Evil unintentional thoughts..

I've had a similar thing going.

Where I would see someone, boy or girl, male or female, on the street for example and my mind would think an extremely evil judging thing about the person and 0.1 seconds later I would think to myself "wtf was that!?"

At the beginning when I noticed these thoughts I was a little bit scared of them because I started to wonder... is this who I am? But now I have realized that you are not those fleeting thoughts. Whenever thoughts like that appear in my mind I just laugh and think "yeah that's not me, that's not who I am" and since then those thoughts have declined.

I think not "believing" every thought that pops into your head is a good habit to develop. So often when our mind goes a certain way we automatically follow it. "I am bad at this" "I'll never do that" and you believe it, and you start thinking in that direction, coming up with reasons for why the thought is correct and that becomes a huge hindrance for our growth in life and simply our well-being.

No matter how much in control of our thoughts we are, we are always bound to have those negative and destructive thoughts pop into our minds. And if we are ready and observant of that and realize that it's just head trash which we can throw out immediately we will grow a lot as individuals.

So to make a long story short.

Never mind where it comes from. Whenever those thoughts pop up just laugh by yourself and acknowledge that those thoughts are not who you are or what you believe in and eventually they will subside.

 

I have been struggling with these intrusive thoughts since I was in my teens, and they have always been far worse in nature than simply calling other people names or what you have described. I've had a lot of really messed up, sadistic thoughts come into my head and for the longest time it really had me depressed because I thought there was something wrong with me.

I know now that it is actually a (somewhat) common issue with varying degrees of intensity (mine was very bad at one point), but it can cause a lot of headache and stress if not dealt with - which it took me a long time to realize how much these intrusive thoughts were dictating my life.

Basically, the best way to combat them, is don't think about them when those images or thoughts pop into your mind. Don't give it any attention. Don't even acknowledge it. Don't think about how messed up you are or that theres something wrong with you. The more you dwell on those things, the worse the thoughts will get and the more frequent they will become. The more you ignore them, the less frequent they will become.(because thats what you have to do, their is no way to stop the thoughts completely. They are, after all, not our own thoughts, and have no bearing on who we are, and we should recognize them as such).

I could go into a lot more detail if you like this has been such a huge struggle in my life and while I am in wayyyyyy better shape than I used to be in regards to the intrusive thoughts even I still have them on occassion and I just brush them off.

 

What makes this seem like an uphill battle is this:

You decide to be observant of these thoughts and make a conscious effort to disregard them.

Now what happens is you will start to notice those thoughts more often.

Why?

Not because they are showing up more. But because you have made your choice to notice them more. And the better you get at this, the more thoughts you will notice.

So it will seem like you are getting worse because you can find yourself almost drowning in those thoughts in the beginning but in reality you are getting better because you are actually observing those destructive thoughts which normally would just slide right by.

So expect an uptake in whatever thoughts / thought patterns you want to minimize for a good while in the beginning and realize that means progress. Eventually the curve will flatten out and then start heading downwards.

When I say laugh it off, I am not physically laughing it off, just mentally. But this is only how I handle it sometimes. A lot of the time I just let the thoughts pass right through me. Not angry, not upset by the fact that they showed up, just indifferent to them. Letting them pass right through because I don't need them.

You will find your own ways. Another way to do it is to turn a destructive thought on its head.

You simply take that negative bad thought about a person (whatever it may be) and change it to something wonderful and positive about that person.