminish. Again, the thoughts are a distraction, a first-layer attention-getter designed to force you to turn inside and attend to your inner world. Thus, when you're perseverating on an anxious thought, the question to ask yourself is, "What am I trying to control, avoid, or fill up?" or "What is this thought trying to protect me from feeling?" and see if you can connect to the softness of the human heart, knowing that what you find when you bring your loving attention to the quiet places is always, always, a pearl."
"most therapists have never heard of intrusive thoughts, so when they encounter them in their therapy office they either try to dismiss them by telling their poor clients to stop thinking those thoughts (as if that's possible) or they take them at face value: "Oh, you're wondering if you're with the wrong partner? That probably means you're with the wrong partner [because everyone knows that doubt means don't]." Or: "Oh, you think you might be gay? Well, then maybe you're gay." Ack! There's no faster way to send the anxious mind into obsessive, self-hatred overdrive then to confirm that an intrusive thought is categorically true."
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