Comment on hmm
superduperenigma@lemmy.world 10 months agoThey 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.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Right, nuance and context are infinitely important. Now what’s the functional difference between the two, because 8f 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.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
The functional difference is:
Thoughts == benign shit passing through your brain that cause no personal discomfort.
Obtrusive thoughts == shit that intrudes on your regular internal monologue and causes discomfort or fixation.
It’s fine to have such thoughts, and it’s also fine to acknowledge that you don’t want them. Like I’m trying to get on with my day, but now my brain is playing a vivid horror show and I just want to finish my TPS report, not walk through every moment of myself shattering Steve’s skull with the fire axe because he can’t figure out how to use the collate function on the printer.
Sure, you can embrace that shit as fictional, but it’s distracting in the moment.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Sure, but ignoring an ‘intrusive thought’ is functionally no different to how you ignore any other thought.
I say ‘pink elephants’ you’re going to fixate for a bit, how that affects you emotionally won’t change that functionally for you.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
I guess there are degrees of intrusive thoughts, because no, it’s not really the same. ‘Don’t think about the elephant’ causes a benign and very fleeting fixation.
Intrusive thoughts are things that linger, often in a disturbing way, long after you want them gone. They interfere with your ability to focus.
The elephant thing is like a musical ear worm whereas intrusive thoughts can be like someone blaring industrial music in your ears. I’m not explaining this well, but it’s on another level.
superduperenigma@lemmy.world 10 months ago
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.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 10 months ago
My stream of consciousness picks things up, not has things fall into it.
It’s a matter of perspective.
fosho@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
what you’re failing to pick up on is that no one cares about how you handle your thoughts and you can stop talking about yourself as if we should all aspire to think the way you do. this thread has largely been about the shared experience of having what we call intrusive thoughts and you coming here and trying to hijack that by telling us we are doing it wrong was never going to be well received.