My mind is my greatest enemy.

[Marcus]

I don't know where to even begin on this one.

My mind has been the biggest obstacle I've had to face my entire life.

I often find myself verbally arguing with my thoughts, most of the time they are always negative, and I don't really have the self esteem to try and prove them wrong.

I've always thought that I have had two different personalities as well, one being totally heartless and mean, and the other being soft and caring, although the former shines through more than the latter.

Sometimes I can just be going along with my day then out of nowhere my thoughts just start attacking me with all kinds of things, usually when it happens I stop what I'm doing and literally put my hands on my head, (I've never figured out why by the way.)

I hear all the time "You are absolutely awful, no one deserves to have you in their life." and "See? With everything that's wrong with you, you will never have a successful life, you'll just be a pathetic sap."

Sadly enough, I agree with them more than I disagree.

However, there are times where I go days without a single bad thought, and I cherish those times greatly.

I just wish I could truly figure out why this happens, although even then I doubt this would stop.

 

[Judge]

I have such intrusive thoughts, though in my case they are primarily related to my OCD. Usually focusing on worst-case scenarios relative to much of anything I'm doing at the time.

About all I can do is to be able to acknowledge such thoughts as being unreal and just move on. Of course the pattern repeats itself and I must again try to shake it off. It never really ends. A "private hell" of sorts.

 

[Streetwise]

fatigue and anxiety! you should start trying mindfulness for some prayer others gardening ,art ,creating something, dance, running, tai chi reading
its about focus on something apart from your inner thoughts .
also vit b for nervousness, probably magnesium- be careful if you take an antacid as they can contain magnesium and a build up can mean distressing visits to the bathroom ! say to yourself iam loved iam unique

I don't know where to even begin on this one.

My mind has been the biggest obstacle I've had to face my entire life.

I often find myself verbally arguing with my thoughts, most of the time they are always negative, and I don't really have the self esteem to try and prove them wrong.

I've always thought that I have had two different personalities as well, one being totally heartless and mean, and the other being soft and caring, although the former shines through more than the latter.

Sometimes I can just be going along with my day then out of nowhere my thoughts just start attacking me with all kinds of things, usually when it happens I stop what I'm doing and literally put my hands on my head, (I've never figured out why by the way.)

I hear all the time "You are absolutely awful, no one deserves to have you in their life." and "See? With everything that's wrong with you, you will never have a successful life, you'll just be a pathetic sap."

Sadly enough, I agree with them more than I disagree.

However, there are times where I go days without a single bad thought, and I cherish those times greatly.

I just wish I could truly figure out why this happens, although even then I doubt this would stop.

 

[Chance]

Marcus... I think most of us do this. I was so worried about it I got help, and my counselor admits he even does this, so... He found nothing wrong with me. It's just part of who we are. Sure it can get extreme, but for the most part you have already said you have days it doesn't happen... Thats a good thing. I was taught just what Judge has said, but its worded just a tad different...

The ugly self condemning thought pops up... Thank it and ask it to leave. Immediately focus on what ever your doing, find something to focus on, or get up right then an do something to switch gears in your head.
It took me a while to get used to it, but it has worked really well. Now, I just say to my self "Nope, I am not going there, I am better than this." I don't allow it to start churning. I just cut it off before it grows.

Yes, there are days I am stressed out, depressed, or upset, and I cant make it work real well and that is called being human. : ) You beat yourself up a lot... I do it, a lot of us do this, but for the most part, we are in charge of our minds, not the other way around.

 

[Alaska]

I don't have any idea whether my method of coping with unwanted intrusive thoughts will work for others here, but I will put it in here in case it might.

I am certain that my aforementioned thoughts came from abusive parents. I internalized their harmful messages and they kept repeating in my head when they were not around.

Once I decided not to let this continue, I put a rubber hair elastic around my wrist. I picked one that was small enough to fit over my hand, but not fit tightly around my wrist. Next, I snapped the rubbery thing every time an unwelcome thought crept in. I was able to almost completely stop the intrusive thoughts within less than six months.

It has been a blessed relief since then. Every once in a while, the thoughts come back. If they are persistent enough, I use the elastic band around my wrist for a bit to get rid of them. It does not take so long to make them go away now, and they don't return much any more.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

I call it my 'left shoulder goofy'

If you remember a goofy cartoon where he sprouted a little devil goofy on one shoulder and an angel one on the other, whispering in his ear..,

Works for anything stupid I do - left shoulder goofy is to blame.

Separates it from yourself, lightens it up a little. I mean, it's goofy!

 

[Lady Penelope]

I don't know where to even begin on this one.

My mind has been the biggest obstacle I've had to face my entire life.

I often find myself verbally arguing with my thoughts, most of the time they are always negative, and I don't really have the self esteem to try and prove them wrong.

I've always thought that I have had two different personalities as well, one being totally heartless and mean, and the other being soft and caring, although the former shines through more than the latter.

Sometimes I can just be going along with my day then out of nowhere my thoughts just start attacking me with all kinds of things, usually when it happens I stop what I'm doing and literally put my hands on my head, (I've never figured out why by the way.)

I hear all the time "You are absolutely awful, no one deserves to have you in their life." and "See? With everything that's wrong with you, you will never have a successful life, you'll just be a pathetic sap."

Sadly enough, I agree with them more than I disagree.

However, there are times where I go days without a single bad thought, and I cherish those times greatly.

I just wish I could truly figure out why this happens, although even then I doubt this would stop.

I get it. My mind races and I just can't switch it off. At night especially. I have been practising this crazy idea called 'mindfulness'.

It is not meditation or even trying to change your thoughts. It is self-awareness. It is being able to notice that you are having thoughts as you are having them and thinking more deeply about them. Sounds crazy, right? I thought so too. Until I tried it. Then tried it again. And now I am able to acknowledge and notice and be aware of my thoughts and how they make me feel and whether I would prefer to have a different feeling or think about why I might be having a particular thought in the first place.

I has helped quieten my mind. It has helped with anxiety and depressing thoughts. I am able to see that if I have a day full of social activities, high emotional days, lack of food, lack of sleep, and the like, it affects my brain and its ability to function, reason, be logical and keep away from manic and destructive thoughts.

I am a continual work in progress, but this seems to help.
I just have to remember to use the damn thing!

 

[Suzanne]

I have had it said to me: you know what, you are your own worst enemy? I am unable to refute that.

I feel blessed though, because when I get that need to: hold my head to quieten it, I cry out to my God and He hears and suddenly I get peace.

Since the thoughts are coming from our head area, it is hardly surprising that would hold our head to try and ease the ache, caused by intense hatred against ourselves.

Even when I am chatting with someone, my mind is taunting me. But not to the extent that it crowds out any other thoughts, so I can push it aside and concentrate - up to a point.

 

[SusanLR]

I've always said my mind is my prison.
I started out with these intrusive persistant thoughts when I was about age 13. It lead to panic disorder and agoraphobia. Then there was the undiagnosed Aspergers that I only found out about two years ago. Knowing about that helped a lot.
The lifetime of racing, negative thoughts have been much hard to deal with. I have now found a psychologist that is a professional in Aspergers and autism. Mindfulness is a new approach for me that I have just started trying and next week she is going to try EMDR with me as I have some PTSD symptoms over the loss of my mother that I don't know how to handle myself. It comes out in my dreams and the everyday emptiness and total feeling of being alone.
I just watched a lengthy video on You Tube by a DC on how thoughts can heal or hurt. Makes a lot of sense if I could just get all this to start working.

I've heard of the band around the wrist before. Glad to hear it can help. Maybe I should try that too.

One thing I've found is my obtrusive thoughts have changed as I've gone through life. They used to be more fear based, now it is the loss based type.
Meditation and finding the right balance of forcing myself to go through the things I don't want to do vs time to do good things for myself have so far helped the most.
Good luck to you Marcus.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

I've always said my mind is my prison.
I started out with these intrusive persistant thoughts when I was about age 13. It lead to panic disorder and agoraphobia. Then there was the undiagnosed Aspergers that I only found out about two years ago. Knowing about that helped a lot.
The lifetime of racing, negative thoughts have been much hard to deal with. I have now found a psychologist that is a professional in Aspergers and autism. Mindfulness is a new approach for me that I have just started trying and next week she is going to try EMDR with me as I have some PTSD symptoms over the loss of my mother that I don't know how to handle myself. It comes out in my dreams and the everyday emptiness and total feeling of being alone.
I just watched a lengthy video on You Tube by a DC on how thoughts can heal or hurt. Makes a lot of sense if I could just get all this to start working.

I've heard of the band around the wrist before. Glad to hear it can help. Maybe I should try that too.

One thing I've found is my obtrusive thoughts have changed as I've gone through life. They used to be more fear based, now it is the loss based type.
Meditation and finding the right balance of forcing myself to go through the things I don't want to do vs time to do good things for myself have so far helped the most.
Good luck to you Marcus.

Your mind is a big jar. Positive thoughts or thoughts of who you want to be are like drops of water, slowly filling the jar.

I would have preferred a smaller jar, personally

 

[Momo]

This sounds kind of what I'm like some days, I too have this whole multiple-personality thing. Though I used to think they were all kind of separate, I've come to realise that they are all me, and it's not necessarily a mask either, like I used to think, it's just the different parts of me that I'm willing to show different people. More of a: "Do I trust you?" Sort of thing than a: "Complete ice queen." Then again, sometimes I can be pretty evil—I would make a great Disney villain.

 

[Gracey]

Your greatest enemy and also your greatest strength (your mind)

Repetitive, intrusive thoughts can become torturous.
I watched a Ted talk on you tube called the three brains given by a Dr Joe Dispenza. It wasn't so much being able to learn the compassion he talks about, more understanding the processes in the brain he spoke of.

There was one clip showing footage of a neuron wiring together. This for me was indisputable.
In my mind, nobody could tell me this ISN'T accurate, this isn't what happens to neural pathways.
The most awesome thing about it was; being the control freak that I am, it highlighted the fact that I am in control of that process, it's my brain, my neural pathways, I build them or recycle them (through habit)

They are mine to control... Mwah hah hah hah ...(sinister, cloak-wielding, power crazy laugh)

Seriously though, I'd just been handed a profound piece of information that I could use to lose a ton of negative, self critical baggage and create some positive beliefs about myself.
It's empowering.
Without realising, I had been in control all along, I just choose to believe the opinion of others over my own, handing them the control.

Rewiring my circuits is the tricky part. I'm led to believe; and would welcome any correction on this, it can take two to four weeks of consistent repetition to form a reliable habit (in thought and deed) so trying a method five times and giving up because it's not working, obviously won't work.
I've also enlisted the help of a therapist, to keep me on the right track through this.

I can still find myself getting in a bit of a mess with too many intrusive thoughts at once, the really damaging, negative, self esteem draining type. I tend to swear a lot at them as soon as I recognise them (not out loud)
It's the feeling behind the swearing and intonation rather than the words used. To date I haven't yet found an alternative as powerful or forceful.

My apologies for the long post, I get enthusiastic on this subject.

 

[Alaska]

I have not tried this yet, so can't say if it works for me. I wanted to share it anyway, since other people here seem to need it as much as I do. I read quite a while back that one can pick a thought that you want to add to your mind and write repetitions of it every day and it will become part of you. This was suggested back during the positive affirmations craze. They also wanted one to sit in front of a mirror and say stuff like that aloud. I do not even like to make contact with my mirror image, so this would not be a good experience yet.

I have gotten so I can make eye contact with others from going to Toastmasters, but that does not mean it has gotten easy to do all the time and I don't really like it yet. I figure that if I keep it up I can at least get comfortable with eye contact, maybe more.

I plan to do the written repetitions starting today. First I have to decide what to write and repeat. Lol.

I am laughing thinking about Al Franken doing the mirror thing on Saturday Night Live. He was so funny.

 

[SusanLR]

I like this thread.
Neuronal pathways can be changed and those repetitive affirmation things have been shown to really work.
But, yes it takes a lot of it for extended lengths of time.
I have used that method in the past for thoughts I got really hung up on and it did work.
I made it something simple and would say it 25 times twice a day. Each time at the end I would write down the negative thought I wanted to alleviate and mark it out with a black pen. This gave a feeling of power in over riding it. Good luck!

 

[Gracey]

At the moment, for me Alaska, I'm working on the practical stuff, getting out of the front door, visiting a dentist, walking over a footbridge and so on.
Success with these does boost my confidence and I go on to apply it to other areas but working on things like self esteem, self care, self affirmation feels quite alien. I could repeat positive affirmations all day long but unless I actually believed in the words themselves, the exercise would be meaningless (for me)

To date, I'm up to believing I hold the power to define myself. Only keeping hold of those core values and beliefs I agree with. In that respect I have dropped a ton of restrictive, vintage baggage and labels. "Myself" appears to be a pretty fluid concept at the moment and it's quite exciting to wonder about my future.
( Like having programmes that have always been running in the background I didn't have a name for, discovering those and believing I have the freedom to choose my future - now that I'm not letting anyone else choose it for me)

Your mentioning sitting in front of a mirror and repeating positive affirmations made me smile, not at your discomfort, but the very idea of trying to make that work I don't yet have the ability to do that either.

 

[Datura]

Mindfulness really is helpful. I do a form of mindfulness meditation called Calm Abiding Meditation. Essentially you just sit, stare a few feet ahead of yourself, and try to think of nothing. If a thought does enter your head (and they inevitably will) you simply label it "thinking" and let it pass. My own personal variation (perhaps as a bit of a visual thinker) is to imagine the thought becoming a butterfly and drifting off.It's surprisingly difficult, but the practice does help to quite my mind. It's kind of like physical exercise where you gain benefits with regular practice, but lose it if you stop. Essentially you are training your brain (forging those nerual pathways) which allow you to silence unwanted thoughts and be more at ease with the world around you.

I can also attest that writing positive affirmations has been helpful to me. I also think there is a point though where ones inner critic is too argumentative for this to work, where any affirmation is met with a violent backlash that only makes matters worse. I've been there, but I urge you to at least try it first. Don't worry about internalizing the words (if you are ready that will happen naturally) just go through the motions.

Cognative Behavioural Therapy is also helpful. It is essentially a process of intercepting thoughts, identify cognative distortions, and replacing those thoughts with more objective and realistic ones. This method is a lot of work and requires keeping journal of sorts (something I have never been able to do) even so, I've found it helpful.

 

[WereBear]

We are never taught how to use our mind. And I have met people who don't use it; they float around like toy ducks in a bathtub, not dealing with intrusive thoughts by not thinking much at all.

For those of us on the spectrum, with so much more input and channels for thoughts to run through, it's even more of an issue. Meditation, coping strategies, and focus have helped me greatly.

 

[Chance]

Your greatest enemy and also your greatest strength (your mind)

Repetitive, intrusive thoughts can become torturous.
I watched a Ted talk on you tube called the three brains given by a Dr Joe Dispenza. It wasn't so much being able to learn the compassion he talks about, more understanding the processes in the brain he spoke of.

There was one clip showing footage of a neuron wiring together. This for me was indisputable.
In my mind, nobody could tell me this ISN'T accurate, this isn't what happens to neural pathways.
The most awesome thing about it was; being the control freak that I am, it highlighted the fact that I am in control of that process, it's my brain, my neural pathways, I build them or recycle them (through habit)

They are mine to control... Mwah hah hah hah ...(sinister, cloak-wielding, power crazy laugh)

Seriously though, I'd just been handed a profound piece of information that I could use to lose a ton of negative, self critical baggage and create some positive beliefs about myself.
It's empowering.
Without realising, I had been in control all along, I just choose to believe the opinion of others over my own, handing them the control.

Rewiring my circuits is the tricky part. I'm led to believe; and would welcome any correction on this, it can take two to four weeks of consistent repetition to form a reliable habit (in thought and deed) so trying a method five times and giving up because it's not working, obviously won't work.
I've also enlisted the help of a therapist, to keep me on the right track through this.

I can still find myself getting in a bit of a mess with too many intrusive thoughts at once, the really damaging, negative, self esteem draining type. I tend to swear a lot at them as soon as I recognise them (not out loud)
It's the feeling behind the swearing and intonation rather than the words used. To date I haven't yet found an alternative as powerful or forceful.

My apologies for the long post, I get enthusiastic on this subject.

I love Ted talks and Ted x... most of it is really good. Mel Robbins, Joe Dispenza, Anthony Robbins and more. Its really educational and if nothing else we are not putting trash in our heads from the junk on TV... This stuff is my TV : )

I get excited too... I never say much in real life so I get all wordy when I am typing.
Its why we are here... to hash through. learn and experience what others are thinking : )
I think

 

[Alaska]

At the moment, for me Alaska, I'm working on the practical stuff, getting out of the front door, visiting a dentist, walking over a footbridge and so on.
Success with these does boost my confidence and I go on to apply it to other areas but working on things like self esteem, self care, self affirmation feels quite alien. I could repeat positive affirmations all day long but unless I actually believed in the words themselves, the exercise would be meaningless (for me)

To date, I'm up to believing I hold the power to define myself. Only keeping hold of those core values and beliefs I agree with. In that respect I have dropped a ton of restrictive, vintage baggage and labels. "Myself" appears to be a pretty fluid concept at the moment and it's quite exciting to wonder about my future.
( Like having programmes that have always been running in the background I didn't have a name for, discovering those and believing I have the freedom to choose my future - now that I'm not letting anyone else choose it for me)

Your mentioning sitting in front of a mirror and repeating positive affirmations made me smile, not at your discomfort, but the very idea of trying to make that work I don't yet have the ability to do that either.

Gracey, I bolded the most relevant words you entered there. You do not have to start out believing what you write down or say for affirmations. You have to start somewhere making your new neural pathways. After you do it a while you teach yourself to believe. You don't have to pick an affirmation that is that far from your current reality, either.

I am going to use something like, "I am getting better". It is kind of vague, but I think that is what I need to start with. Not specifying HOW I am getting better makes it easier for me to achieve it. Once I feel good about that, I will pick something more specific. Perhaps something similar will work for you.