thelittlestastronaut:

spacemancharisma:

antique-symbolism:

spacemancharisma:

so I saw a post about it that got the point across but had a very aggressive tone — that i disagreed with on the basis of, most people are ignorant about this sort of thing and I don’t want to hold that against them— and it also was (understandably) genuinely very upsetting and possibly triggering to read, so I’ll try to reiterate here.

People often use “intrusive thoughts” to describe thoughts like “eat that leaf” and “pineapple hustler” and other sort of Lawl Random XD thoughts that your brain sometimes just spits at you. These are not intrusive thoughts. These are impulsive thoughts. The difference is critical.

Intrusive thoughts are a symptom of mental illnesses. They aren’t just randomly generated thoughts that pop into your head sometimes. Intrusive thoughts are of a very specific nature. They are violent and deviant and frightening and sickening. They are things that come into your head without warning or cause, and leave you shaken and afraid. Intrusive thoughts disgust you and make you afraid of yourself, because you would never want that, you would never even think that, but you did just think that. It may not have been on purpose, but it did come from you. Intrusive thoughts aren’t funny and don’t make good tumblr posts. They’re the kind of thing you don’t share with anyone because they’d think you’re dangerous to be around. In the meantime, you wrestle with feeling like you’re a monster while trying to understand that it’s not your fault.

I don’t blame anyone for not knowing this; misinformation is powerful. But please go with this knowledge now and act accordingly.

This distinction is very important, but at the same time I think it’s also important to acknowledge that for some people, their intrusive thoughts wouldn’t necessarily seem that bothersome or disturbing to anyone but them.

I think the key distinction is how much it affects you and how difficult the thought is to dismiss – if you really can’t stop thinking about eating leaves off the ground and the image/thought upsets you (ie: because it seems unsanitary, or you can’t stop thinking about how embarrassing it would be if you did it in public, or you worry irrationally that you’ll lose control and actually do it, etc) then imo it should be classified as an intrusive thought.

This is an important addition, thank you.

^ the distinction being that it causes distress. if if it doesn’t, it’s not intrusive.