What was your most intrusive thought? - eviltoast

Mine was having the sudden urge to hurl a random toddler who was teetering over the edge of a waterfall.

  • Shampiss@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    I’m sorry that you had a bad experience with your psychologist.

    If I can point out one thing that might help you is that these thoughts largely come from an evolutionary trait called Negative Bias

    Negative Bias is the disproportionate focus on bad events and/or memories compared to good events.

    It applies to a large range of memories and our ability to perceive danger. Evolutionary it makes sense because our embarrassing memories makes us afraid or unwilling to behave in a way that the social group doesn’t like.

    You can imagine when humans lived in societies in small groups of 30 people, that disrespecting someone could get you kicked out of the group and potentially starve to death in the wild. So there is a very strong evolutionary pressure that made your brain evolve to avoid repeating bad scenarios

    Your constant embarrassing, sad, or traumatic memories are your brain reminding you over and over not to be in that situation again.

    Unfortunately your brain didn’t evolve to be happy. It evolved to survive.

    All I wanted to explain is that these memories are not your fault. Don’t feel like you’re any different because you have bad memories constantly. Accept that your brain will do what it is programmed to do and learn how to work around those tendencies.

    And I could recommend trying another psychologist. I’m also available to chat if you’d like. Cheers 🙂