There are better goals for your Quality of Life. Far better, productive, and effective goals.
Consider:
I want to be a strong and unbothered person.
I want to be self-assured enough to make it through the day.
I want to be the Chad and not the Wojak.
I want to overcome being affected by these "bad thoughts".....
Words a therapist might use would include "Distress tolerance" (which I have a bad taste in my mouth over.)
It is kinda a brain-fuck, but just imagine that the goal is to minimize this whole thing in your life to the point where you absentmindedly forget it ever happened. Not actively repress, mind you- but just for it to shrink, like a toddler who's never given attention for tantrums, and gradually outgrows having them.
3 Mental strategies:
- Double-down to the point of absurdity and it becomes not emotionally charged. This doesn't have to involve "desensitizing yourself to bad thinking."
For example: Intrusive thought about molesting somebody on the bus. In response I could think, I'll molest this person on the bus, then rip off all my clothes, they'll call the cops, put me into an asylums from the 1800s, I'll spend the next 40 years as a ward of the state, they'll give my pets away to my coworker who won't feed them the correct diet and my cat (who's lost 5lbs thank you very much) will become fat again and what a shame will that be, God I need to buy more cat litter.
To me this is almost like a free association exercise. You want to get as far away as fast as possible. I made it to "buy cat litter."
The response to a thought of molesting somebody on the bus was "Remember to buy cat litter." I didn't have to "make myself think about the bad stuff a whole bunch", as they often say you have to do, for some reason. Being sentenced to life in an asylum from the 1800s is just fantastical enough that it doesn't really worry me, but if that would worry you, consider being imprisoned in the moon, dropped into a volcano, or whatever works.
You can also think of it like a shitty bit in a comedy show. The hosts and people involved have to do that "Yes, and?" thing to keep the show going, but obviously the bit sucks and so they have to pivot away.
For some reason, a lot of counselors will try to get you to draft up some highly formal commitment statement. Like a mantra. It might look something like "I am a strong person and I am motivated by my love for my family to stay sober and yadda yadda." You're supposed to repeat it in whatever time of need. In daily life I'm just not so formal, and such formal commitments seem baseless. "Pretty" mantras just don't seem to work.
A big sigh seems to work a lot better. Just a signal of disinterest. You want to tell your brain it's a disinteresting, boring, not-worth-having thought. Nothing worth giving attention to. This may not actually be a big sigh, especially when it's totally mental. But just imagine yourself rolling your eyes like a bored teen girl.
"That's so, whatever...." That sort of response. Yes, even when you're wondering if you're a pedophile.
Isn't this the bajillionith time? Get new material! I've hashed this out.... I'm so bored of that.... This is how I respond immediately to impulsive thoughts. It really helps prevent panic and anxiety, because boredom and anxiety don't tend to mix. Anxiety is interesting. You might not think that, but your brain feels that way.
Anxiety is basically just "negative excitement." If you convince yourself that a thought is boring, it probably won't be scary or unsettling. A boring movie isn't scary. If your friend tells you over and over that a TV show is boring, you will probably give up on talking to them about it. Your brain will act the same with you.
- Extremely interesting things to think about.
I have found it very beneficial to obsess about things. Obsess about anything you want. Music has obviously been powerful for me, and I think I would probably go insane if I didn't listen to music regularly. I have a song in my head most of the time. I am very aware that I obsess constantly, and so to me it's like a superpower. The goal isn't to stop obsessing. The goal is to be the master of my domain. It may help to literally visualize yourself as various fictional or historical characters, in order to have a better relationship with your own thought process. Literally think of your brain as Sherlocking it up in there. I'm not some retard. If you've read this far, you probably aren't either. Literally imagining myself as having the thought process of some aspirational person, is a very powerful thing. Think about Wide Putin. Think about the sigma males. Think about Christ, or Paul, or John, or Hulk Hogan. Whoever clicks for you. Put all your beliefs about yourself aside and try to think as you imagine your role model would think, about your situation and position in life. This is similar to what's recommended in various Stoic works, esp. Meditations. It helped me "grow up" a lot in my teens. I recommend
Book 4, although it's all old enough that it is pretty dense reading nowadays.
