[Smoking Jays]

Never have I been a physically aggressive person, never been in a fight, none of that. I actually hate skin to skin contact, as a general rule. So lately, I've found when I utilize the thought stopping processes I've been trained to try to advert my repetitive thoughts, it's replaced with violent, and equally repetitive thoughts. I wouldn't intend to harm anyone, but the repetition, and, I suppose for a lack of a better word, extremism of the content itself, it's rather disconcerting. I'm unsure if this is an extension of the anger issues I've worked on from an early age, or a new facet of my diagnoses, but it's just of concern. I'm not particularly sure if it's agitation in the repetition, or the need to so often thought stop, but it just doesn't seem to be in my norm. Sorry to ramble.

[CANDC]

I am sorry you are having repetitive thoughts that are troublesome.

I have my own problems with invasive thoughts. I use silent counting of breath, breathing normally to get off the thought train and onto the breathing train.

Start on one on the inhale, two on the exhale, three on the inhale continuing on up to 10. Then go back to 1. It is a help to refocus on breathing and counting and away from wild thoughts.

[CBDMeditator]

I get these too. They're not urges--in fact they usually repulse or frighten me--but intrusive and often graphic flashes. They're a well established common symptom of OCD (my NPD/ego defenses aside, my OCD manifestations are typically habitual rechecking, and these intrusive images of the non-sequitur variety).

Obviously being as disturbing as they are, many tend to irrationally imagine these are some manifestation of something worse, or signifying some loss of control. This is not the case, and should be readily debunked by our understanding of OCD.

I'm starting to feel like an unpaid shill for various authors who don't know I exist, but I generally swear by all of the books I've recommended. I don't know if you've heard of or read Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior by Jeffrey Schwartz M.D., but it came up as Amazon's most popular choice for self-help in this arena several years ago. I do recommend this book.

Since anxiety usually precipitates poor processing of these thoughts (e.g. "I'm a bad person," "I'm a monster," "who thinks like this?," "am I coming unglued?"), it activates the amygdala and further exacerbates the OCD, which causes more anxiety, which of course gives us the vicious cycle. That book gives you a series of processing steps for OCD thoughts of all types. The more you learn how to process them, the less severe and repetitive they become.

I find myself returning to this book (not because of compulsions to reread things!) every few years anytime I get away from proper processing.