Intrusive Visualizations Move or Don't Go Away Problem

[Ranger]

While I was talking on Discord, Rusty pointed out only when he wonderlands, his intrusive visualizations may move or not go away. This reminded me of this other story someone told me where they had all these cubes or something attach to them and they couldn't go away.

 

I created this thread because I swear there's a solution for this but I cannot for the life of me remember what it is. Since we didn't have this problem ourselves, I don't feel comfortable saying "oh just ignore it" or "it's probably a focus issue" when I never actually had to solve it myself.

 

Did anyone else have this problem? What did you do to fix it?

Edited January 3, 2023 by Ranger

[Luminesce]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory

 

I used to have an invasive visualization problem of my perspective spinning, as if a camera depicting the scene was rolling to the side. For a long time I tried believing my perspective was "anchored" and denying that it could possibly roll with limited success, but eventually I realized that thinking about it is what caused it to happen, and that I had literally no other choice but to truly and thoroughly ignore it. Not just "let it happen", but to completely remove the thought from my consciousness entirely. Admittedly, this takes some mental discipline I don't think the average person has, and I can't explain it to them

 

For ironic process theory specifically, I disliked failing the "Don't think of a pink elephant" (etc. etc.) trick, so I made an effort to create an automatic process that deferred my thought when I read any such suggestion to a different thought instead. That wikipedia article actually mentions some people having success deferring to pre-planned other-thoughts-to-focus-on, so that's not unfounded, but...

 

To be honest, I only have complete success with avoiding ironic process (and invasive thoughts in general, though I rarely got them to begin with) by developing the habit of completely ignoring anything that triggers that "I don't want to think that!" feeling/thought. Which basically looks like, when I read "Don't think of a pink elephant", I've trained myself to not linger on the sentence at all and to immediately focus on anything else (in cases like "example of ironic process theory", that usually just means continuing to read or write the following sentence(s))

 

 

So I would call it an intermediate endeavor, trying to learn how to truly ignore something (and not the "blah blah blah I'm ignoring that blah blah blah" kind of thing where you are ABSOLUTELY thinking about the thing in question) by focusing on either anything else (trickier, but what I chose to learn to do, which really looks like just dropping thoughts on purpose), or by setting pre-planned things to focus on for specific scenarios perhaps. Wikipedia recommended that, but I'm not sure how I'd pull it off, I personally am just better at choosing to focus back on whatever happens to be relevant. 

 

I wish I could explain how to do it simply, but I can't really. All I can say is I haven't had any trouble with any kinds of invasive thoughts for many years now since working on this

Edited January 4, 2023 by Luminesce

[Ranger]

I was wondering if it was simply a persistent intrusive thought + the mindset it could happen, thank you for clarifying. Thank you for the explanation too, I hope this helps people who want more than "just ignore it".

 

When it comes to weird persistent intrusive thoughts we essentially do what you just said, focus on something else whenever it pops up until it hits a point where you can ignore it for good. Sometimes we mix in just acknowledging the thought, maybe adding the symbolism of it going away, and then moving onto something else, but not always.