Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts _ a CBT-Based Guide to Getting Over Frightening, Obsessive, or Disturbing Thoughts. ( PDFDrive )

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Recovering from Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts 13Exercise: Observing Your Own Ironic ProcessThis demonstration will take less than ten minutes, and it consists oftwo parts.Part 1Set a timer for two minutes. Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and payattention to what you think, feel, hear, and smell. You may think aboutanything you want— anything at all— except for one thing. Under nocircumstances should you think about carrots. Not the word carrot, notthe smell of carrots, not the taste. Nothing with carrots in it— no carrotcake, no carrot salad, and certainly no Bugs Bunny! It might help tostay away from the color orange as well. Now start the timer, and doyour best to keep your thoughts away from carrots.After the timer goes off, ask yourself how well you did. Now, mostpeople will report that they failed to be completely free of carrots.The effort to not think about carrots backfires. In fact, the effort itselfis doomed to failure. The more you try to rid your mind of carrots,the more insistent the thought becomes. So trying not to think aboutcarrots is a form of thinking about them.Part 2In this portion of the exercise, you will set your timer for five minutes.Your task is to try to keep your mind completely free of carrots for fiveminutes. As in the first part of the exercise, sit comfortably and giveyourself permission to think about anything at all except carrots. Startthe timer, and each time you think of carrots, you must reset the timerback to five minutes. Your task is simply to go five minutes withoutthinking of carrots. Be honest! Ready, get set, go!Now look at what happened. Most people report that they thinkof carrots after just a few seconds, so they reset the timer. But thenit happens again, and the timer is once again reset. After a while,the task starts to seem impossible. You become frustrated, annoyed,
14 Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughtsand even angry. And each time the thought comes back sooner andsooner. Almost no one is able to go five minutes, and so you end theexercise with the timer still ticking away.But let’s look at what you have done. You have created a “stuck”thought! The content of the thought is carrots, which is about asuncontroversial and non- upsetting as can be, but that thought hasbecome stuck in your mind. You really couldn’t care less aboutcarrots one way or the other. It is your attempt to follow the assignmentthat has now created all those thoughts about carrots. Yourattempt to control your mind has backfired. The simple truth is thatwhat you resist tends to persist. This is the basic paradox— theironic process— at work in making unwanted intrusive thoughts sopersistent. Thoughts stick because of the energy you expend to fightthem. Your assignment was to fight the thoughts, but they fightback!Worried Voice: Carrots make me think about sex. Anything shapedlike that does. What kind of person thinks likethat? I’m disgusting.False Comfort: This is supposed to be a neutral topic. Think aboutsomething neutral.Worried Voice: I can’t help it.False Comfort: Just distract yourself. Put your mind on anothertopic.Worried Voice: I have these thoughts all the time, you know.Maybe I truly am a disgusting person.False Comfort: Why am I stuck with you? Why won’t you just shutup and listen to me?False Comfort would like Worried Voice to just stop offeringunwanted intrusive thoughts. It tries to help Worried Voice stop,but it doesn’t work. False Comfort objects to every one of thosethoughts. But Worried Voice just can’t help where its mind goes.
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Page 12 and 13: IntroductionHave you ever stood on
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CHAPTER 4Unwanted IntrusiveThoughts
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Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts Q and A
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CHAPTER 9What Does Recovery Mean?In
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What Does Recovery Mean? 157We say
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What Does Recovery Mean? 159Stickin
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What Does Recovery Mean? 161happeni
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CHAPTER 10When to SeekProfessional
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When to Seek Professional Help 165A
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When to Seek Professional Help 167T
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Three years ago I wrote a single pa
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BibliographyBaer, L. 2001. Imp of t
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Sally M. Winston, PsyD, founded and
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SELF-HELPIt’s not what you think!
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Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts _ a CBT-Based Guide to Getting Over Frightening, Obsessive, or Disturbing Thoughts. ( PDFDrive )

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