Those are also the ones that tend to stick around. But the thoughts most likely to make the rest of us sit up and take notice are odd and unpleasant. Random inspirations of musical genius are all very well, if you’re fortunate enough to have them. I could grasp them with my hands in the midst of nature, in the woods, on walks, in the silence of the night, in the early morning, inspired by moods that translate themselves into words for the poet and into tones for me, that sound, surge, roar, until at last they stand before me as notes. They come unbidden, indirectly, directly. Mozart revelled in musical thoughts he did not command. Not all unasked-for thoughts are unwanted or unpleasant, far from it. Intrusive thoughts are what happens when the mind says ‘yes, and’ rather than ‘yes, but’. The cognitive idea generator does not have to anchor its responses to reality. It’s a similar principle to a corporate brainstorm exercise and how every idea to boost sales or attract customers – however stupid – gets written on its own sticky note and given a nod of approval from an overenthusiastic manager. To consider all possible solutions, it’s important for the mind to generate novel ideas and not immediately censor them. On most other occasions, this generator helps us to solve problems. The theory used by psychologists who study OCD is that our brains have something they call a cognitive ‘idea generator’. Where do these bizarre thoughts come from? The simple, if unsatisfying, answer is that we don’t know for sure. To consider such a thought or urge unwanted, disturbing and unwelcome – and so intrusive − is usually enough to show it is ego-dystonic and so contrary to someone’s normal personality and actions. A disturbing thought of sex with a child does not make someone a pedophile, just as an unwanted urge to hit someone with a hammer does not make someone a thug or a murderer. I’ve no desire to quit this world, but thoughts, desperate thoughts, come into my head.Īs Churchill observed, to have intrusive thoughts is not a sign that someone wants to act on them. I don’t want to go out of the world at all in such moments. Talking once of how he hated to sleep in a bedroom with access to a balcony from which he felt the urge to jump, he told his doctor Charles Moran: Churchill was a well-known depressive but these, and similar thoughts he had of jumping in front of trains (he liked to stand with a pillar between himself and the edge of the platform) do not appear to have been genuinely suicidal impulses. Winston Churchill, a one-time First Lord of the Admiralty, didn’t like to travel by ship because of the ego-dystonic urge he had to jump into the water. We do not want to be the dreadful person who could think such terrible and ridiculous things. We are not dishonest, yet we could snatch the money from that open till so easily. Just to think these thoughts is enough to make us question who we are. They clash with how we see ourselves, and how we want others to see us. Unwanted and intrusive thoughts, the raw materials of obsession, are different. Severe grief, hysteria even, is based on the rational sense of loss. So, usually, are the dark thoughts of depression: endless rumination on external events, regret of decisions and how life has unfolded. But at their heart most concerns of anxiety are rational. Taken to extremes these types of ego-syntonic thoughts can cause mental disorder, usually anxiety. ‘I can’t believe you left this to the last minute.’ ‘It’s only been a month. Indeed, sometimes we resent others who do not have ego-syntonic thoughts as acutely as we do. Ego-syntonic thoughts can make us unhappy, but when they do it is their contents and not the thoughts themselves that are the problem. They are in harmony with our drives and motivations.
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