[Onward2wards]

I had a realization this morning that left me totally slack jawed. I'm just going to dump my unedited personal journal for today and let the realizations speak for themselves:

Intrusive negative thoughts are a bit like waking nightmares - they are actually a "message", like a visual/emotional "alarm clock" or reminder alert, that something needs to be addressed in my life right now! It's an alert to unfinished emotional business. Now, why is that business unfinished? Because of old learned fears that I am not handling due to simple but ineffective defenses such as denial, procrastination and other avoidance mechanisms, sublimation, etc. etc. , OR by behaviors which, though logical if those fears were absolutely 100% legitimate and unchangeable, only serve to hold me back in the real world!

What happens when I either deliberately address the "unfinished business" by constructive action, or some random event or experience does the same thing? The intrusive thoughts lessen or even disappear!!! Not even "thought stopping" or reframing my conscious focus seems to do this much!!! (Although, I can reframe my focus and stop a train of thought to a degree IF whatever is distracting me is emotionally rewarding enough and there is nothing going on to draw my mind back to the intrusive thoughts. This reminds me of distracting a child from a grazed knee by giving them a lollipop!).

Whatever brain regions give me the alarm seem completely "unaware" of the activities of the regions which govern fear-based behaviors. It is as if one is just reacting to the presence of the other. Perhaps they really do have totally different specific functions? Further, if neuroses and neurotic behaviors (schemas) are all about painful experiences from the past, and intrusive thoughts are correlated with failing to deal with it in the present, perhaps "catastrophizing", "fortune telling" and similar thinking errors are the same fears projected onto an anticipated future...?

The game is afoot, Watson.

One caveat: different strokes for different folks. This seems to apply to me and works for me. I don't know if it makes any sense to you.

[Gaar]

Oh yes, it makes sense. It also pleases me you have found a way to vanquish the intrusions.

As an aside, mindfulness meditation is offered by those who have treated me as a way to employ more positive regions of the brain. Doing so diminishes the more negative areas by lack of use. The negatives are in theory supposed to fade away over time.