Adulting: Intrusive Thoughts

Having the comorbidity of Anxiety alongside being autistic can provide many challenges for me. One of those challenges I constantly battle is intrusive thoughts. These thoughts often pop into my headspace without warning and at times loop very much to the point they bring me down.

Many of these thoughts stem from past experiences where I feel that they were wrong or should not be the way they played out. This can be further compromised into my daily routine where I produce thoughts of wanting to run away from the problem. In reality, this does not solve the problem that I am having and more and more I am expected to be in the situation that I must endure.

When things do not go as planned or happen the way I think they should, the thoughts would appear as the past experiences would play out without realizing that now provides a different dynamic of why they are the way they are. Things change and while I have been better at accepting that, at times my mind is telling me that others need to feel my anguish for the way that I think I am treated when in reality, I am safe and my needs are met. My mind is overreacting and things are not as bad as they seem to be in my headspace.

I constantly play that intrusive loop in my head of when things didn’t go well, what should have been or the way I thought it should have gone. If this is not controlled, it can lead to me lashing out at others who are mind blown at this behavior and those on the sidelines see a person that they cannot believe acts in such a manner. Having others on the sidelines that looked up to me and seeing me not being in control of my emotions really brought to light the need to change the way I reacted to my intrusive thoughts.

It was realizing that I need to practice radical acceptance and accept things for what they are and that the past is just that, the past and I need to move on from what happened. I know that I cannot let the intrusive thoughts overpower my mind or vocalize them when others hear me because that will fuel the anger fire. It is replacing the negative thoughts that I have with positive ones, practicing gratitude daily and realizing that only reacting on these negative and mind boggling thoughts will only make things worse.

It is being in the moment and living it the best I can while caring for my needs and not being so hyper critical when extremely challenging thoughts appear and loop around in my headspace. It is understanding that I have a choice as to whether to allow myself to act on them or ignore them. It is finding healthy coping strategies and defense mechanisms to distract myself from the thoughts that can at times play over and over again like a broken record.

I have been through alot in my life and there have been a lot of things that have been handed to me that were traumatic and stressful, but I cannot let the thoughts of the past be a factor of keeping myself from being the happy go-lucky person that I know that I can be. I am tired of letting my brain control my happiness by these many times untrue thoughts by doing what I need to do to take care of myself and not let the thoughts commandeer what I do in life. It is in part unloading the traumatic garbage that has been in my headspace for so long and living the best day I can without all the issues that plague me because of my intrusive thoughts day in and day out.