"The thoughts that come"

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not sure how to phrase this question, but I’d like to request that I don’t have a dozen people who don’t know me, suddenly deciding I’m in dire need of medical assistance - or worse, mind-altering drugs.

I’d like to know about the prevalence of what I call 'the thoughts that come". So when I originally burned out on Christianity, I was severely depressed for weeks, and assorted suicidal thoughts popped into my head…and were promptly squashed and banished and otherwise rejected. But they still came. I didn’t deliberately conjure them. And then, when I was no longer depressed, the thoughts stopped coming.

Or maybe today, the kids make me mad - one of them thoughtlessly or cruelly hurts a sibling, and I get angry, and a thought pops into my head of some very harsh and obviously inappropriate punishment…which I squash and otherwise reject, and instead mete out something fair and evenhanded. I do it every time. I control my actions. But the thoughts still come.

Where do the thoughts come from? Heck if I know. Novels I’ve read, recent horror stories in the news - ones about mothers who kill their children are the worst for me because it can take me days to stop having these things pop into my head - movies…I don’t know, if it’s not those sources.

In my mind, this falls within the realm of normal. For it to slip beyond normal into abnormal, you’d have to be troubled by these at all times, or be unable to exercise self-control rather than being controlled by the thoughts, or anger.

However, in this thread about avoiding rape, when one poster wondered why he felt guilty about rape even though he has never and will never commit such an act, and I tried to suggest that perhaps, such thoughts might pop into a man’s mind (and be promptly squashed and never acted on)…well, I was told such things don’t happen and that I’m a bigot to even suggest it. And that if I ever have thoughts of violence, any at all, regardless of how I handle them and perceive them, I need to consult a doctor immediately…well, is this true? Is it true that your average person does not have unsought and even undesirable thoughts pop into their head? Ever, regardless of provocation? Do thoughts equal action? And if they do, how do other people control their thoughts so they never think anything they don’t want to think?

At what point do such thoughts actually require medical/societal intervention? My gut tells me, as an example, ‘when a depressed person accepts those thoughts, and starts actively planning how they will commit suicide’, or when thought threatens actual action. But, maybe I’ve got this wrong - maybe the person who has the thoughts isn’t qualified to determine when their thoughts are safe, and when they’re no longer safe.

What do some of you think?

2

Psychologists are only one option.

There are also mental health councilors, whose help can be obtained through your local Health Department or Mental Health Center.

Perhaps you should conside that as an option.

3

Were you looking for a consensus of belief from the Teeming Millions? Or did you want an answer based in clinical psychology? If you were looking for the latter, we could try to stand over the thread with a baseball bat, keeping the answer limited to responses from trained professionals or backed by citations to peer-reviewed journals.

That seems like a lot of work, however, so I think I’ll shift this over to IMHO.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

4

I posted a while back (can’t remember the thread) expressing my surprise at the apparent assertion that there are good people who think good things and bad people who think bad things. I regularly have dark thoughts that I must always quash; they are quite easy to identify and deal with, but I can’t simply stop thinking them; I thought this was normal.

5

Sorry, I knew it wasn’t Cafe material, or (god forbid) Pit material, so thank you for moving it.

6

Now that I am not constrained by a lack of a psych degree:

For what it’s worth, I see a distinction between the rape scenario and the punishment scenario.

For me, my entire attitude toward sex involves sharing pleasure and getting a certain amount of personal affirmation from the fact that my sex partner enjoys my company. Thus, seeing a beautiful woman, I am liable to have a fleeting thought of how it would be nice to make love to her. Having experienced the thought, I am not going to do anything to pursue that activity: I am committed to Deb; chasing other women is, as you put it, “a thought that comes.”
On the other hand, there is no shared pleasure in rape–and there would certainly be no afirmation of my ability to be loved in such an act, so I actually never get a stray impulse or fleeting fantasy to rape a woman.

In the context of punishing kids, it is very frustrating to have to explain to my son for the six thousandth time that he has no right to hit his sister when he gets mad and that his best option is not to argue with me trying to persuade me that he needed to hit her because she bugged him. At such a time, the impulse to hurl him head-first into a four-foot snowdrift may be quite strong. But the motivation is my frustration that he repeats the same bad actions and that he wants to argue that he is right to do so, combined with a desire to see him “cool off.” In that case, I can see where the impulse arises. As long as I am not going to actually hurl him into the snow (or break his head or otherwise damage him), the thoughts or impulses are simply reactions of my mind to a certain level of stress.

7

I wonder, then, about thoughts that come to me, after I have seen yet another horror story on the news about some parent or caretaker who has harmed their children…could the answer be as simple as ‘Don’t read articles like that’ and ‘don’t watch the news, because you might see articles like that’? I haven’t emulated them. I don’t see how I possibly could. Yet - I don’t know, maybe as I examine the scenario to wonder…how could they? How did they justify it to themselves? How could they live with themselves afterward? I try to put myself mentally into their shoes to see how they fit…and recoil in horror. But the thoughts do come for a few days after any such article comes out. And then they fade. And it is such a relief to me when they do. Could it be the stress, as you say, of learning about such a horrifying act? (And would ‘copycat’ crimes then be instances of people who not only think about it, but proceed to the action themselves?)

I suppose it’s fairly simple to avoid the news, but even here on the SD, there will be extensive threads about this guy who beat and molested a toddler, and went to jail for it, or that woman who did something equally horrid, and…that’s life. I can avoid the threads, but to avoid reading the titles I’d have to avoid the SD too. I mean, there comes a point when it seems like the price of ‘mind control’ is living in Pollyannaland.

I’ve never heard the suggestion, as Mangetout recounts, that ‘good people think good things, and bad people think bad things’. I have just always assumed that people don’t talk about their ‘bad thoughts’ because if they did, they’d get punished for things they hadn’t even done. It does seem to hearken back to the Christian concept of the thought being equal to the sin: if you even lust after your neighbor’s wife (for example), you break the commandment. Never mind if you never touch her, or ever would. But Bosda does appear to hold to this approach.

8

I too am often set off by news stories, particularly ones in which a mother injures a child. It usually starts with “How could someone DO that?” and leads to, “Could I be capable of that?” Then my extremely active and detailed imagination kicks in and I horrify the crap out of myself and feel terribly guilty afterward. Because, after all, if I can conceive it I can achieve it, right? Well, no - not right. I mean, I suppose I COULD be capable of such horrible things, but I just don’t do them, because that’s not how I am. A frightening impulse is just an impulse, and I’m afraid I have no idea where such thoughts come from, but not acting on them means you’re basically OK.

On the suicide thing - well, I’d say it’s perfectly normal to think of your own death. It is a certainty, after all. And when we’re overcome by what’s going on in our lives, I’d also venture to say that it’s pretty normal to think, “You know, this would all be over if I just offed myself.” I’d further venture that MOST of us get about that far and then think, “Naaah. There’s a better solution.”

It’s when these random thoughts start preying on you that it’s time to look for help - because you KNOW they’re not the right answers. If they’re the only answers you can think of, THEN you’re in trouble.

9

Just so we’re clear, many mothers who murder their newborns suffer from post-partum psychosis. Some people with these thoughts have schizophrenia. These people are mentally ill, and these scenarios are a whole 'nother subject than that of random disturbing thoughts in an otherwise mentally healthy person.
One symptom of deep depression is an intrusion of these “bad thoughts”… I’ve experienced them. They were not thoughts of me committing acts of violence, but rather fleeting thoughts of random terror and violence, such as my apartment building crashing down on me and my family, a car careening out of control into mine, etc. They’re quite disturbing, and I can imagine they would cause someone great concern if they didn’t understand the pathology of the thoughts.

10

I think that’s what I was trying to get at in the thread on rape, although since I was in day 3 of what turned out to be Influenza type A, I clearly wasn’t making the point very well. People do think of doing things that they never, ever would proceed to do. Sometimes it’s an intrusive thought, sometimes it’s a line of thought they didn’t mean to follow, but it doesn’t make them bad people. And yet they might still guilty about it.

The only other thing I could think of, and should have mentioned then and didn’t, was that I had run across this concept of male ‘rape guilt’ in the book The World According to Garp. Near the beginning of the book, Garp witnesses a young girl running naked away from a public restroom (I think in a park), clearly having been violently raped, and she is far too incoherent and maybe too young to talk about it, but she keeps putting a finger across her upper lip. Then a freshly-shaven man comes out of the restroom, looking nonchalant, and Garp runs in and smells fresh shaving cream. He goes and helps capture the man. I think. It’s been a number of years since I read the book. Anyway, the girl goes on to cut out her own tongue, and begins a cult of sorts of women who do this…and Garp…feels guilty just by being male. It’s not the first time I’d run across the concept. I do have to wonder if it’s possible that anyone has their thoughts so strictly controlled that they never even once run a scenario across their mind, ‘what if that were me…?’ I’m guessing some must, based on replies. I’d love to know what methods they use.

11

I have strange thoughts like this pop into my head all the time. Sometimes *just in my head * I’ll brutally kill an annoying coworker or force an asshole driver off the road into flames. Or sometimes I’ll be quite convinced someone dear too me is having a heart attack right now. **trublmakr ** is right, those thoughts are frightening. I wish I could be rid of them.
Sometimes, I have sexual thoughts about having sex (for example) with the man at the bus stop. I can’t believe I’m capable of ape, but I’m not imagining a seduction scene (like I was really planning on trying to get someone to have sex with me) it’s a hey-you-lets-do-it-on-the-bus-stop-bench-right-now. I suppose such fleeting thoughts might be me imagining raping someone. Now I’ll probably put more effort into squashing those thoughts.

12

I wasn’t judging you, and I don’t put your post in a “sinning” context.

You were obviously upset, & I made a suggestion. I didn’t mean to bother you, I merely offered a less formal, lower stress approach.

Health care is just that…health care. It isn’t a moral issue. It isn’t anything nasty or shameful. And I don’t separate mental or physical care.

I made no mention of a moral context–neither did your OP.

13

To me it seems like an upper-brain lower-brain struggle, the lower-brain being the one that sends out what we’d percieve as “impulses” and the upper one would send out more refined, rational thoughts.

The upper one, being the newer of the two, would be take longer to kick in even if for a few seconds.

I get these thoughts once in awhile but never to the point where I’d feel forced to act on them. I think that maybe if you let the thought happen without trying to deny it, maybe you would recognize that you have more control over it than you think.

Or maybe you’ll bludgeon someone with a shovel.

Let us know what happens. :smiley:

14

I think your post raises some interestining points. But let me put another wrinkle in the whole rape/dark fantasy scenerio. From the other side.

I’m a masochist. I’m also a sane person. Meaning I would never put myself in the hands of someone who would really harm me. But believe me, I have some pretty dark fantasies. The question is, does it make it better or worse if I cast myself as the victim? Does that make it ok if i’m not the one doing the torturing? Even if I wish someone would :)?

Just something to think about when thinking about evil thoughts.

I really think it’s the the understanding between fantasy and reality where real evil creeps in.

15

FWIW, I understood what you were trying to say in the rape thread and I should have backed you up in that thread; not that I’m sure I would have been able to clarify what you were trying to say, but I could have tried. This apology comes too late, but I’m sorry for not backing you up in that thread.

On to the OP: I don’t know if everybody has these thoughts, but I do. I’m not sure how “normal” it is, but I figure I’m not all that special so if it happens to me it probably happens to most people. The kids would do something wrong and I’d think of a horrible, over the top punishment–but not act on it. Or my husband will do say something and I’ll think about thumping him.

I suffer from depression. One of the ways it manifests is in anger/frustration way out of proprotion to actual events. When I have a bad depressive episode, I tend to lose my perspective on how bad a situation is, put the worst possible spin on it, and then react out of proportion to the event. But even at my most depressed I don’t react in any of the truly horrible ways I have considered. I figure that deep inside, I’m capable of some behaviors and incapable of others. I may be able to think about dismembering my husband and feeding him to the dogs, but I would never be able to act on it–I’m just not that person.

I believe that I’m able to determine when my thoughts are safe; I guess I agree with you.

On the other hand, my father is the oldest of six kids; 4 boys, 2 girls. He has a brother and a sister who are schizophrenic. My uncle has been in various institutions and half-way houses for the last 30~ years. My aunt has been out on her own dealing with it (poorly) since diagnosed 10~ years ago. My uncle absolutely was unable to determine for himself when his thoughts were safe (as evidenced by his attempted suicide via electric fence). IMO, my aunt is also unable to make these determinations for herself and I believe she is a threat to herself and others, but since she doesn’t agree there isn’t much to be done about it.

IME, some people who have serious mental health problems often aren’t able to determine when their thoughts are safe; I guess I don’t agree with you.

I believe both things–that an individual can determine whether his/her own thoughts are safe and that some individuals are incapable of making such an assessment. Not very helpful, I know, but you asked for opinions, not solutions. :slight_smile:

16

I, too, have experienced these types of thoughts that seem to pop into my head at random with no warning. They are disturbing and all I can do is try to squash them and reassure myself that there’s no way I could ever ACT on them. FWIW, I also have a history of depression–although I’ve been okay for many years now–and that seems to be a common thread in the responses here.

How about this: although I think Freud is 99% BS, you could look at it as a conflict between your id and superego–your primal id wants to do something your highly evolved superego finds apalling. Whether you agree with Freud’s ideas or not, at least you can see that this sort of conflict has been recognized as a universal human experience having going on forever in some context, and as long as you don’t carry through on your thoughts, you’re probably okay.

17

What about the possibility of it being OCD?

18

I would be surprised if anyone doesn’t have dark thoughts ocasionally. In fact I would susspect mental illness of someone who doesn’t or clames never to have such thoughts. As long as you clearly differentiate between thoughts and reality you are not in danger.

I allways had my share of dark thoughts, so never recognised them as in any way strange. It wasn’t the suicidal thoughts slipping into reality that made me seek help. It was learning about what depression is as a disease how someone can try and beat it.

I needed and got psychiatric and chemical help, they have both helped my life significantly. I notice that all dark thoughts not just the suicidal ones are reduced now that I am undergoing treatment. If your dark thoughts make you unhappy or depressed then it may be worth doing something to try and get rid of them.

19

Hmm. I’ve never thought of that possibility. I actually do have some OCD-ish traits, just never severe enough to get treatment. And since having kids, my obsessive need to clean has been greatly diminished. I’m lucky if I get all the dirty dishes into the sick at night, much less actually washing them :smiley:

But you raise an interesting point. It looks like the DSM says the thoughts have to “cause marked distress, are time consuming (take more than 1 hour a day), or significantly interfere with the person’s normal routine, occupational (or academic) functioning, or usual social activities or relationships” in order to qualify as OCD. I guess if your thoughts become that distracting, you should probably seek professional help.

20

Thank you for the clarification. In the other thread, FinnAgain (who was irritable with me) made the same suggestion, more sternly, on the basis that any such thought is apparently abnormal and is indication of a serious problem. Yet we see from this thread that thoughts are not themselves the problem, nor particularly unusual.

I suggest that if I went to my doctor and told her I have occasional thoughts of harming my children, even if I have never acted on them and intend never to do so…she would be obliged to tell the CPS, and shortly if I did not have my children removed from my home, CPS would have its fingers so deeply tangled in my life I would never get them out. All because I admitted to having thoughts. Thus, the thoughts themselves become a crime punishable without trial. God forbid.

Yet, a very small number of people do act on their thoughts. And clearly, some people cannot be trusted to differentiate between ‘just thoughts’ and 'thoughts I will act. So I guess the next question is - how do we know which people really need intervention? And how to get it for them?