Freedom from intrusive thoughts...

[jaybee]

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Yesterday I heard someone speaking (in church) about forgiving and forgetting and they opined that forgiving was the easy bit but forgetting was much more difficult as sometimes negative thoughts feel like they're tattooed on the brain ....

I thought this was a dramatic but accurate way to describe what happens .... especially when the intrusive thoughts looping over and over are related to feeling (rightly or wrongly) betrayed and unfairly judged...it can drive you crazy.... even when you can carry on and appear quite normal on the outside... on the inside thoughts pop up and torture you over and over...


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Yesterday this short video came up on the YouTube recommendations page and I'm finding it helpful - (as I'm suffering with intrusive thoughts regarding a close family member at the moment and have been for the last eight months...)... I've watched a lot of Eckhart Tolle stuff over the last couple of years as well and his videos are also good and helpful when it comes to this topic .... I love Eckhart Tolle :) and will post some of his videos in this thread -

But first off - this 9:19 minute video is very much to the point - and perhaps my own intrusive thoughts are naturally running out of steam a bit.... but today I'm feeling like I can successfully apply the remedy outlined by Noah......


HOW I GOT RID OF (Obsessive Anxious Thinking & Painful Rumination)


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[Michel Leclerc]

“We can not make our suffering go away, we can not make our sorrow go away, we can not make our confusion go away – but we can add a little pleasure to our suffering, we can add a little joy to our sorrow, we can add a little clarity to our confusion”. (Andreas Rothe, my Shivaite master).

[Harmony]

jaybee this is a really important issue that most people go through in their lives. :heart:When it is a family member or someone you care about it seems extra hurtful too.:bearhug:


Another thing that I think can help to remember is, you cannot control how other people think, and from experience, I have found later down the track that other person may realise they were harsh or unfair and even appologise years later. I found if I know in my heart I have done my best, then just feel good about that and let go, the other person is likely dealing with inner pain of some sort. Catching that circular thinking though and using the advice in your iinked video is good advice too.:stars:






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Yesterday I heard someone speaking (in church) about forgiving and forgetting and they opined that forgiving was the easy bit but forgetting was much more difficult as sometimes negative thoughts feel like they're tattooed on the brain ....

I thought this was a dramatic but accurate way to describe what happens .... especially when the intrusive thoughts looping over and over are related to feeling (rightly or wrongly) betrayed and unfairly judged...it can drive you crazy.... even when you can carry on and appear quite normal on the outside... on the inside thoughts pop up and torture you over and over...


*******************************


Yesterday this short video came up on the YouTube recommendations page and I'm finding it helpful - (as I'm suffering with intrusive thoughts regarding a close family member at the moment and have been for the last eight months...)... I've watched a lot of Eckhart Tolle stuff over the last couple of years as well and his videos are also good and helpful when it comes to this topic .... I love Eckhart Tolle :) and will post some of his videos in this thread -

But first off - this 9:19 minute video is very much to the point - and perhaps my own intrusive thoughts are naturally running out of steam a bit.... but today I'm feeling like I can successfully apply the remedy outlined by Noah......


HOW I GOT RID OF (Obsessive Anxious Thinking & Painful Rumination)

[AxisMundi]

Thanks for posting, I haven't watched this yet but have opened in another tab to view later.....

These sorts of rumination's are literally like a chronic infections of the soul and are extremely harmful, including the potential to cause serious illness in the physical body.

My own strategy when I find myself 'circling the drain' like this is to imagine a hungry group of demons approaching me to torture me and eventually kill me. That's really the essence what these sorts of thoughts are.

I remind myself that everything in life I need to surrender, everything I desire and everything that's aligned with soul evolution is dependent on escaping these demons. It generally works and I give up the ruminations in that moment.....

[norman]

I've been through a very long period of separation from my daughter who grew up mostly under the influence of people who didn't understand me at all. Consequently, She doesn't understand me at all either, and I can't fit my fatherly mind into much of her world now either.

A couple of decades ago I came to a realisation that the difference between us was also a distance between us that made each other at least stable distant stars in each other's minds (and hearts). A stable distant star is at least something, and better than up close and personal stress antagonism and conflict.

It's a sadness, that sometimes forces solitude with the creator back into being loneliness instead. These ways I describe the situation are, in my case, the handles by which I try to process and deal with it for myself.

But things change, sometimes surprisingly, and have to be grappled with differently. There was a period when my daughter reached out me to try to (probably) resolve her side of the situation. She did indeed get to know me a little and we met twice. I began to hope for better times. Unfortunately, the perspective in which she acquainted herself with me was such that the more she learned the more she didn't want to deal with the perspective of 'my world' and my world view. In a quite swift change of course, after the last time we met, she emphatically snuggled herself even further into what I regard as the fake upside down world reality and she de-prioritised keeping in touch with her dad.

I felt the thump in the gut. We live in different countries and my ability to chip away at the gap between us is very limited. If she doesn't want to exchange emails with me I'm cut off completely. It hurts a bit. I think she's got a long path in front of her and I wish her well on it. I probably will be dead and gone before she reaches the part where she assigns any value to her useless distant dad. On a good day, I'm ok with that. On a bad day, it chews me up far more than feels healthy.

Why didn't she grow up WITH me in the first place ? That's a whole different book and I'm not going to start writing here.

[jaybee]

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many thanks for the replies..... :heart:

you know.... I never saw this coming - the biggest challenge of my life... (to keep my thoughts and reactions under some kind of control) but I shouldn't say that and tempt fate because I'm sure the demons/gremlins can come up with something worse... :/...so fingers crossed, touch wood etc etc ...

I don't remember years ago being plagued with intrusive thoughts in the same way....even when things were tough or life took a nasty turn for a while....

I do remember sometimes a song would pop into my head out of nowhere and I'd think... oh I must be picking up on the radio waves coming from a broadcast somewhere and my brain's tuning in... but now..... now..... how many radio waves etc are criss crossing everywhere - EVERYWHERE - broadcasts / conversations / images etc etc.... often right through our brains - this surely must be having an effect.... on the brain waves and thought patterns...? Not forgetting the corrosive effects of Social Media and actual propaganda pumping out EVERYWHERE...

remember when you drove a car and the windscreen would be splattered with insects... not any more...
you left the door open at night with a light on and there would be lots of moths flapping around the hot bulb - not any more..

when you went out on a dew drenched morning and there were spider's webs EVERYWHERE...covering all the bushes - not any more -

I think I saw one beetle last year - a smallish brown one....

(cue Alex Jones and 'they're turning the friggin frogs gay!!' )

sorry this is turning into a kind of (topic related) rant.... the people who make out they care about the planet and 'climate change' and whatnot don't give a damn about the electronic / radio frequency pollution because....duh.... it's invisible - and everyone's addicted to technology (myself included a lot of the time re laptop)

What I'm trying to say is perhaps the obsessive, intrusive thoughts are made MUCH worse by the electronic / radio frequency pollution - notice how people - often young people babble now and speech has speeded up -



maybe it's sending us all crazy .... it's hard enough when everything is going well but if something emotionally challenging (and long term) is hovering over every day..................... it's tough..................

normal thread service (from me) will be resumed in due course...

:shocked:

edit - I feel the need to make an edit after posting all of the above, in a ranty moment.... and that is to say that we humans seem to be very adaptable and if the invisible radio frequency pollution is messing with our thought processes in some way.... well that will just mean more thoughts that will have to be observed and nullified - whilst retaining the power of the Creative Core Self... :nod:
:fingers crossed:

[Kryztian]

Thanks Jaybee for creating this thread. Here's another video that essentially says the same thing. It is a little less autobiographical in the story here, but he is very clear about how to formulate the solution. I discovered this video about a decade ago and it helped me with my anxiety.

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[Mike Gorman]

Yes, I think this is incredibly common and leads to all kinds of adverse outcomes, even suicides and violence: I discovered this 'letting go' technique when I was being tortured by a negative, intrusive, repeating and futile cycle of thinking, and wow it can be so relieving. I find you need to reinforce this sometimes, and just let your thinking 'have at it' don't try to fight/rationalize - this truly is helpful, and so simple, thanks for the reminder!

[grapevine]

I too am no stranger to mega stress and anxiety over many years and maybe I will be again in the future, although for now all is well. But if I could offer just one piece of advice, it would be: Be your own Best Friend always and set boundaries.

[jaybee]

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This is another video that I looked at when I decided to start a thread on the subject of intrusive thought...

On a lighter note - and I think keeping a sense of humour going through the Hard Times is healing - even (especially?) if it is black humour -

Something funny happened when I watched the video yesterday - @7:15 he is talking about the brain being a receiver and that you can't predict what thought it will come up with next.....then he challenges the viewer to try and predict what thought would pop up next - even to pause the video to do it....... so I did that and a random thought of a big jelly + blancmange came in - one of those old fashioned ones that you make with a mold - it was just THERE in all it's glory - quite a big one, pink at the top and milky coloured at the bottom - his point was proved because I could never have predicted that !!! and heaven knows where it came from - :lol:

Thoughts pop up like memories - and can be very random - but when something or someone has upset your equilibrium the thoughts (and memories of the thoughts) seem to go into a continuous loop - until that loop is weakened (and broken).....


OVERTHINKING STOPS NOW (16:02)

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0:00 - Stanford Study
0:18 - Ways to quiet the mind
0:40 - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Overuse
0:49 - Mark Twain Quote
0:56 - What is Overthinking?
1:17 - Taming the Horse Story
2:14 - The Wise Horse Tamers Method
2:29 - Don't Force the Mind
2:38 - The Secret of the Mind
2:50 - Full Stop Subdues the Mind
3:08 - Buddha Story
3:24 - Awareness Story
4:08 - Stop Fixing Yourself
4:24 - How to Cultivate Awareness
4:28 - Know who you are beyond thought
4:48 - You are NOT the voice in your head
5:09 - If you see the Buddha...
5:33 - Watch the Good Thoughts & Bad Thoughts
6:00 - Ramana Maharshi Story
7:09 - You are NOT Thoughts
7:18 - Can you predict your next thought?
8:18 - The Moon and Your Thoughts
8:48 - Self Inquiry
9:18 - You are the Awareness
9:50 - Why do you Overthink?
10:11 - King Story "All is Well"
13:46 - Neti Neti Practice
14:15 - Rumi Quote
14:23 - Self Inquiry Meditation
15:40 - Stay as the Pure Observer

[Michi]

“We can not make our suffering go away, we can not make our sorrow go away, we can not make our confusion go away – but we can add a little pleasure to our suffering, we can add a little joy to our sorrow, we can add a little clarity to our confusion”. (Andreas Rothe, my Shivaite master).

I would like to challenge that statement.
"We can not" is blatantly way too general.
Prolonged (mental) sufferings are mostly unresolved past trauma.
Thru regression one can re-visit trauma events and uncover how those events startet out - even uncover related confusions.

Concerning the OP video. It's a sound approach to recognize the nagging chatter as not oneself but some kind of "circuit".
But one isn't aware of it and often takes it as "oneself talking".
It happens even when I have a very strong opinion or problem about something. My mind goes in overdrive, trying to deal with the issue.
A good way to go about is to write the whole thing down and perhaps write down some 1-2-3 plan.

[jaybee]

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I mentioned Eckhart Tolle earlier in the thread and there are so many extracts I could put here - this is one about becoming aware of internal negative dialogue as the first step to doing something about it.... the stories, long and short that we are constantly running through our head...about our lives....

Eckhart had a big crisis / breakdown many years ago when he felt suicidal and that he couldn't live with himself anymore... this brought about realizations regarding the destructive power of the constant inner dialogue - and the peace + healing that could come from disengaging from, and observing those thoughts - (asking WHO was it that was doing the observing)?

Maybe when the crisis really peaked, followed by his realizations, he had a super blast of cerebral spinal fluid / kundalini energy :)... because he then had two years of bliss when everything became endlessly fascinating and life was a wondrous thing - he wrote a book 'The Power of Now' and became a spiritual teacher/philosopher...

People meet up in venues and he gives / shares 'Talks'... and it's mostly all on the internet now...

Is Your Inner Monologue Destroying You? | Eckhart Tolle on Self-Talk and Negative Internal Dialogue(13:02)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HffrwmOT6c

just the url because you need to go and watch it on Youtube - it won't embed.. not sure if they are all like that or not -


13 Apr 2023
Eckhart explores how we can cultivate awareness to identify and free ourselves from our self-talk and the negative stories we tell ourselves about our lives.

[jaybee]

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I just watched this as it came up on my YouTube recommendations page - and it couldn't be more relevant for me right now.... (and hopefully has relevance for someone reading this post..) to cut to the chase and stay with the thread topic .... it could be a big help with getting free of unwanted intrusive thoughts...


Funny thing is about 6 days ago I saw a comment about the heart and the brain and although I can't remember now exactly what it was - I started making a conscious effort to shift my awareness to my heart region and solar plexus region - - - - away from the brain... and doing this shifted away from the brain chatter and felt good - aka... where attention goes, energy flows...?


So this Gregg Braden video of him giving a talk and practical demonstration using a volunteer regarding brain / heart cohesion..... just fitted in perfectly to go further into this...

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The thing about reversing aging is one part of it all - because it could be a very helpful exercise to increase health and well being generally...


Secrets to Reversing Aging with Ancient Heart Brain Coherence Practices | Gregg Braden (1:06:01)

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Premiered on 3 Jan 2025
Gregg Braden - Gregg Braden examines ancient traditions and scientific findings to reveal the cyclic model of aging, emphasizing daily renewal through gratitude, mindfulness, and emotional harmony. Discover how heart-brain coherence fosters vitality, reframing aging as a dynamic, regenerative process for health and longevity.


it's common knowledge how destructive stress + anxiety can be on health and happiness.... and the amazing thing about the Heart Brain Coherence exercise that Gregg goes through at the end is that doing it for 3 minutes can reverberate on the body and the field around the body for around 6 hours...!!!

there are many points of interest and education (scientific and spiritual) in the hour long video and I would say watching it is time well spent - - -

:thumbsup: