My son has been really plagued by intrusive thoughts. He feels they have escalated since reducing his compulsions. Because they are all emotionally charged thoughts, he gets unstuck often. Lying down, listening to youtube meditation music and watching NBA is all he wants to do. It is the only way he knows to stop the thoughts. I really think he needs to anticipate he will hear the thoughts and so stop the emotion that is carried with the thought. At the moment he just cant separate emotion from the thought. Just any random discussion of it will invite another fear cascade. My pet rock idea to use as a refocus aid, was too much of an opportunity to use as a missile.
I suppose when you are living in the illness, the thoughts bring the fear and the emotions then carry you away. It is really hard to use a relabel, refocus and evaluate type of strategy when in any emotional state.
I have a friend who writes to me. She has journeyed through an OCD form of illness. She has an interesting take on her intrusive thoughts. She has accepted them as her genius mind's way of managing more painful problems. A distraction that makes her responsible for solving.
I have included her words below:
I have found a "beauty" to the minds ability to give us intrusive thoughts.. we fight this ability our minds have to ask us to resolve things, that we push aside thinking that they are a nuisance, and nothing good comes from thinking about them, as we have worked relentlessly in trying to resolve them numerous times while lost in the thoughts, to no avail. the ideas to resolve them run in such speed, that most times they don't stand out to us, because they aren't new, and since the result is feeling miserable most times, we figure the best alternative is to push them aside when they come.. as they appear to be thoughts that are just haunting us with no positive outcome possible by dwelling in them.. that's the difference i guess between being within depression, where we dwell in the painful thoughts, and where a disorder is born, aka ocd, a very "genius" method the mind has developed to distract from the painful thoughts. it's all in effort to relieve depression, pain, anger.. what have you, the emotions that the thoughts induce. a quick escape from them in the best logical way we can, by distracting the mind onto another subject.
I hope we all have a better day and learn more about managing this illness together. Marg