I think a good term for what you defined in your edit might be “intrusive thoughts”
Comment on hmm
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months agoThey aren’t intrusive thoughts, they’re just your thoughts, stop being afraid of thinking. Now if you lack impulse control, then we have a problem.
FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world 7 months ago
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
If everyone has them it’s not a phobia, it’s a condition of consciousness. The phobia is being afraid of your perfectly normal condition.
FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world 7 months ago
May I ask what expertise you have on this that makes you know more than doctors and psychologists who use the term intrusive thoughts, and specifically use that term to diagnose people with mental illness or neuro-divergence? Or are you just pontificating to feel smarter than everyone else? We don’t need a new word for something everyone (except you) clearly already understands and uses properly.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I understand it perfectly, this is a philosophical perspective not a medical one. My understanding of the term as used in medicine does not differ from yours.
superduperenigma@lemmy.world 7 months ago
They are intrusive thoughts, because that’s the phrase that was coined to describe these types of thoughts. Sometimes we come up with specific phrases in order to describe more specific concepts.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Right, nuance and context are infinitely important. Now what’s the functional difference between the two, because 8f none exists that can be implemented by the individual then the nuanced difference between the types of thoughts becomes irrelevant to how one handles them.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
The functional difference is:
Thoughts == benign shit passing through your brain that cause no personal discomfort.
Obtrusive thoughts == shit that intrudes on your regular internal monologue and causes discomfort or fixation.
It’s fine to have such thoughts, and it’s also fine to acknowledge that you don’t want them. Like I’m trying to get on with my day, but now my brain is playing a vivid horror show and I just want to finish my TPS report, not walk through every moment of myself shattering Steve’s skull with the fire axe because he can’t figure out how to use the collate function on the printer.
Sure, you can embrace that shit as fictional, but it’s distracting in the moment.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Sure, but ignoring an ‘intrusive thought’ is functionally no different to how you ignore any other thought.
I say ‘pink elephants’ you’re going to fixate for a bit, how that affects you emotionally won’t change that functionally for you.
superduperenigma@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Thoughts = literally any thought
Intrusive thoughts = the type of thoughts we don’t particularly want to think because they make us uncomfortable, but they intrude into our stream of consciousness either way.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
My stream of consciousness picks things up, not has things fall into it.
It’s a matter of perspective.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 months ago
There absolutely are intrusive thoughts. Two examples:
Once in a long while, I’ll be talking to a black person and I’ll think of the N-word. It will just pop into my head for a split second and I’ll think “oh my god, no!” and it will be gone. I’ve never said that word out loud, I’ve never thought of anyone black that way, and I certainly don’t want to think of anyone that way. It’s not a thought I meant to have or even a thought that would ever represent how I felt. It isn’t even a thought that is pointed with malice at the person I was talking to. It’s literally just “N-word” and it’s gone. It’s purely unconscious and intrusive racism that I think is just part of being white.
Every so often, I’ll be talking to a couple I know and imagine them fucking. Just for a split second again. I don’t want to imagine them fucking. It’s not titillating to me. I don’t get a rise out of it. I don’t fantasize about it later. But just for a moment, I imagine what it would be like if my perceptive versions of them fucked. We won’t even be talking about anything remotely sexual. But sex is part of the human condition and sometimes we have unconscious, intrusive thoughts about sex.
I don’t think either of these will lead me to murder. In fact, in general, I don’t have violent thoughts, not even intrusive ones. But it could lead me to other atrocious behavior if I dwell on those thoughts and if I let them become more than momentarily intrusive. It’s not being afraid of thinking them, it’s not wanting to think of them and doing my best to will any such thoughts that stray out of my head as quickly as I can. Because those thoughts are not thoughts I want to have about people. I don’t care if I don’t act on them either. I don’t want to think that about any black people I ever encounter in my life. I don’t want to think that about any couples who I know. But sometimes those thoughts just pop into my head and I can’t help it. But I can help moving past them as fast as I possibly can so they don’t end up accumulating and turning me into a person I don’t want to be.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That’s called having a normal and functioning think box, comes will all the usual bits of imagination just like every other human.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 months ago
“Bits of imagination” you don’t want to have = intrusive thoughts.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
We don’t always get what we want, that’s life.
feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s not part of being white anymore than dropping a baby out of a window. It’s just your brain telling you what not to do, because you know not to use that term, on account of it being rude and offensive.
It’s become such a taboo term, you’d literally never say it, so it’s like internal Tourettes, and I suspect this type of intrusive thought is least vaguely related to the phenomenon of cute aggression.
I’ve even joked about this with a Nigerian friend, about how your brain will just think something awful about somebody and you just have to smile about it. It’s sad that you would assume some essential racist nature about yourself.
F_Haxhausen@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Intrusive thoughts are a big part of OCD.
And they are unwanted thoughts that a person doesn’t want to have. That’s why doctors call them “intrusive thoughts.”
F_Haxhausen@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Intrusive thoughts are a big part of OCD. And they call them “intrusive thoughts.”
Maybe it’s OCD?
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
If intrusive thoughts legitimately affect their capacity to function then yes that would be a disorder, but not due to having them, only due to how they handle them differently from those that aren’t affected.
Any relation to OCD is outside of my experience.
F_Haxhausen@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The point is that intrusive thoughts are real.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
And my point is that yes, they are real, they are also a figment of our imagination.
srai@feddit.de 7 months ago
These kind of thoughts are normal, but can develope into a subform of ocd called puro-o ocd
Cannacheques@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
Maybe stop trying to analyse these things or put Buddhism into a box too yeah?
krellor@kbin.social 7 months ago
Not all thoughts are consciously summoned, wanted, or pleasant. The term intrusive thoughts is a good way to describe those thoughts we find unpleasant. Yes, they are natural and normal, and often how we grapple with and process experiences, but that doesn't make them unobtrusive.
Additionally, many people have intrusive recollections of upsetting events from the past. Intrusive thoughts is a good descriptor that helps avoid over using terms like flashbacks or PTSD.
Clarifying such things as intrusive helps destigmatize these thoughts for people who have them and feel the weight of social expectations, like new parents as in the comic. I feeling guilty about having these thoughts isn't healthy, and properly describing them helps people prices them. I don't see what is particularly objectionable or hard to understand about the term and why being more specific in the description of one thoughts is off-putting to you.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I am not emotionally disturbed by my ‘intrusive thoughts’ because they have as much bearing on reality as whether I like the smell of burnt toast.
I’m disheartened by the fact that people feel they need to thought police themselves for the benefit of a society that will never engage with those figments of their imaginations.
That is legitimately depressing and I feel sorry for those people. I wish them the best in developing more significant and functional mental fortitude. Sorry if I offended anyone, it wasn’t my intention.
krellor@kbin.social 7 months ago
Everyone is different, and life is path dependent. Some people don't struggle with difficult memories, and others have simply not lived an unpleasant enough life to have accrued the emotional scars.
However, being blatantly brusque in your description of others followed by "sorry if I offended" is the epitome of ringing hollow. At least be honest; you don't care if you offended others.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I wasn’t being disingenuous and I’m sorry the way I express myself makes you feel that way.
SomeoneElse@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
You’re not being downvoted for “caring”, you’re being downvoted for sounding like condescending, pompous arse. If you’re not purposefully trying to be a dick, you might want to try developing your empathy skills. And ditch the non-apologies, they just make you seem even more disingenuous.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I am a condescending pompous arse, an ego earned by being correct. I’m empathetic, but I’m not sympathetic to those who would ignore a way of thinking that is not afflicted by the same weakness as their own.
F_Haxhausen@lemmy.world 7 months ago
No thoughts are “your own.”
You are owned by your thoughts.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
If you believe that try not having them.