Dianne
I believe I understood correctly it would be okay to repost this. I always want to be respectful of the guidelines here. There has been alot of discussion on obsessing so I retreived this old file. I'll understand if you delete it. But I think you said it was actually okay. . .
Note, as long as we only use brief portions and cite the source. I have linked the source at the bottom, thanks, finished, Di
Thanks always
finished
I found this information on another web site a few weeks ago and fortunately had not deleted it from my file. It is in regards to obsession. I was so GLAD I still had it. I'm going to copy it here. It helped me so much when I read it and seems timely now
As copied from another web site:
Hi Everyone. During the 'dark days' of the N situation I was literally obsessed with thinking about the Ns in the family I married into. I could not stop. My emotions were bouncing all over the place.
I had an opportunity of having a medical student stay with me for two weeks while she was doing an elective at one of the local hospitals. She did a rotation in Pediatric Psychiatry. She told me she had interviewed a 15 year-old girl who had tried to kill her own father. The patient was completely lacking in empathy, she actually thought there was nothing particularly wrong with what she had done. She was diagnosed withAntisocial Personality Disorder.
The medical student found that she developed obsessive thinking about this patient. She could not get the patient and the whole situation out of her mind. I talked with her at some length about her obsessive thinking and my own situation and it helped me to see that this phenomena is much more common than I had thought. If this medical student could develop obsessive thinking over the interviewed patient, then I who was smack in the midst of coping with my NH and his son had the same problem.
I decided to run a medline search and came up with the following. It seems the good news is that once we
demystify the N situation (which can be accomplished by reading and learning as much as we can) that we then experience a lessening of the 'obsessive thinking' problem. I hope this helps some of you come to terms with what we all seem to go through and will validate your own experiences. Also, you will note from the excerpts I have copied from the abstracts that attempting to 'not think about it' actually increases the problem.
Address for medline searches - I used the parameters of 'obsessive thinking'
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?SUBMIT=y
According to recent research, deliberate suppression of unwanted thoughts may result in a paradoxical
increase in their frequency. White bears and other elusive intrusions.
Assessing the relevance of thought suppression for obsessional phenomena.
> Purdon, C. Clark, D.A. Behav Modif 2000 Jul;24(3):425-53
Research has shown that attempts to suppress a thought can cause an increase in the frequency of the
thought. These paradoxical effects of thought suppression play a key role in cognitive-behavioral models of
several emotional disorders. Paradoxical effects of thought suppression: a meta-analysis of controlled studies. Abramowitz JS, Tolin DF, Street GP. Clin Psychol Rev 2001 Jul;21(5):683-703
It is proposed that obsessions are caused by catastrophic misinterpretations of the significance of one's
thoughts (images, impulses). The obsessions persist as long as the misinterpretations continue and diminish when the misinterpretation weakened. A cognitive theory of obsessions. Rachman S. Behav Res Ther 1997
Sep;35(9):793-802
The White Bear reference seems to be the name of a psychological questionnaire used by psychiatrists to
determine obsessive thinking levels. It does get better with time and with understanding the whole N problem and its significance and impact in our lives. So, the upshot of all this is to read and learn and try to
cope with the problem and understand it fully.
(REPLY 1)
I would guess it takes a lot of time for cognitive restructuring to take place, and the thinking and re-thinking
helps with minimizing the misperceptions and aids in assimilation of "the new knowledge. I really like the proposal: "It is proposed that obsessions are caused by catastrophic misinterpretations of the significance of
one's thoughts (images,impulses). The obsessions persist as long as these misinterpretations continue and diminish when the misinterpretations are weakened."
That makes sense to me. I had people tell me to just stop thinking about it, but I had to think about it until I was comfortable. The better I understood it, the less stress I had. Obsessional thinking really helped.
One thing I say to explain my obsessional thinking is that my experience with my female N was such a
catastrophic failure, that I was forced to do a failure analysis, are-thinking of the events and my misperceptions. I wondered how I could have made such a blunder in life. It took a lot of thinking to fix myself. I do not want to repeat that lesson.
FINISHED speaking here. It seems like many of us are in this place as described above. I liked his way of thinking "forced to do a failure anaylisis. So practical and a positive way to look at it. So he won't repeat the lesson. That works for me so well. I am a problem solver. Once I know WHAT the problem IS. . .then and only then am I in a place to begin to correct past mistakes! I think this is encouraging!
(REPLY 2)
Am I ever glad to have read this thread! I have been trying for months to "thought stop" and to "get over it. I have been having obsessive thought about the N and the other woman, playing and replaying fantasies
based on my anger and rage at the N.
(REPLY 3)
Thanks to all of you for your posts on obsessional thinking. I am only now becoming enlightened and just in the past 24 hours have received so manyanswers to the questions that were plaguing me. The biggest question I had was about myself: why was I obsessed with this person? I engaged in crazy obsessed behaviors (driving by his house to see if he was there or had another woman over). My thoughts were so preoccupied by him that all other areas of my life suffered. I kept trying to resolve conflicting information.
Over and over, he was all I thought about. I have only now gotten the answers I need so have not yet extricated myself from the situation.
(REPLY 4)
That big hump--it's there for everyone and it is overcome in each persons unique timing. I want to make sure that no one here in the early stages of this process thinks that they need to begin practicing forgiveness....NO NO NO...embrace your anger, vent as you need and use it to empower you to escape
Me speaking now:
I found it validating that getting the information and processing it,comparing behavior and communication dealt to us by P's helps demystify it so we can move on. . .Guess this is where "it gets worse before it gets better" applies.
finished
Source: Obsessive thinking...