Intrusive thoughts are terrifying. It’s a testament to our collective willpower that we haven’t horrifically murdered each other.
Also, I’m really glad the phrase “intrusive thoughts” came along. It made the whole thing a lot easier to talk about.
Collective willpower? Or centuries worth of social contract? Humans are kind of just animals who can predict the future by writing down the past.
I’ve had some pretty nasty intrusive thoughts. I’d like to believe it’s more than just social conditioning that kept them under wraps. But maybe.
I would like to believe that despite it is hard for most people not to have intrusive thoughts, it is much easier not to act on them.
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I’m sorry if this sounds callous but I utterly disregard your notion with predjudice.
They aren’t intrusive thoughts, they’re just your thoughts, stop being afraid of thinking.
Now if you lack impulse control, then we have a problem.
Edit: We need a new term for the phobia of imagination and thought. I suggest Thinkophobia.
I think a good term for what you defined in your edit might be “intrusive thoughts”
If everyone has them it’s not a phobia, it’s a condition of consciousness. The phobia is being irrationally afraid of your perfectly normal condition. Which if you think you’re own thoughts are intruding on you, you may have.
May I ask what expertise you have on this that makes you know more than doctors and psychologists who use the term intrusive thoughts, and specifically use that term to diagnose people with mental illness or neuro-divergence? Or are you just pontificating to feel smarter than everyone else? We don’t need a new word for something everyone (except you) clearly already understands and uses properly.
I understand it perfectly, this is a philosophical perspective not a medical one. My understanding of the term as used in medicine does not differ from yours.
The question is how does that change what a phobia is? Are you not aware how phobias work and are defined as according to medical literature? My statement is correct. If you have an issue with any of my other statements, reply to them directly.
There absolutely are intrusive thoughts. Two examples:
Once in a long while, I’ll be talking to a black person and I’ll think of the N-word. It will just pop into my head for a split second and I’ll think “oh my god, no!” and it will be gone. I’ve never said that word out loud, I’ve never thought of anyone black that way, and I certainly don’t want to think of anyone that way. It’s not a thought I meant to have or even a thought that would ever represent how I felt. It isn’t even a thought that is pointed with malice at the person I was talking to. It’s literally just “N-word” and it’s gone. It’s purely unconscious and intrusive racism that I think is just part of being white.
Every so often, I’ll be talking to a couple I know and imagine them fucking. Just for a split second again. I don’t want to imagine them fucking. It’s not titillating to me. I don’t get a rise out of it. I don’t fantasize about it later. But just for a moment, I imagine what it would be like if my perceptive versions of them fucked. We won’t even be talking about anything remotely sexual. But sex is part of the human condition and sometimes we have unconscious, intrusive thoughts about sex.
I don’t think either of these will lead me to murder. In fact, in general, I don’t have violent thoughts, not even intrusive ones. But it could lead me to other atrocious behavior if I dwell on those thoughts and if I let them become more than momentarily intrusive. It’s not being afraid of thinking them, it’s not wanting to think of them and doing my best to will any such thoughts that stray out of my head as quickly as I can. Because those thoughts are not thoughts I want to have about people. I don’t care if I don’t act on them either. I don’t want to think that about any black people I ever encounter in my life. I don’t want to think that about any couples who I know. But sometimes those thoughts just pop into my head and I can’t help it. But I can help moving past them as fast as I possibly can so they don’t end up accumulating and turning me into a person I don’t want to be.
It’s not part of being white anymore than dropping a baby out of a window. It’s just your brain telling you what not to do, because you know not to use that term, on account of it being rude and offensive.
It’s such a taboo term that you’d literally never say it, it’s more like internal Tourettes. I suspect this type of intrusive thought is least vaguely related to the phenomenon of cute aggression. Like, intrusive thoughts of The Thing You Absolutely Must Not Do.
It’s sad that you would assume you have some essential racist nature - I don’t know you, but being born white is not a form of original sin, it’s an arbitrary identity category and you’re most likely a decent person.
That’s called having a normal and functioning think box, comes will all the usual bits of imagination just like every other human.
“Bits of imagination” you don’t want to have = intrusive thoughts.
We don’t always get what we want, that’s life. It’s how you handle the things you don’t control that defines you.
What does that have to do with what I said or your claim that there are no such things as intrusive thoughts?
How you handle intrusive thoughts is no different to handling any other thought you have, wanted or unwanted, good or bad, if you are going to get it anyway and you can’t change the fact they exist how does defining them otherwise in the context of understanding how to not let them affect you provide any benefit?
I would argue that my way of thinking must be correct for this task because I am obviously not afflicted in the same way by my thoughts that I feel I need to define the bad subconscious ones as ‘intrusive’. They haven’t intruded on my consciousness, my consciousness found them.
It’s a perspective that removes a significant amount of emotional power from ‘intrusive thoughts’.
They are intrusive thoughts, because that’s the phrase that was coined to describe these types of thoughts. Sometimes we come up with specific phrases in order to describe more specific concepts.
Right, nuance and context are infinitely important. Now what’s the functional difference between the two? Because if none exists that can be implemented by the individual then the nuanced difference between the types of thoughts becomes irrelevant to how one handles them.
I am not emotionally affected by my ‘intrusive thoughts’ because they have as much bearing on reality as whether I like the smell of burnt toast.
Thoughts = literally any thought
Intrusive thoughts = the type of thoughts we don’t particularly want to think because they make us uncomfortable, but they intrude into our stream of consciousness either way.
It’s called being descriptive, and it lets people know exactly what kind of thought you’re referring to by adding a simple adjective before the word.
My stream of consciousness picks things up, not has things fall into it.
It’s a matter of perspective.
Intrusive thoughts are a big part of OCD.
And they are unwanted thoughts that a person doesn’t want to have. That’s why doctors call them “intrusive thoughts.”
Intrusive thoughts are a big part of OCD. And they call them “intrusive thoughts.”
Maybe it’s OCD?
If intrusive thoughts legitimately affect their capacity to function then yes that would be a disorder, but not due to having them, only due to how they handle them differently from those that don’t have their capacity to function affected.
Any relation to OCD is outside of my experience.
The point is that intrusive thoughts are real.
And my point is that yes, they are real, they are also a figment of our imagination.
We don’t imagine them. They imagine us.
We are the result of them. We are the effluence of thoughts.
I don’t think this person believes that people are actively making up intrusive thoughts or talking about something that doesn’t happen. It seems like they’re saying that thoughts, any thoughts, are our imagination, intrusive or otherwise.
I imagine you believe that.
our brains run simulations of awful situations all the time as a diagnostic self-test system. The fact that we recoil in revulsion from destructive intrusive thoughts is a sign that we are still at least nominally sane. Those who yearn for peace prepare for war. Likewise, those who care for their loved ones prepare to face terrible events that might befall them.
These urges are what the Chao garden in sonic adventure was made for.
Damn chao garden… now that’s some good nostalgia
Borderline c/LemmyBeWholesome
Is so wholsum
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Just whisper even worse things back. Karma bitch
THE VOICSS THEY WONT SROP
CRAZY WHATS CRAZY… THEY… THEY STUCK ME IN A RUBBER ROOM A RUBBER ROOM WITH RATS AND THE… THE… THE RATS MADE CRAZY
Or in the case of Disturbed, make it into a music video to try and help others.
Big Saturn energy
I have these kinds of thought all the time lol
Here, have some of mine!
THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKED ME INNA RUBBER ROOM A RUBBER ROOM WIV RATS AND THE RATS DIDNT MAKE MW CRAZY THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKED ME INNA RUBBER ROOM A RUBBER ROOM WIV RATS AND THE RATS DIDNT MAKE MW CRAZY THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKED ME INNA RUBBER ROOM A RUBBER ROOM WIV RATS AND THE RATS DIDNT MAKE MW CRAZY THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKED ME INNA RUBBER ROOM A RUBBER ROOM WIV RATS AND THE RATS DIDNT MAKE MW CRAZY THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKED ME INNA RUBBER ROOM A RUBBER ROOM WIV RATS AND THE RATS DIDNT MAKE MW CRAZY THEY LOCKEDNME IN A RUBBER ROIM A TUBBER RUUNE WIV RATS AND THE RATS RJRNT MAKE ME FRCRAXT THEY LOCKED ME INNA RUBBER ROOM A RUBBER ROOM WIV RATS AND THE RATS DIDNT MAKE MW CRAZY
Intrusive thoughts like that must be human nature. I doubt there is a single person who has never had a single thought about something like that.
Lol my mom and I have OCD. She’s got a bit of this type, fortunately mine is a bit more of the I really really love filing and collecting things (data hoarding) borderline autistic type.
Someone learned about intrusive thoughts.
YEET
Unless you are in psychosis and then the intrusive thoughts win 😭
Am I the only one who doesn’t do this?
Are you trying to say you’ve not experienced intrusive thoughts?
Yes, you’re the only one in the world. The chose one. The boy who survived.
I have this all the time with my daughter and it scares me.
OP is like James Joyce if James Joyce grew up with rotten.com
