thoughts

“I want it.”

The drug. To ravage the woman who doesn’t want me. To murder my husband in his sleep.

Obsessive fixations – from physical drug cravings to harm-doing – can vice us in the grip of one of its hands and torture us slowly with the other. It wasn’t until after I quit chemicals completely that I realized just how deep, dark, and viscous is the bog of compulsive cogitation. It’s one I drown in every day. And, like any other sufferer who no longer relies on scripts or Sauvignon to diminish the demons’ appeals to my intrinsic insanity, I’ve slowly sought out self-help stuff. Initially, when I was alone, meditation itself was helpful. Then, when I began to let others enter my life, my practice was challenged. I had to remember some super Buddhist principles, like: “This is just a thought. What my ex said. What my co-worker did. How I’d like to rip that rectal polyp who cut me off out of his car to choke him out with my left hand and punch him with my right until the light turns green again…”

(“Try to remember it’s somebody’s mother.
Try to remember it’s somebody’s mother….
(*click-click*)
Try to…”)

“ALL just… thoughts.”

When actually activated, this line of thinking can be of great aid.

If something – especially something you want to act on but shouldn’t – is just a thought, it’s not real. You’re not the thought. You don’t have to do it. You’ve not committed it. So it doesn’t define you. And neither do the ramifications of what’d happen if you did.

As a brilliant yes-and to that, today, I read something about these compulsive, cyclical mental laps that really “resonated” (as my more earthy friends’d say) with me. The first part is that – just because you’re acknowledging the just-a-thought-ness, doesn’t mean you’re denying its existence. In fact, it was compared to cutting off a hydra’s head and having a ton more pop up like in that groundhog game at Chuck E. Cheese. Another way I’ve heard’ve this is the “underwater beach ball” analogy: keep trying to submerge an inflated sphere with your body, and it’ll just pop up with seemingly renewed strength, shooting out of the water altogether. The point to the relentless metaphors? Yet another one: like them or not, these thought-beachballs are a part of you. Bury them, and they’ll just spend their time below, resentfully leaking toxins from their grave into your mental earth and the water supply that your other thoughts drink from. And then everything in your world gets distorted. You get angry. Confused. And, once your guard is down, voila. They pop up with supercharged vigor and pelt you rapidfire like a bad game of dodgeball.

Instead of that recurrent nightmare, these thoughts must be dealt with.

You grow the balls to grab those balls and use ’em as weapons.

Against your own demise.

It’s like that Hozier song: “Don’t ever tame your demons; keep ’em on a leash”.

Okay. So… how? How do I do that?

Well, the suggestion I read in this month’s Psychology Today actually touched on a version of a concept I’ve heard in drug recovery programs. It’s one I’ve written about before – called “Think that thought through.” The twist, however, with what PT offered is a little more of a home exercise program. It reaches to non substance addicts who just suffer habitual thoughts they wanna kick, too. You don’t have to have a sponsor. You don’t have to have a shrink. Both help tremendously – because someone else can help keep us honest. But, if you’re in a tight spot and help’s not available, you do this:

Grab a pen and paper – and write the entire scenario down from a fact based standpoint. How the whole thing would look from start to stop. From calling that dude who peddles pills from the house down the street… to the sweats and fiery flesh sensation of coming off’a Oxycontin. From texting your copulatory companion to come over and empty himself… to you feeling empty enough in the days after that you’re more likely to call said pill pusher. Or even the anecdote I read in that PT article – about a woman who really, really wanted to suffocate her slumbering husband. I tried not to laugh about the concept (still am as I write about it) of something seemingly so preposterous – until she detailed everything from watching him stop moving to seeing her mug in tomorrow’s news… and I realized, “Oh, crap. This is really real to her.”

Or – was – I should say.

After she realized something important:

But also acknowledged the thoughts’ existence.

Along with how they’d look IRL… Out loud and in ink.

Because something happens when we reach a place of acceptance. It comes full circle to that “It’s just a thought” thing mentioned before. It’s just a thought. It’s just a part of my mind. It’s not who I am. When something is just a concept or a dark fantasy, it’s only reality’s highlights – not everything. It’s appealing because we’re the Spielberg of this mind movie. Conveniently, we leave the uncomplimentary facets on the cutting room floor. Through thoroughgoing acknowledgment, we add back in the full story – however painful – and let ourselves marinate in the miserable details that are part of the package deal. What’s the full story? Of returning to an abusive partner? Picking up drugs again? Inflicting harm? Sure, your favorite hobby is pleasing the man you love – but his is hitting you with frying pans. Yes, some tranquilizers’d be nice – but every time you pick up a drug, ten years disappears. Of course your wife would be more attractive with her loud mouth stitched shut – but unfortunately there’s a few laws against acting that out too.

Writing it with an actual pen and paper, they say, is crucial because the hand-to-brain action makes it more personal and concrete via the tactility – versus typing. Also, the effort and time it takes affords you the opportunity to indelibly burn the concepts into your brain. Do you remember all the little comments you spew onto social media each day? Every “lol” or heart emoji? No. It’s noncommittal. You could change your mind and unlike that post about talking tube fish tomorrow. Likewise, I have to re-read my stuff on here half the time (out loud) to make sure I mean it. Similarly, with this journaling hack, the idea is to outline facts that matter, get certain about what it is you want, and have the reminder in ink – staring you down tomorrow, versus furtively tucked into an app on your phone. If it’s easier to ignore what you’re ashamed of, you will. But once this has been tried, our darkest desires are far easier to override.

In the meantime? Learn to laugh at your thoughts – not feel guilty – as they arise.

’cause, fortunately, you can’t truly do harm from thoughts alone.

Only to others, if you act on ’em. And only to yourself, if you latch onto ’em.