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For Those Who Suffer From Thought Loops


Guest ashipinharbor

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Guest ashipinharbor

Where it's like the intrusive thoughts won't stop, and just get worse, and worse. And "letting go" even the tiniest bit feels like giving to the "good feeling".

How did you go about approaching treatment?

Edited by ashipinharbor
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Thought looping adds a challenging dimension that I personally do not think is sufficiently understood - in fact I KNOW so from personal experience. 

I am not too well myself today, so not looking to take any PMS on this, but welcome the opportunity foe a little awareness training on thought loops. 

You won't find much about it out there - you'll find more about "ear worms". An ear worm is a sound - often a song - that insists on going round and round in the sufferers head, won't stop, won't go away, drives the sufferer bonkers. 

Get the idea - fancy struggling with that? 

I have had episodes of recurrent OCD thought loops since I was 20, and I am now 66. Few people, especially my therapists, have really understood the concept. Here is an example. 

I was I think 27 and about to drive back to London from Scotland. I caught sight of the title of a book - my OCD took a memory of that book (kind of like a screenprint I ) and my mental chatter constantly churned over the title of that book - which my OCD had also "mind-read" to be distressing - all the drive back, it never left me it constantly churned. 

Of course, I concentrated on driving, and later the loop stopped. 

I now know (but only from last week)  that these loops can be of 3 degrees of severity continuous like mine being the worst. 

For me, a loop has only stopped when it wants to. But distraction can disrupt it, and encourages it to ease off. 

A thought loop of the worst (constantly repeating) kind is much more challenging than the normal repetitive thinking of obsession then compulsion. 

My sister experienced thought looping of the constant kind recently for the first time. She said to me "I only now understand what you go through - how on earth can you cope with it?".  

She told me she felt so bad she wanted to smash her head against the wall to try y and stop it. 

So please bear in mind folks looping is not a compulsion you can just switch off or ease down. And even the most experienced and eminent private healthcare specialists can understand little about it. 

Edited by taurean
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20 minutes ago, taurean said:

So please bear in mind folks looping is not a compulsion you can just switch off or ease down. And even the most experienced and eminent private healthcare specialists can understand little about it. 

I'm sorry but I can't let that go unchallenged. :no:

'Thought looping' doesn't exist as an entity, which is probably why your eminent health care specialists won't get drawn into long discussions with you about it. What you're describing is just a form of rumination, perhaps with less conscious awareness of engaging with the thought. But you're still engaging, still reacting emotionally to its presence - which is why it sticks around. 

An ear worm will quickly drive you bonkers IF you react emotionally to it, try to wish it away etc. Ignore it, or hum along happily to it and it soon stops, same as ruminative thoughts stop if you cease to engage with them and refuse to give them value. 

And so it is when a single thought/theme 'loops' around in your head for hours on end - it's just rumination in another guise, nothing special (even if it is as persistent as an ear worm.)

You simply have to learn to switch off from the 'loop', to stop reacting to it as if it was a bad thing. Stop mentally and emotionally rejecting it and like any unwanted thought you 'just let be' it will stop of its own accord in time. 

1 hour ago, ohwhyhello said:

Treatment for OCD is essentially the same regardless of the content of the thought.

Exactly. :yes: 

Not engaging with the thoughts is key regardless of how they present. 

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Mmhhh. Not really for me. It's a stuck transmission in the brain. Jeffrey has it right. 

When you have a loop just going on - when you are at a conference for example - you are not giving it belief, you are actually busy at the conference. 

You aren't giving it credibility - you are leaving it alone. 

I was certainly focused elsewhere on that long drive back from Scotland. 

It is a compulsion yes, but for me it's not a one that responds to that approach as such. 

The best analogy is Jeffrey Schwartz stuck needle in the groove of a record, from Brainlock - when we ease around the stick, then the brain communicates properly again. 

Mindfulness is the best approach, perhaps. 

Edited by taurean
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For me, the thought looping element was picked out by Jeffrey Schwartz over 20 years ago in Brainlock. The stuck transmission analogy works well with me. 

Until that stick shifts, the repetitive loop will stay. 

Yes trying to neutralise or get rid of a loop will strengthen it. 

Having thw most severe version is horrible. 

On another occasion 3 of us took a day trip north to present to a client. 

The element of stress stimulated obsessional thinking - as PolarBear said the other day a few seconds is enough for an obsessional thought to form. 

That phrase looped in my mind all day but had gone the following day. It was not given time of day but it stayed in there. 

I think this concept of the loop should be recognised as an element of OCD and sufferers from what can be a very severe sideshow given more understanding. 

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16 minutes ago, taurean said:

For me, the thought looping element was picked out by Jeffrey Schwartz over 20 years ago in Brainlock. The stuck transmission analogy works well with me. 

Just remember the stuck transmission analogy is an analogy, not a descriptive fact of how the brain is functioning. :dry: 

18 minutes ago, taurean said:

I think this concept of the loop should be recognised as an element of OCD and sufferers from what can be a very severe sideshow given more understanding. 

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. It's not that I'm not giving you sympathy and support, I am. But applying these unofficial labels to segregate specific symptoms is, I believe, ultimately counterproductive to overcoming the problem. 

A thought going round and round your brain is no different in principle to a question going round and round with the person compulsively seeking answers. 

Just like the folks who are doing covert compulsions to keep their thoughts active, these 'looping' thoughts are the result of covertly engaging with the thought. 

To use the stuck transmission analogy, whatever gear it's in there has to be continual revving of the engine or the car would grind to a halt and stall. Yes, you can put the clutch in and shift gear (distraction techniques), but you can also just stop revving the engine (disengage emotionally from the thought.)

Emotionally engaging with the thought includes any kind of wishing it wasn't there or getting annoyed, distressed or depressed by its presence. 

It's the difference between hating someone (fists clenched, heart racing) and ignoring them (shrug them off as unimportant.) You can't ignore someone you hate any more than you can stop the 'looping' of a thought you detest or reject. 

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For me the looping has always been a compulsive response to the obsessional thought. 

It's the fact that until the stuck mechanism eases it won't stop that makes it a challenge, and the fact that in my case it runs continually like a video advert on a placard. 

You can't stop it any more than you can a lower frequency intrusive thought. You can, and need to, leave it be. 

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As we are taking the opportunity to educate others in this concept, loops can be words or images - and as we said earlier, moderate, troublesome or continuous. 

When first in London in around 1972, we went for a team Christmas lunch at Southwark in an Italian restaurant. 

I went for a comfort break and looked out of the window into a small yard. 

For some reason my OCD "photographed"  the image of that yard, and regularly played it back to me throughout the Christmas holiday. 

It wasn't continuous, but it was repetitive and it wasn't even distressing as an image. But it was negative and unwanted. 

That is however still a "thought loop"  for me - does what it says,  loops around.

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Coming back to ship's original question. 

I was waiting to go into a meeting with a client and needed the support of a Director and Underwriter so took them with me. 

The meeting was likely to be extremely challenging and this threw me into a constant repetitive thought loop. 

I told the director and Underwriter this - they were singularly disgruntled and unimpressed, but somehow I got us through the meeting (it was my meeting to run). 

Like any type of OCD this angle can be triggered worsened and maintained by stress. 

As snowbear says it won't be helped by responding to it, we do have to leave it be and not connect with the belief the disorder gives it. 

And we have to live with the fact others will not understand the problem. 

 

Edited by taurean
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Worth reading my other thread which ship has relaunched :tongue:

Another difficulty with this kind of compulsion - agreed that is what it is - is that for me it isn't phased by ERP. I think this is why it is still a feature some 46 years on. 

And the looping can be about literally anything - it can operate across what is for me in any case a very broad field of theme. Books TV films titles, news headlines or stories, phrases words images.

 

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Guest ashipinharbor
2 hours ago, taurean said:

Coming back to ship's original question. 

I was waiting to go into a meeting with a client and needed the support of a Director and Underwriter so took them with me. 

The meeting was likely to be extremely challenging and this threw me into a constant repetitive thought loop. 

I told the director and Underwriter this - they were singularly disgruntled and unimpressed, but somehow I got us through the meeting (it was my meeting to run). 

Like any type of OCD this angle can be triggered worsened and maintained by stress. 

As snowbear says it won't be helped by responding to it, we do have to leave it be and not connect with the belief the disorder gives it. 

And we have to live with the fact others will not understand the problem. 

 

Thank you, Taurean, for your insight and advice.

I had no idea this thread would lead to such a discussion, though I am happy to see all the information.

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It has always hit a nerve with me that people say "So what, it's just OCD repetition" 

Yes but it's a particular manifestation and I get the constantly repeating version, which is beyond dreadful to cope with when it's operating. 

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Guest ashipinharbor
1 minute ago, taurean said:

It has always hit a nerve with me that people say "So what, it's just OCD repetition" 

Yes but it's a particular manifestation and I get the constantly repeating version, which is beyond dreadful to cope with when it's operating. 

Exactly, yeah! It's hard enough to deal with on its own, but people dismissing it makes it worse.

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On 16/02/2017 at 13:34, taurean said:

we have to live with the fact others will not understand the problem. 

Except I do understand. I've been there, with looping thoughts, looping images, looping ear worm tunes, looping physical responses. 

I've been stuck in a loop for days on end without a break, for weeks on end where it comes back again just when you think it's finally stopping. :( 

And that's why, with the hindsight of now being able to control and escape my 'looping' with relative ease, I confidently claim it is a ruminative compulsion, no different to any other ruminative tendency except in the persistence of engaging with it. 

Hindsight has taught me the reason for that persistence is we disengage from the thought mentally with distraction or getting on with life, but continue to engage with the thought at an emotional level. 

The emotional response is often subliminal which is what fools people into thinking they've disengaged when they haven't. 

The thoughts which are most persistent are always those we find most distressing on a moral or emotional level. We struggle to let them go because we're struggling to truly accept the world is not as we wish it to be. 

That's why I use the analogy of hating someone. When you hate you engage with the emotion. It's never neutral. When you hate someone (or something) you give it the power to upset you, to niggle you, to get under your skin. It's impossible to ignore someone you hate. Even as you turn your back on them as an act of ignoring them you are feeling hatred and revulsion inside. In essence, you're reacting while pretending not to. 

Mental disengagement from a thought without emotional disengagement can be similar to hating someone. If you haven't stopped caring at an emotional level to enable you to totally disengage then however you act (or think) the problem (hatred/revulsion, or obsessive thought) will still be there. 

It's hard. Really, really hard, to genuinely accept at that deepest moral/emotional level. Every fibre of your being is screaming 'wrong, wrong' and yet you have to learn to say 'it's wrong, but it happens and that's the fact I need to get my head around, like it or not.' 

I'm still struggling with this true forgiveness/acceptance myself. It's not easy, but I genuinely believe it is possible to do without compromising your values. 

That's the other half of the equation when people struggle to truly accept - they are holding onto the belief that acceptance lowers their values or reflects badly on them morally. We have to let go of the notion that acceptance of things we disapprove of, reject, or find repulsive 'says something about your moral values as a person.' It doesn't. 

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