Beating Intrusive Thoughts

Dude, If I was in a better way id tell you to send me those mixes over and id tweak em' no charge. SOMEDAY haha. no one in that band i linked was into what we were doing but a chance at some free travel is always nice. yep, im a complete sellout. mercenary pop drummer for hire since i was 18. got to see some cool stuff but i gotta say just messing around with some rockabilly/punk/ska in my basement with my friends cant be beat.

Hey wayfarer, you guys were good! "Pulse in the Sound"...very nice. Thanks. Im an old rock'n'roller, an aging hippie.

east

EAST thanks so much! what kind of stuff are you into?? i like me some old time rock n' roll!

mmm I like todays young minds. Beautiful voice and great lyrics. 

 

My brother is the bass player for a band called the mystery Jets.

http://www.myspace.com/mysteryjetsIts really tough to try and make it in the music business these days. Theres just no money in it anymore

 

 

Bump

This has been my worst symptom by far. Bumping this thread.

Kperson, Thank you SO much! My days are a nightmare wrestling with suicidal thoughts. I don't want to do it! So this is fantastic. Thank you again. Gilly x

Here is some good advice from Jennifer Leigh on intrusive thoughts:

 

Ten Things To Do When You Have Intrusive Memories.

by Jennifer Leigh | Nov 30, 2016 | Coping Skills |

 

When I was in my first year of benzo withdrawal, life was intense, to say the least. I had a laundry list of symptoms. I was exhausted from the minute-to-minute suffering and struggle. All I wanted was a few minutes of “normal.” I drove to a party supply store to look for decorations for Thanksgiving. It would be a bit of a distraction from all the weirdness going on in my mind and body. That was the goal, at least. When I got out of my car, I couldn’t help but notice the convertible parked next to me. The leather on the seats reminded me of the car a boyfriend of mine had owned when we were both twenty-one. I was immediately awash in old feelings and memories that I had absolutely no control over. I was stuck in some crazy movie-like drama in my mind, drowning in emotions I didn’t want to feel.

 

Like Intrusive thoughts, intrusive memories pop into our minds and flood us with feelings. We never know what may trigger a memory. We feel so out of control! It’s exhausting and uncomfortable, to say the least.

 

If you are plagued by intrusive memories, here are ten things that you can do to cope.

 

Understand that intrusive memories are part of the withdrawal syndrome for many people. They don’t signify any type of mental illness. They don’t mean that you are losing your mind. It can be uncomfortable to be flooded with the emotions tied to an intrusive memory, but they aren’t harmful.

 

Know that intrusive memories come to an end. You won’t go through the rest of your life being triggered by every little thing that you encounter!

If you feel overwhelmed by a memory, breathe in to the count of seven and our to the count of eleven. That breathing pattern helps calm down your neurophysiology.

 

Take a gentle walk when you experience an intrusive memory. Moving your body is a good way to allow the energy of your emotions to pass through you.

 

Get grounded. If a memory feels frightening, look around at your surroundings. Name things that you see. Feel the ground under your feet. Touch something close to you. Remind yourself that you are in the here and now and that the memory is just that, a memory.

 

Don’t fight the memory. Allow it to bubble up and pass through you. It won’t stick around, and the energy you extend attempting to push it away isn’t worth it.

 

Be a neutral observer. “Watch” yourself experiencing the memory. Don’t judge anything about the experience.

 

Call and talk to someone if you are triggered and want support. Talking to someone who understands benzo withdrawal and all of its strange symptoms can be helpful.

 

Get creative! Drawing, painting, sculpting—anything creative—can take your mind off of an intrusive memory and reduce stress chemicals, too.

 

Turn on some soothing music and take a warm bath. It’s a good coping skill for many of life’s rough edges!

 

Intrusive memories may sound like a benign phenomenon to someone who hasn’t experienced them, however, they can be overwhelming. In benzo withdrawal, we are often afraid of our thoughts and feelings because we have so little control over them. When you add intrusive memories into the mix, it can feel like the straw that will break the camel’s back. Fortunately, intrusive memories fade away as our GABA receptors heal.

 

Jennifer also has her blog up and running again, which I'm so thankful for! http://benzowithdrawalhelp.com/

 

 

Thanks for posting that Terry!

You're welcome!!

 

I suffered from intrusive thoughts, and they were driving me crazy! It settled down quite a long time ago. I don't even remember when, and I forgot all about the madness until I started reading posts about it again. The lightbulb went on, and I remembered the looping, scary thoughts. So glad it's over, but I know it's so very difficult to go through!!

You're welcome!!

 

I suffered from intrusive thoughts, and they were driving me crazy! It settled down quite a long time ago. I don't even remember when, and I forgot all about the madness until I started reading posts about it again. The lightbulb went on, and I remembered the looping, scary thoughts. So glad it's over, but I know it's so very difficult to go through!!

 

 

Old thread but

How long did you suffer from this thougs?

Hello everyone!

 

I know first hand how hard it can be when you suffer from intrusive thoughts during Benzo Recovery. With your heightened fear and anxiety they can disturb you like no other. By far the most disturbing is causing harm to yourself or those you love. I've experienced it myself and it tore me apart! But in the midst of it, I discovered a write up about it that really helped me learn to cope and control them! Even on the worst days this has helped beyond belief.

 

I thought I would share it with you all in hopes to bring some ease to your minds! I know how tough it is, but believe me this will help you understand it and beat it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intrusive thoughts are usually inappropriate, disturbing and shocking in terms of their content and can cause high levels of anxiety and distress. They tend to represent the complete opposite of your true intentions, desires and beliefs and regularly focus on things that you find particularly unpleasant and upsetting. Usually anxiety causes initial intrusive thoughts to occur which consequently raises your level of anxiety. Increasing anxiety causes more of these intrusive thoughts to occur which raises your level of anxiety even more - a vicious cycle. The longer this cycle goes on, the level of attention that you give to these thoughts (and your thoughts in general) increases which in turn makes you feel they have increasing importance and credibility (which they don’t actually have!). These feelings can make you start to question and doubt yourself (for example, you may begin to think that you are a horrible person for having experienced these thoughts - this is definitely not the case!). The fact that intrusive thoughts feed on your anxiety and to a greater extent, your attention, is extremely cruel and can lead to them becoming obsessive and taking hold, resulting in you feeling that you’re losing your mind or that your brain is short-circuiting. Therefore as a consequence of having intrusive thoughts, there is usually a very strong urge for you to ruminate over them, try to suppress/neutralise them, avoid certain things/situations that can trigger them and to seek reassurance from others.

 

The way in which the human brain responds to anxiety (the anxious response) is responsible for the occurrence of intrusive thoughts. This is because your brain acts on any anxiety that is present in your system and conducts a risk assessment based on the level of that anxiety and the environment which you are in. It looks for anything at hand in your vicinity that it can attach the anxiety to (for example, something which could be perceived to be a threat to either yourself or someone else who is close by) and uses your highly creative imagination to construct a catastrophic ‘what if’ thought based on it, which can trigger a strong emotional response from you as it suddenly enters your head. This type of response is more likely to occur if you have an overly sensitive personality or if you have very strict/irrational beliefs (for example, ‘only bad people have bad thoughts’ or ‘thinking a bad thought is as bad as acting on it’). If instead, you are already troubled by a particular thought then your brain may act on the anxiety by reminding you of it or it may create new ‘what if’ thoughts which are often associated with it. After experiencing many of these thoughts you may start to develop a conscious fear of what new thoughts could possibly enter your head which fuels the process even more. For example, you may fear having horrible thoughts about certain things which you have a strong emotional connection to. Your brain acts on this fear and starts to create new intrusive thoughts based on these things.

 

It is the emotional response that you have to these thoughts which attracts your attention to them and causes your level of anxiety to rise. This in turn triggers the anxious response causing more of these thoughts to occur. To clarify, the thoughts themselves are not the problem (they are a normal part of the anxious response), it is your reaction to them which is the problem. The amygdala is a primitive part of the brain and is responsible for the anxiety response. It is vital that you understand that it only responds to feelings and emotions, it does not respond to logic or reason! Therefore in order to stop the amygdala from performing the anxious response, you need to reduce your level of anxiety which means you need to change the emotional response that you are having to these thoughts to more of a neutral response. A method which may help you to achieve this is now explained.

 

Firstly, you have the right to disassociate and detach yourself from these intrusive thoughts (i.e. you can observe them but you don’t have to endorse them) because

1. you have absolutely no desire to have these thoughts - they are completely unwanted! You detest them and certainly don’t ever intend to act on them. Therefore these thoughts have nothing to do with your ‘true’ self. In normal everyday life disturbing thoughts are usually triggered by external stimuli. How we choose to view them is down to our conscience, morals and beliefs. For instance, if you happen to see a news story about child abuse which you find really shocking, then you may experience horrible thoughts related to it. It is therefore important to recognise that although these thoughts would be inappropriate in terms of their content, having them come into your head would be completely appropriate given the context in which they arose. Similarly, although the intrusive thoughts which you are currently experiencing are also inappropriate (in terms of their content), they are completely appropriate given your level of anxiety - it’s just that your level of anxiety is inappropriate! The fact that you feel genuine disgust when these thoughts enter your head only goes to prove you have nothing to worry about (i.e. you are viewing the content of them in the correct way). Indeed, having intrusive thoughts and being affected by them actually reveals that you have a very sensitive personality (the majority of people who experience these type of thoughts just treat them as background noise and don’t tune in to them - they dismiss them pretty readily without much consideration). They also show that you have a very creative imagination (your brain is just using it in a very disturbing way as part of the anxious response). One positive way to view intrusive thoughts (and there are not many positives to having them!) is that they are a really good means of constantly testing your conscience, morals and beliefs.

2. they may not even make sense, are out of context or are somewhat abstract in nature so have no meaning in the real physical world in which we live. Again, it’s just your brain using your creative imagination.

3. you don’t have total control over your thoughts (i.e. you can’t control everything which comes into your head). At best, you can only influence them through your general behaviour. The worst thing you can do is actively try to suppress intrusive thoughts (even though it might appear the right thing to do morally or instinctively). Any attempts to do so messes up your normal brain function (i.e. alters your natural way of thinking), increases anxiety and actually causes more intrusive thoughts to occur - the ‘pink elephant’ complex (actively trying not to think about pink elephants actually causes you to think about pink elephants. Similarly, consciously not wanting to think about pink elephants causes you to think about pink elephants).

 

Since you can disassociate and detach yourself from these intrusive thoughts and can see them for what they truly are (as you now understand the processes that cause them and sustain them - they are purely hypothetical ‘what if’ thoughts that have arisen due to catastrophic thinking, a direct consequence of your brain responding to inappropriate levels of anxiety and fear - they have no actual importance or credibility!) you can have more of a neutral response to them as they come into your head. Any kind of strong emotional response that you have experienced as a result of having them (e.g. feelings of shock, terror, total disgust, guilt, shame, self-doubt and fear) is down to the fact that you have been misinterpreting these thoughts (due to a lack of understanding of them and how the human brain works) resulting in you feeling that they have significance, along with other factors (such as having a sensitive personality, having extreme/irrational beliefs, loss of perspective due to being in an anxious state, the emotional response may have become a subconscious habit so it happens automatically by default whenever these thoughts occur). Hopefully you will be able to recognise that this type of response is a disproportional response (an overreaction) to these intrusive thoughts (just like excessive hand washing is a disproportional response to germs).

 

The best way to implement the neutral response is to let the thoughts come freely into your head (or even say to them ‘come and get me’) and then ignore them (i.e. let the thoughts pass naturally through your head) when they arise. Initially this can be very daunting and difficult, especially if you have already developed the anxious habit of reacting to the thoughts by trying to mentally suppress them or neutralise/undo them by thinking ‘counter’ thoughts, but you have to persevere. Also, when you first start to ignore the thoughts it is likely that they will suddenly increase in quantity due to the fact that your brain is not receiving the usual response it is expecting, so keeps sending you the same thoughts again and again. Do not give in to them! Given time, your brain will adjust to your new behaviour towards these thoughts and their strength and frequency will significantly decrease (as you are starving them of their greatest power source - your attention!) which in turn will lower your level of anxiety.

 

Once you start immersing yourself in normal activities (e.g. spending time with friends and family, listening to music, exercise, work, etc) and as time goes on, the thoughts will fade away completely. It is important to note, however, that all human beings have inappropriate thoughts from time to time as they are a normal part of the human condition (i.e. you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have them to some degree), but in the future you won’t be so tuned in to them which will make it easier for you to dismiss these thoughts automatically.

 

Thank you so much for this . I have a better and thorough understanding regarding intrusive thoughts and it does make sense. From now I will practice let the thoughts go to my mind freely and not pay much attention to them . I also try not to ruminate and accept them more . I struggle with this symtoms a lot .

 

Thanks again.

 

Tracy

I found this post today. I think it saved me. I've been tormented back and forth by awful intrusive thoughts after going through Ativan interdose withdrawal for 50 days, CT now 28 days out. I've been trying to fight them for weeks and I just end up in a recursive feedback loop. I've never actually tried dissociation to the thoughts. I now imagine a revolving door to let the thought in then out, not caring about their substance or timing. Unfortunately I think this is a skill so it will take time to practice.

It definitely takes some practice and some days you will be better at it than others, I suppose depending on what you are most vulnerable to.

 

For example with me, health anxiety can be one of the more difficult ones for me to ignore thoughts about, whereas harming myself I'm generally a lot better at dismissing.

So glad I found this. Most people seem have physical symptoms glad to have found others with horrible mental stuff. Have had intrusive thoughts slowly getting worse throughout this whole horrible experience. I do think they are one of the worst symptoms.

Bump. If anyone's eased how long did it take. I am feeling totally without hope been nearly 3 years dealing with this crap!

It’s real tough i used Geoff Thomson via youtube The power of now he teaches you how to control intrusion it helped a lot to understand and try to block the thoughts he has many podcasts about fear a BAFTA awards winner also Paul McKenna for relaxation and sleep if its ongoing talk with a health professional good luck to all.

Thank you for that. Most of my intrusive thoughts are hypochondriac in nature, but I think your advice still applies.

 

Same with me.......basically, my recurring intrusive thought is this can't be just benzo w/d and anxiety bc I feel so deathly ill sometimes. Something else has to be wrong with me. I can't seem to get these thoughts out of my brain. Ugh!

Same here! It's lessened recently however

Anyone else still have intrusive thoughts? It's the one symptom that never eases or improves, no matter what I try to disassociate from the thoughts. Have read when it's chemical anxiety that time is only thing that heals them. Just that nagging doubt could be permanent, Baylissa said  if you didn't have them before they will eventually go.

Thankyou for the post.

I have dealt with the intrusives and fear and terror, all of it.

 

Someone on the site recommended these youtube videos by a therapist who is going through this and has been documenting her stuff on youtube and you might find it helpful. She had to stop working as a therapist so if you are looking for a coach to help manage intrusives and other symptoms you may want to look at Jennifer Leigh's stuff.  she has the intrusive thoughts, too.  she seems to have done her research to understand what is going on and I reached out to her on Instagram and asked her a question and she posted a video about my question. 

 

https://youtube.com/channel/UCUWQqty01rUUmeD77BFm9lg

 

hope its helpful!

 

 

Very helpful, the video what the hell is happening explains it well, wish she would share her coping strategies.Had intrusive thoughts solidly for over 2 years nothing eases them so far.

Very helpful, the video what the hell is happening explains it well, wish she would share her coping strategies.Had intrusive thoughts solidly for over 2 years nothing eases them so far.

 

I tried a tiny dose of Riluzole (like 1-2mg) it stopped the OCD and intrusive thoughts from withdrawal.

leann,

I reached out to her on Instagram about a question I had and she responded with a video the next day --- its by the same name - jenniferswanphd --

 

If you don't have Instagram I am happy to go on there and ask her to post about coping strategies -- if you don't want your name to be public in the comments on her youtube site

 

I want to hear more about that too!