Johnny Dangerous wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:03 am
Ruhan wrote: ↑Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:52 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: ↑Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:33 pm
Ignoring intrusive thoughts is not the same as simply accepting them and letting them be. Ignoring them tends to mean trying not to look directly at them, which cab subtly turn into avoidance, which of course tends to increase their impact.
https://drmartinseif.com/intrusive-thoughts/
Posting this again because this gentleman as written a very good book on intrusive thoughts, and some of the advice on the website covers the very subjects we are talking about here.
It seems to me that it is a simple use of different words to indicate the same thing.
Or maybe what works for me doesn't work in less mild cases.
By
"ignoring intrusive thoughts" I meant the simple act of letting the moment of anxiety cool off by letting time pass. In my experience this weakens the intrusive thinking and also helps to accept the possible future repetition. Train to see that as nothing happened last time (despite not having done what he told you) so nothing will happen the next time either.
This certainly means imposing oneself to live the chaotic sea of anxiety of the moment without trying to intervene following the impulse to find a solution with the rites (mild or serious) that have been structured over time. It is not simple and immediate, of course. And I do not exclude that this applies only in certain cases and not others (such as tics etc)
I didn't mean - instead - to ignore something like
"try to drive them out, actively avoid them"; this is part of that series of actions that do nothing but expand its permanence, given that as long as you try to counter it, you keep thinking about it and continue to nurture its presence.
For the rest I am not a doctor so what is needed in my case, maybe not needed in different cases or quantitatively stronger cases.
No offense intended here, but your language around this stuff is somewhat imprecise, and could be interpreted all sorts of ways.
Typically people either use terms from Western Psychology, Buddhism or both when talking about this kind of thing. You are pretty much using your own vocabulary, which (I think) is probably why people are misunderstanding you.
No offense, don't worry, I can understand, but I must also say that I think there is a general misunderstanding on your part here (probably also favored by my having spoken in general) about my intentions.
I do not have a western psychological background and it also seemed out of place to bring here any language linked to this or that Buddhist tradition. I say it seemed out of place, but I learn now that this is common practice in this section. I thought that the debate here was the least "religious" possible and I adapted as I could. My mistake.
Secondly, my background is philosophical and historical; these issues do not concern the sphere of what I usually deal with, so I do not - frankly - have the right tools to tackle a debate on the OCD.
Thirdly (and this is the main point)
I have never wanted to make any scientific, technical or universally valid contribution, but only bring a personal testimony and not as an expert on the subject. You say I would have been misunderstood because of my non-technical language; it seems to me that I was misunderstood - rather - due to the fact that I did not immediately clarify that mine were simple personal testimonies(of the same mood as those of tkp67):
this is how it works for me. For the others I don't know. I do not claim to provide any technically effective method.
In order to be misunderstood for my non-technical language I would have had to claim to give a technical opinion; claim never had, but perhaps I have not disclosed this properly and I apologize.
Fourth, it could also be that many terms are unclear because English is not my language and I really have no idea what terms you usually use to refer to Buddhist concepts such as "grasping"(
upadana) or "not thinking"(the Dogen's
"hishiryo") or "sense of identity."(
Atman, as defined by Candrakīrti, as sense of intrinsic identity and subsistence - or in greek "hypostasis"; or in philosophycal ontology: diachronic and synchronic identity) as well as the expression
"cool off "(weakening/burning of the karmic seeds -
Bija - accumulated in
Alaya consciousness; if you continue giving substance to that seed, you will produce others like it etc.) which in my language makes perfect sense(it's a way of saying: like when a boiling pot is left to cool), but I can't render it in English. As well as the
"nourishing his presence" which I could render with
"load with further reality", but it is a translation; I don't know what terms you English speakers consider technical. In my language is used the term "rimuginio"( "rumination"?). Below I will try to give some coordinates of what (certainly incompletely) I know about rumination from a technical point of view (as a simple reader).
As Borkovec (1990) argues, rumination takes shape as a continuous mental repetition, sometimes associated with obsessive states, of the fear of irreversible damage without effective coping or resolution plans.
Rumination, according to Mathews (1990), is made possible by the presence in long-term memory of negative and threatening information, by selective attention (attentional bias) towards threatening perceptions and emotions and by states of hypervigilance.
Alway Mathews (1990) argues that this is made possible by the presence in long-term memory of negative, threatening information, but what triggers the rumination is the presence of selective attention (produced by attentional biases) towards perceptions, threatening emotions similar to those stored by memory, as well as by states of hypervigilance. Also Mathews seems to have shown together with Mc Leod (1988) in a study on anxious subjects, that hypervigilance is antecedent and that information processing biases act as powerful maintenance factors, in the sense that they select and isolate potential threats in the environment and continually put them under the attention of the subject already hypervigilable in itself.
As Sassaroli and Ruggiero (2003) have illustrated, there are various types of rumination. When I talk about not focusing attention on intrusive thinking and not trying to find solutions or trying to reach a state of well-being again, I am referring in part to
"rumination as a way of solving problems". It is defined by Sassaroli and Ruggiero (2003) as the illusion that rumination is a type of thought that produces solutions. In reality, no real solution is opposed to the feared threat and therefore the threat (supposed) remains and with it the rumination that does nothing but fix the attention even more on the threat itself (through the above biases).
Now: this is specially true for the GAD (i think), but in a sense it is also true for the OCD; the difference - as long as I'm not mistaken - is that the obsessive suffers the intrusion of a thought suddenly during even normal activities and implements compulsions to reduce the state of anxiety caused by those intrusive thoughts. While the GAD provides (as long as I'm not wrong) a state of semi-constant rumination following a thought that was first small and then bigger and bigger(but maybe it also applies to OCD? I do not know).
Now, I don't know how it works for others, but I have experience with obsessions of contamination and obsessions of damage. The answer to these is varied: rumination when they appear or - shorter way - if possible, the implementation of compulsive rituals (washing hands for example, or trying to verify that everything is well in a more or less ritualized way) .
What I have verified (but I do not know if it is true for others since I am not an expert and what little I know, I know because I am self-taught what little is enough) is that the avoiding of rumination as well as the implementation of the rites, it is true that in the short term it does not at all placate the state of anxiety derived from intrusive thoughts, but in the long term it prevents them from growing in power or even allows them to decrease their strength when they arise again.
I link this to karmic seeds(Bija) and the fact that the more they are replanted (through compulsive rituals and rumination) the more similar seeds will continue to perpetuate. The seeds in this case are - basically - those negative information stored in memory. While the attentional bias and the state of hypervigilance could be produced (in a comparison I don't know how risky) by the Manas consciousness, since the state of hypervigilance, as well as the attentional biases, would be meaningless without considering oneself as a different self from the objective environment. Manas runs after Alaya by selecting in the flow of dharmas those dharmas similar to the seeds deposited in Alaya (so I explain attentional bias to myself) and by particularizing general hyper-vigilance.
For this reason Buddhism has helped me to better discern the issue (FOR ME) and to fight against intolerance towards uncertainty (impermanence).
I do not doubt that this can only make sense in my specific case.
I know well that it is a banal truth that the more you give rise to rites etc the more it enhances the subsequent attention and the power of obsessions, but Buddhism has helped me to give a practical and concrete meaning, as well as an approach, to this truth yes trivial, but which I did not know (many years ago) how to implement.
p.s. The examples I have given as rituals are general; do not exhaust my experience in this regard.
Having said all this and since it seems impossible for me to communicate credibly (due to my limitations as a non-native speaker), I leave you to your debate hoping not to have broken it.