Obsessive thoughts (obsessions) are images or impulses that invade consciousness uncontrollably, against a person’s will. Attempts to get rid of these thoughts lead to outbreaks of anxiety and bring severe discomfort. A person experiences constant fears and bad thoughts. If you do not seek help in time, obsessions lead to psychological exhaustion, social withdrawal and depression.
Obsessive thoughts occur in many diseases: neuroses, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (obsessive neurosis) and even schizophrenia.
Features that distinguish obsessive thoughts syndrome:
- a person cannot influence the appearance of such thoughts, thoughts arise against desire;
- obsessive thoughts are not connected with a person’s usual thoughts - they are separate, alien images;
- obsessive thoughts syndrome cannot be overcome by willpower;
- the disorder is associated with intense anxiety and irritability;
- clarity of consciousness and critical perception of one’s condition are usually preserved.
The disorder is extremely difficult to bear. Usually a person is aware of what obsessive thoughts mean, understands the irrationality of the images that arise in the head, but cannot fight them. Attempts to stop the appearance of thoughts and the coercive actions associated with them are unsuccessful and lead to even greater distress.
People who suffer from this disorder are not difficult to convince that their obsessive thoughts are unfounded. But this does not help get rid of the problem. Situations repeat themselves over and over again. A necessary step to getting rid of painful conditions is to seek help from a specialist before complications arise.
What are intrusive thoughts
Intrusive thoughts are ideas that enter the mind, often without warning or prompting, with content. They cause anxiety, worry, or just seem strange.
These are thoughts that everyone has at some point in time, but for some people these thoughts “get stuck” and cause severe discomfort in the form of obsessions, phobias and regular repetitions of the same action.
The presence of intrusive thoughts is a clear symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. But not only this behavioral deviation is associated with obsessions. The reasons for their occurrence, and what other personality disorders exhibit this symptom, will be discussed further.
Features of neurosis
Obsessions can turn into phobias or delusions. Yes, then they cease to be obsessions, but delusions and phobias can still be accompanied by compulsions. In any case, we are dealing with irrationality, which has characteristic features, but is not fundamentally different from any other. OCD is usually classified as a neurosis for several reasons.
- In the nominal state, without exacerbation of some other serious disorder, the disorder is reversible. The percentage of those healed or healed is not so small. Moreover, there are also examples of obsessions disappearing on their own for no apparent reason.
- People suffering from OCD are almost completely harmless to society. The woman who loved her baby and was afraid to kill him did not and could not do this. Obsession is not mania or aggression, not deviation, but the fear of being a maniac, an aggressor and a deviant. Fear in one citizen does not pose any danger to others. True, some kind of moral discomfort can still be provoked.
Reasons for intrusive thoughts, and are they normal?
There is no consensus yet on why obsessions suddenly appear. But psychologists have their own theories.
1. Psychologist Lynn Somerstein put forward a theory in 2020 that recurring or frequent obsessive-compulsive behaviors are a sign that something is not going well or is going wrong in a person’s life. He struggles with relationship problems, stress at work, or frustration with parenting. Through willpower, a person tries not to think about his problems, but they find other ways to break to the surface.
2. Dr. Hannah Rees suggested in 2011 that these ruminations occur because subconsciously we don't want to do what we do. That is, a person is in a state of cognitive dissonance and intrusive ideas are its consequences.
3. Anxiety and intrusive thinking experts Dr. Martin Safe and Dr. Sally Winston described in 2008 where they believe unwanted and intrusive thoughts arise. They suggested the following reasons: “Our brain sometimes creates unnecessary images, and these thoughts are just part of the fleet of our stream of consciousness. Empty thoughts have no meaning. If you don't pay attention to them or don't associate yourself with them, they dissipate and are washed away by the stream of consciousness."
Emotional reaction
Thoughts themselves are just fleeting, changing pictures, products of our minds that have little meaning until we ourselves decide to give them importance. They are not dangerous, do not entail any special consequences, and do not have any physical impact on our lives. So why is it so difficult to resist some of them, where does such strength come from?
It seems that those thoughts to which we ourselves “give” an emotional assessment acquire special weight. As soon as one of the images, for some reason, triggers an emotional reaction in us, especially a negative one, we rush with all the power of our thinking apparatus to solve the problem of avoiding or alleviating suffering.
How to get rid of obsessive thinking, if even our brain in this case works against us?
Causes of obsessive-compulsive neurosis
Although there is no consensus in psychology about where obsessive thoughts come from, if a person cannot cope with them on his own, then they develop into obsessive-compulsive neurosis.
A sure way to make sure that a thought has become obsessive is to count how many times a day you think about it. If more than 3 times and over several days, then compulsive obsessive disorder can be suspected.
An additional complication is that the more we try not to think about something, the more we think about it.
If you are told NOT to think about purple, how long can you wait before the image appears in your head? For most people it will pop up in a few seconds.
When we have a healthy, atypical brain and a good understanding of how to control our own thoughts and allow them to pass by, intrusive thoughts are nothing more than a one-time and short-term phenomenon.
Obsessiveness in relationships
How to determine the line between banal concern and intrusiveness? A common problem in gender interaction is precisely the lack of understanding that behavior becomes obsessive. Such relationships last as long as one has the patience to put up with the annoyingness of the chosen one.
Among the signs of a bothersome person are, first of all, total control, jealousy and fear of loneliness.
Control is expressed in checking a partner’s personal mail and calls, in constant attempts to extract information about the past day of a loved one in the smallest detail. Clingy people get upset and angry if their significant other plans to spend the evening separately. The consequence of such control is the birth of jealousy. The partner requires constant attention to his own person. He forces his loved one to take him to all meetings with friends and corporate events. This is how the fear of loneliness appears, giving rise to an irrepressible desire to be constantly together.
Obsessiveness also manifests itself in the need to constantly receive assurances of love. Such people need constant proof of their feelings. Gradually, they protect themselves from the social circle of interaction, concentrating exclusively on their beloved partner. If we compare the fair half and men, then annoying behavior is more typical of the former, which is due to their psychology. At the initial stage of the relationship, the stronger half manifests itself more actively, since the “conqueror” mode is turned on. This stage is full of care, constant calls, romantic rendezvous. When a relationship moves to the stage of cohabitation, men switch into a different mode - the “breadwinner” mode. After all, the young lady has already been conquered and you can relax. And this is where the gender contradiction comes into play. Women become attached to their partner and crave increased attention, expressions of feelings, communication, frequent sweet text messages, unexpected calls, and romance. Thus, obsessiveness in relationships on the part of the woman is formed. However, there are cases when a young lady becomes bothersome in a relationship even at the dating stage. Men perceive such behavior in different ways.
Basically, they are convinced that obsession:
– demonstrates poor upbringing;
– is an alarm bell, because it makes it clear to the guys that they are planning to be kept “under their thumb”;
- signals that the young lady is easily accessible.
A man's obsessiveness in a relationship is more terrible than a woman's annoyingness. The annoying behavior of men due to persistence is characterized by a lack of respect for the object of adoration.
There are several obvious signs that indicate that a potential partner is obsessive. Literally from the first rendezvous, he begins to convince the young lady that she is his only one.
Such men are not afraid to admit their passionate feelings at the first or at most the second meeting. And they simply don’t accept refusals. There is no balance in SMS correspondence with such guys. They just bombard the girl with messages.
Obsessive men claim all the free time of their chosen one, trying to control her in everything.
The main problem of annoying men is their lack of confidence and low self-esteem, which he tries to compensate for through obsessive actions, which, as a rule, only pushes away the weaker half.
What do obsessive thoughts lead to?
If unwanted, violent, disturbing or strange thoughts surface regularly, it can lead to a serious mental health problem. Two common diagnoses associated with intrusive thoughts are:
- Increased anxiety.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
They are also a symptom of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
If a person feels like they have a lot of obsessions and focus on them often, they may be suffering from one of these disorders.
Treatment
Professional psychiatric help is relevant. If this pathology is one of the manifestations of schizophrenia, drug therapy with the use of antipsychotics is necessary. Only a doctor can prescribe medications: self-medication should be avoided so as not to worsen the patient’s condition.
If necessary, antipsychotics are taken together with antidepressants. Therapy of mentism, manifested as part of Kandinsky-Clerambault syndrome, is carried out in an inpatient setting. Psychiatrists decide how treatment should be carried out to relieve the patient of unpleasant symptoms.
In addition to drug treatment, psychotherapy is widely used, and an integrated approach is especially effective. In acute forms, there is every chance that as a result of the treatment, the symptoms that bother the patient will quickly disappear. If the disease has become chronic, it is more difficult to cure, which is associated with gradually increasing personal changes.
What are obsessive thoughts?
Every person has their own fears, but most often they are reflected in thoughts about:
· Death or illness;
· Failure in relationships;
· Natural disasters;
· Accidents with him or loved ones.
Dr. Reese describes one of his own troubling thoughts. When her son was a baby, she couldn't stand at the top of the stairs because she thought she would drop the baby. She did not want to harm her child and felt horror at such a fantasy.
She also gives several other examples: suddenly feeling like you are pushing someone off a train platform, kicking a dog, yelling in church, jumping out of a moving car, or punching someone.
She goes on to note that occasional, intrusive thoughts are completely normal. If there is a hidden desire to do some of this, that's a different story.
Asthenic syndrome
The condition in question can be observed in patients suffering from neuroses or psychasthenic syndrome. Since with asthenia a person has hypersensitivity to bright light, loud sounds and strong odors, patients complain that these irritants provoke attacks of mentism.
In asthenic disorders, the object of ideas can be both images from the patient’s memories and associations with stimuli that provoke an uncontrolled flow of images.
Classification and examples
Pavel Fedorenko offers a kind of typology of obsessive thoughts in his work. He identifies the following categories and examples of obsessions:
1. About children. Example: a happy young mother suddenly imagines her child drowning or falling out of a window.
2. Aggressive. Example: a man sees himself stabbing his wife.
3. About religion. Example: A devout Muslim suddenly feels the urge to stand up during a service and start shouting.
3. Sexually oriented. Example: A strictly heterosexual woman has the occasional thought of sleeping with another woman.
4. Regarding family members. Example: A brother who has never felt attracted to his sister suddenly thinks of her as a sexual partner.
5. About death. Example: A woman in excellent health who has unwanted thoughts about dying from a heart attack or having a stroke.
6. About safety. Example: A man at work who suddenly has a serious thought that his son was hit by a car or slipped and fell on a sharp object.
Obsessions usually fall into one (or more) of these categories, but they can also be on a completely different topic or in a different area. The important thing that separates an intrusive thought from a normal thought is that it bothers you regularly, but you would rather not think about it at all.
Methods to combat ANTs
Since unwanted thoughts only become more firmly rooted in the mind if you fight them, attempts to “not think them” are doomed to failure. It is foolish to try to control what cannot be controlled. Therefore, the advice to “stop obsessing” is bad. How can you alleviate your plight and avoid unpleasant experiences, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even psychotic episodes?
First of all, you need to understand the nature of unpleasant thoughts and accept them. How could something like this even happen? These are the functions of our brain. Sometimes you need to let your thoughts be just thoughts—pictures that are generated through cognitive processes. We do not control their appearance, but we may not follow them, not develop such ideas in history and not reflect on this matter.
Nothing special, just in one of the rooms of your mind there is a TV showing pornography and body horror. We inherited it from the previous residents, prehistoric cannibals, but we cannot throw it away.
The humanistic dogma of modern culture states that thoughts of violence towards loved ones are categorically unacceptable. And the norms of decency, internalized along with patterns of shame and guilt, bring these feelings down on those who think about obscenity. Paradoxically, the most respectable and conscientious people are at risk. It is the desire for control and the desire to live up to a high moral ideal that causes fear of one’s own mind and forces one to chew on sinful images again and again. Therefore, one of the keys to solving the problem is giving up hypercontrol.
Will you actually do the terrible things you imagine? Hardly. Thoughts and impulses to action are not identical, and in this case they are directly opposite. If the mind decided to demonstrate a scene of violence and you experienced fear, shame and disgust, this suggests that you are not going to do anything like that.
We all, for example, sometimes spontaneously wonder what our friend would look like if we started strangling him?
The ancient ancestors, who constantly got involved in tribal feuds and fought for every piece of meat, left us a legacy of developed mechanisms. But mental image and intention are not the same thing.
Neuroscience data confirm the theological theory: man differs from angels in his free will. We can imagine the most terrible scenarios - but only in order to make the right choice in real life (in the existing moral system, whatever it may be). An infallible creature is not capable of this.
Helps in the fight against ANTs and reprogramming of associative series. Until recently, it was believed that the human brain, once formed during adolescence, does not change until death. The results of modern research indicate the opposite: in adults, not only new synaptic connections are formed, but also nerve cells.
Categories and types of symptoms
The manifestation of symptoms can be divided into 2 categories.
1. Symptoms of Obsession: Repetitive, persistent and unwanted thoughts, urges or images that are intrusive and cause stress or anxiety.
Examples: fear of getting dirty, aggressive thoughts about harming yourself or others, unwanted thoughts about sexual or religious topics.
2. Symptoms of compulsion: repetitive behavior that forces you to do the same thing over and over again to prevent or reduce anxiety. But they only bring temporary relief. Examples: washing and cleaning, checking locks and taps.
Principles of acceptance and responsibility psychotherapy
ACT is based on six core principles:
· Cognitive diffusion. The goal is to learn to give less weight to negative images and emotions.
· Adoption. The goal is to allow the thoughts to flow through you without feeling overly upset.
· Connection with the present moment. The goal is to focus on the present state rather than the future or past. Become open to things happening around you.
· Self-observation. The goal is to be aware of your transcendental self.
· Values. The goal is to determine what is most important.
· Actions. They involve setting goals based on the values one strives for and then realizing those achievements.
These six principles come together to deal with sad and unwanted thoughts.
How to get rid of it yourself
5 tips that don't involve medication or psychological therapy to deal with your annoying ideas on your own:
· Understand why they bother you on a deep level.
· Watch out for obsessions; accept them and let them in, then let them move on.
· Don't be afraid of thoughts - these are just fantasies. Don't let them become something more.
· Be less accepting of intrusive ideas and let go of your emotional reaction to them.
· Stop changing your behavior to accommodate your obsessions or compulsions. This won't help in the long run.
Using meditation for obsessive disorders
This is another proven method for accepting and letting go of unwanted ruminations at the same time.
Mindfulness meditation is a great tool to help people cope with a variety of problems and improve their quality of life.
Meditation will help the patient recognize and understand his ideas, figure out where they come from, and find a solution to the brain's intention to focus on less pleasant images. The point is to recognize the thoughts, let them come in, then let them out, and say goodbye to them.
While doing meditation:
· Keep your attention on your breath and be fully aware of the sounds, smells, and sensations at this moment.
· Acknowledge each thought as it comes up, let it go and return to your breath. Don't analyze it, don't stop or ruminate on it, just let the thought come to your head and slide back out.
The goal is to stay aware of what is happening around you, as well as what is happening within you.
Books and other literature on the topic
To learn more about intrusive thoughts, where they come from, why they happen, and how to stop them, check out this book. There are many variations in the books, some of which were written by the famous author David A. Clark:
- Intrusive Thoughts in Clinical Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment David A. Clark.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Psychologist's Guide to Overcoming Depression, Anxiety, and Obsessive Thought Patterns—Effective Methods for Rewiring Your Brain David A. Clark.
- Free Your Mind: A Guide to Freedom from Anxiety, Depression, Panic Attacks and Obsessive Rumination by Jamie Stevens.
- Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Intrusive Bad Thoughts by Lee Baer.
- Overcoming Obsessive Thoughts: How to Get Control of OCD David A. Clark.
- Brain Block: Break Free from Obsessive Compulsive Behaviors by Jeffrey M. Schwartz.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy: 7 ways to get rid of anxiety, depression and intrusive rumination. Author: Lawrence Wallace.
- John Hershfield, Tom Corboy, and James Claiborne, The Mindfulness Book of OCD: A Guide to Overcoming Obsessions and Compulsions Using Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
- David A. Clark and Judith S. Beck The Worrying Thoughts Book: Skills for Coping with Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts That Cause Anxiety, Obsessions, and Depression.
- Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Rumination: A CBT-Based Guide to Overcoming Fearful, Intrusive, or Anxious Thoughts by Sally M. Winston and Martin N. Seif.
