Sharing – When the Alarm Won’t Stop Ringing

The subtitle of the article says it all about the subject matter:

Intrusive thoughts, irrational fears, and a brain that doesn’t always know best

https://becomingreal.substack.com/p/when-the-alarm-wont-stop-ringing

Intrusive thoughts are more common than many of us think. I’ve had them; I still have them. Often they’re just weird; other times they are downright scary.

Yes, my intrusive thoughts are often about death. Not about harming myself. They tend to be more like driving on the freeway and wondering what it would look like if I ran off the road or got slammed into and died. Then, they meander from there: what would my funeral be like, what would people say about me? How long before my job was posted? You get the idea.

All of this, of course, is because my brain is not very good at ignoring intrusive thoughts, but it is very good at ruminating.

It’s a gift. Or a trauma reaction. I leave it to you to decide. The point, however, is that having intrusive thoughts, anxious thoughts, is something we can talk about, even make jokes about. It happens. We can’t always control what messages our brains want to send us about what we should be afraid of. We control which ones we react to. We control knowing the difference between a realistic fear and an intrusive one.

Mostly, I feel like if we all admitted to having them, maybe it wouldn’t be something to freak out about when someone else has one.