diagnosed with intrusive thoughts and anxiety.

[daydreamer1]

After extensive mental assessments I've finally been diagnosed, but with something I've never even heard of... Intrusive thoughts, forgive me for being niave but I really don't know what to make of this, obviously I am experiencing the intrusive thoughts but have strong feelings of denial that they could possibly come from another source except myself and therefore have been treating these thoughts as my own, even though they are unusual and disturbing. I would just like to know if this is a common effect of anxiety or vise versa, I would say the anxiety came on first but were the intrusive thoughts a result?
X

[jessed03]

This is actually pretty common. People suffer various extents though, some people get slight hints of abnormal thinking, whilst others are plagued by it. They can be about anything; violent, sexual, blasphemous. Everybody has these thoughts. Everybody has looked over a cliff and wondered what it would be like to jump off, and if they would, or looked over the platform at a fast moving train, and thought about what it would be like to jump, the only difference is it lasts for a split second, and their mind is so relaxed that they dismiss the thought in the blink of an eye and it is never problematic, nor prominent.. It is the anxiety that focuses on these thoughts, and keeps them at the forefront of your mind. This is why when the anxiety, and the anxiety towards them goes, the intrusive thoughts do too. They are there simply to alarm you, or scare you, or make you uncomfortable, the same as anxiety is. I suffered from these badly for around a year. As I worked on getting anxiety under control, I found the thoughts reduced significantly.

Are you taking any therapy for it? CBT was very helpful for me in dealing with them. Meditation was too, as it taught me to sort of ignore a lot of my mind, and let it exist in the bckground. It's good you aren't seeking reassurance or developing compulsions. Hopefully it's a sign that you'll get them under control pretty quickly. Sometimes they come simply as the result of a tired mind and time will help the healing.

There is a forum called stuckinadoorway. You can google it, it's an OCD forum, but there are so many posts from people who suffer all manner of intrusive thoughts. I found it a pretty helpful site when they were at their peak in my life.

[daydreamer1]

Thank you so much for your response. I'm not currently having therapy but CBT is an option I'm looking at with the early intervention team. My biggest problem is that I'm falling into a fake reality, the thoughts I had are very violent and often I vividly imagine my boyfriend with other women, so vividly it becomes my reality, its very hard to live with atm but all I keep thinking is at least the violent ones are not actually affecting my behaviour to such a degree. I'll have a look at that website, thank you so much your reply is truly appreciated. X