Sometimes my brain just gets stuck on “Imagine all the people who mean so much to you that would abandon you and hate you if they ever found out.”
Any advice on dealing with?
Sometimes my brain just gets stuck on “Imagine all the people who mean so much to you that would abandon you and hate you if they ever found out.”
Any advice on dealing with?
Compartmentalization. Also I’ve found it helps to not let this part of you become part of your personal identity. Yes, I am a pedo, but I dont let this define myself, there is so much more to me than that.
Could you elaborate a bit on that first part?
Its hard to explain, but basically try to train your brain not to dwell on it, as it will only make you more anxious and depressed which creates a positive feedback loop (positive meaning that it propogates itself, not that it is good). You gotta take these thoughts and put them in a little box in the corner of your brain and dont open it unless you have a reason to.
I know this sounds like telling a depressed person to just try smiling more! But if you really focus, you can actually have a lot more control over your brain and your thoughts than you’d expect.
…it sort of feels like telling me to stop being pedo.
…which, granted, not being pedo would prolly lessen worries about people I care about coming to think me pedo…
Yeah, I think the best thing to do about upsetting thoughts is learn to just move on. Don’t even tell yourself to stop thinking about it. Just drop it.
That’s not an easy thing to do at first, but if you know to do it, you can work on it. It might help to have a topic ready to go so you don’t have to come up with something else to think about on the spot, and maybe change it up sometimes so you don’t start to associate the two things. And it’s something you can actively practice; deliberately think about something unpleasant for just a moment and quickly move on to something else. It’s much easier when you’re prepared for it.
That’s just my experience, of course. No guarantee it works for everyone.