Intrusive Thoughts

 Do you have them? The first time I mentioned them to my husband he looked extra concerned. Once I defined them, as I know them, to him he was less concerned, but I think he might’ve told me I should probably call them something different.

Mine are never fun. My brain never says “Hey, what if everything worked out just the way we wanted? Let’s play that scenario from beginning to end!” That is how I cope with them, though. When my brain forces me to think about something terrible, I then imagine the opposite. It’s not always perfect. Sometimes the intrusive thought is so out of left field that I can’t really imagine the opposite, or it’s like, my day to day life is the opposite of that, and so how can I imagine something that is just what I know. If it was going to work, life alone should have deterred the thought.

 The first one today was about my youngest child. Yesterday she came home with a fever, but was her normal self. Her fever never returned and she was energetic. She went to bed like normal and though I had feared that she would wake up with a high fever and nausea in the middle of the night (those are her go-to with illness), I never heard from her. I woke up this morning and was thinking about her doctors appointment, how much she wants to be at school today, and maybe I would just take her back at lunch time if her strep test comes back normal since it will have been 24 hours since her fever. Is that crazy? And then my brain: “Shes dead. That’s why you didn’t hear anything from her last night. Her fever did come back, she did get sick and she choked on her vomit, and she is dead.” Then I considered if I would remember to contact my boss so that my class wouldn’t just show up to a locked door. I wondered if I’d be able to put on pants with the shirt I’d slept in while I waited for the paramedics. The worst part is that my brain isn’t communicating well enough with itself to say let’s think of this but it’s just hypothetical. Another part is reacting to the stress that I am creating for myself my adrenaline is triggered my body reacts like I am in a emotionally charged situation but I’m actually just in the shower at six in the morning.

On my drive to work I saw a group of men in reflective vests picking up trash on the side of the highway, and my brain said “What if we were being held prisoner by an enemy government against our will, and the only way to escape was to step in front of traffic while we were on trash pick up?” and showed me what that would be like, including a pause in the flow of time, the relief, between the car hitting me and the pain surging in. 

I put on some loud music to exorcise that. 

Happy Tuesday.