My Support Forums - View Single Post - How do you deal with your intrusive thoughts?

Elysium · Apr 26, 2010, 02:22 PM

I don't think I really control them...but I'm learning how to not let them control me.

I have had intrusive thoughts for a very long time...since I was a child. Grew up in an abusive environment with lots of trauma and now live with PTSD. I find the thoughts and memories popping up pretty much all day long. It's like they are a CD stuck on repeat....they just keep looping in no particular order. There is rarely a moment in my day when I do not have the thoughts of horrible things that have happened in my head.

For a long time, I would have anxiety attacks over these thoughts. I was convinced I was going to go crazy. I have never equated these thoughts with OCD. I always thought they were related to the PTSD, but I know I have other OCD traits like picking, pulling my hair, and sometimes needing to repeat things that I say or have heard others say. I wonder how much of this is OCD vs PTSD...or maybe they just blend in together?

I've been in therapy for six years working on my issues and I've gotten to the point where I can almost ignore the thoughts. They are still there, but it's like they are just a noise in the background....like the wind blowing or a bird chirping. I have been able to pull myself away from them and just let them be. Sometimes I am more successful than others.

I also can't stop thinking about death. Always I have thought about death. My death...how I would die, what it would feel like seconds before I died....and when I am driving down the freeway and I see plastic bags on the side of the freeway or rolled up carpets on the side of the road...I constantly think there are dead people in them. Same thing with forested areas. I took my dog for a walk in a nature park yesterday and it was a great relaxing walk....but the whole time the thought that I was going to find someone dead along the path kept playing in my head. It doesn't freak me out as much as it used to, but it does get annoying from time to time.