What No One Has Told You About How to Manage Obsessive Thoughts

An obsessive thought has to do with images, memories and/or words whose content is repetitive and intrusive. Furthermore, there is no control over them, they appear involuntarily, causing a lot of annoyance.

They have no use on a rational level, since no matter how much our head turns to the same thing, we are not able to draw any positive conclusion, but rather become increasingly overwhelmed, increasing our level of anguish.

Understanding obsessive thoughts

I’ll give you some examples of obsessive thoughts:

What no one has told you about obsessive thoughts is that they do have a very specific use, but on the emotional level.

The displacement

There is a psychoanalytic defense mechanism that we call displacement. Defenses are created in our earliest childhood, to defend ourselves from something or someone who was going to harm us. Many times they are unconscious, we don’t even remember that they existed when we were little. Since this danger was too great for our child’s mind to manage, that defense became very rigid. The defense was useful in a context of previous danger and/or trauma, but in the present moment it is not always useful.

Displacement occurs when The emotions we feel about something or someone are too uncomfortable or we simply don’t know how to manage them, so we move them to our heads. It’s something like, they need to go out somewhere and they are out of control from repressing them so much, so they become ruminative, accelerated and meaningless thoughts. Therefore, working on emotional intelligence will be an extremely important factor in the treatment of these obsessive thoughts.

In my experience as a psychologist, I have been able to see that the emotions most associated with obsessive thoughts are four: guilt, anger, fear and emotional pain (or sadness). In addition, there is another clear element in these obsessive thoughts: the feeling of lack of control.

But be careful, guilt has a trap. It is a parasitic emotion. A parasitic emotion is an emotion that covers up other genuine ones that are trying to come out, such as anger, rage or emotional pain. And why is it there? Because it was useful when we were little, in our family or at school.

Examples

I give you examples of this.

When I was little my mother always told me I was a bad girl when I got angry, so I learned to feel guilty whenever I tried to express a need or set a limit. Since no one saw and validated my emotion, I began to think about myself: Have I done it wrong? Will I be to blame? Why is my mother like this? Why do I imagine them dead? (because you are expressing rage by “killing” them in your fantasy).

On the other hand, when I was little my mother always suffered hospital admissions due to her cardiovascular disease. Nobody explained it to me, my father pretended it was nothing so as not to worry me and thus protect me, thinking that would be good. Make fear and pain invisible made the only way to support it was from possible explanations to why my mother was suddenly disappearing: Where did she go? Will she be okay? Will I be okay? Will the same thing happen to me as it does to her? Will I have the same heart disease? Is it wrong if I tell how I feel since my father tries to hide it? (guilt over fear).

Also, when I was little and got angry, my parents would punish me and stop talking to me for two days. They also punished me by looking at the wall. My anger and my fear of being stopped loving me shifted to the following obsessive thoughts: Why do you do this to me? Will they reject me if I get angry again? Have I done wrong in showing them my needs? Am I stupid? (guilt and anger inward because it cannot be expressed outwardly) Have I been that bad? Should I die for being so bad? (and, as an adult: Has my partner already arrived home? Has he been unfaithful to me? Does my life have meaning? Why don’t I die?).

I can’t forget when my family always talked about how well my sister’s clothes looked on her. Even with how ugly my mother’s nose was, my father always picked on her a lot. My mother, on occasions, told me why didn’t she buy me other types of clothes, that she would fit me better. Seeing her diet very occasionally made me nervous, I saw her suffering with the whole issue of weight and her body.

But no one talked about it at home. Even though they had not said anything “direct” towards me or my physique, I began to worry about it. Everything got much worse when at school they started calling me piggy, because of my slightly raised nose. Little by little, as a child, I began to think that I was not well inside or out. So I started thinking: Am I ugly? Do I have to lose weight? Am I a weirdo? Should I get a nose job? Are my friends prettier than me? Does it make sense for someone like me to be in this life? (guilt and emotional pain).

Characteristics of obsessive thoughts

Obsessive thoughts, therefore, They are usually triggered by situations in which we use the repression of emotions such as fear, anger, or even emotional pain. And then they move.

We learn to do it in childhood. It may be that there is a parasitic culpogenic component, as I explained, or not. Sometimes a thought or chain of thoughts only hides one emotion without parasites, or several emotions together.

However, There are times when these thoughts do not have an external trigger. (argument with someone, illness, pain or event) but it can be internal. Suddenly a traumatic memory is activated with very intense emotions that my internal world cannot manage (anger, fear, pain…) and then, suddenly, I can’t stop thinking. An example of this is the confinement we experienced during the first wave of COVID. Why did many people ask for psychological help again? Because the “simple” fact of being isolated made them have more time to spend time with themselves and connect with their internal world.

When this connection is made and stopping, old memories erased long ago may come to mind (when I was bullied at school, when my parents hit me, when my dog ​​died…) and activate obsessive mechanisms that are difficult to eradicate.

These obsessions can lead us to think about death, about COVID in an excessive way, about how terrible the future can be, about our body, about death… When in reality what is happening is that, far from worrying and Obsessing over something real, what is underneath and we are covering up, are emotions that need to be processed.

What factors can cause the development of these obsessive thoughts?

These are the main elements that can contribute to the emergence of obsessive thoughts or trigger them.

• Fearful parents in general. Fear of the future, of physical or mental illnesses, etc.
• Hypochondriac parents. Focused on concerns about disease issues.
• Negative parents. They think all the time in a catastrophic and hopeless way.
• Parents who have difficulties regulating emotions. They are very mental, rational, focused on solutions and not so much on letting their emotions feel.
• Perfectionist parents. They have to have everything under control, perfect, ideal. There is no place for emotions, there is room for what they will say (a lot of importance to appearance) and non-vulnerability, because it is judged as bad and embarrassing. Therefore, there is a very internalized fear of rejection.
• Parents who play with emotional manipulation, victimhood and blackmail. Something like: “daughter, how angry you are, what a character. With everything I do for you. “I can’t tell you anything, how much you make me suffer.”
• Personality structure predisposing to obsessiveness. Everyone has a personality and may be more or less prone to developing obsessive thoughts.
• Traumatic events for which the brain cannot find any rational explanation, much less process the experience emotionally. There is a clear lack of control for the individual. Examples of this are accidents, abuse, negligence, losses or deaths, bullying, etc.

How to heal obsessive thoughts?

Accept that it is a defense that in some contexts may not be useful

Thinking carefully about something to make the best decision can be useful, there is a rational and emotional benefit, but this is not always the case. So identify at what age or in what environment you began to develop this obsessive defense to avoid getting in touch with your emotions.

1. Close your eyes and locate the emotion in your body

Give it a name, and then shape, structure, color… Breathe. Notice it in your body. Like this until it decreases or increases. The excitement will pass.

• You may be interested: “What is Emotional Intelligence?”

2. Is it anger, fear, or pain…?

Depending on what emotion it is, there will be a different message and action. If it is anger, this will lead us to set limits on the person or situation that has hurt us or to distance ourselves from it. If it is fear, we must protect ourselves. If it is pain, we must mourn it alone or with others.

3. Is it an emotion from the present, from the past, or both?

Sometimes, an argument with someone generates anger in us that we do not understand where it comes from. Maybe what that person told me reminded me of what someone else said (mother, father, cousin, school…) that he attacked me when I was little. At other times, like COVID virus waves, they can reactivate the fear I felt as a child when my mother suffered from anxiety attacks.

4. Do what the emotion asks of you in the present as long as it is not responding to the past

For example, I can put limits to someone who has insulted me, but not to get disproportionately angry with someone for the simple fact that they remind me of a person from my past who did something bad to me. In that case, I will have to go to therapy to heal my past.

The same with fear; If there is a virus like the one that causes COVID, obviously from there it is functional to feel fear. And I have to protect myself with a mask, with vaccines… but yes, I do feel afraid whenever my chest hurts thinking that I have a cardiovascular disease and it is not real, I cannot act on the fear, but breathe it, hold it, and work on my past. in therapy.

5. Don’t focus on obsessive thinking

Accept it and understand it as a defense of the past that does not always work and focus on the emotion. If we let ourselves be carried away by obsessive thinking we will only be reinforcing this defense. Also do not do any compulsion, that is, anything that eliminates the anxiety of that obsessive thought.

For example, if your chest hurts and you think you might have a heart attack all the time, don’t search for information on the Internet, don’t consult the doctor or a family member… just expose yourself to that emotion of fear by closing your eyes and breathe it in. Then reflect on whether that emotion has been activated by a trigger in the present or by a past trauma that has to do with hypochondria, as in this case.

Concluding…

In short, think that emotions listened to, processed and emotionally regulated are equal to obsessive thoughts eradicated. However, processing entrenched emotions from the past that have to do with painful memories will require a psychotherapeutic process by a specialist trained in trauma.