I Have Intrusive Thoughts. You Might Too. It's Okay.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your bad brain days is just to talk about it to someone.
I don’t know how to write about my brain. I guess I’ll start from the beginning. I went through a lot of shit in my childhood through my young adulthood. I didn’t know how to be happy. I’m not sure whose fault it was. Perhaps it was mine. I don’t know. Anyway, the prologue of my life ended when my last girlfriend before I met my wife dumped me after two months. Around two months after I started dating my wife, I started getting intrusive thoughts. Is there a correlation? I don’t know. I suspect there is, but the thing about brains is that at times, they are ineffable.
At first, I didn’t know what intrusive thoughts were. I had them, but they didn’t have a name They drove me bonkers. I started taking escitalopram (brand name, Lexapro), and I got them under control. The second time I got them was around when my daughter was born. It was then when I looked up what the fuck was happening to me, and I was able to give them a name. It helped. Therapy helped even more. I was able to corral them into a space in my brain and not let them ruin my day, week, month, or year.
Sometimes, they get out though, through my mental blocks, through the drugs, through all the good things going in my life. The difference between then and now is that now, I have tools, and I have experience. I know the intrusive thoughts won’t paralyze me. When they come around, they still suck hard though. They linger, and they make me think disturbing things. You know when people around you say “oh, I’m so OCD” without any trace of seriousness? Obsessive-compulsive disorder isn’t just fixation on little things, The fixations can paralyze you. They can be rooted in real worry, or they can be rooted in intrusive thoughts. OCD isn’t the cute little thing a thoughtless person can bring up. I should know because I’m diagnosed with it. Intrusive thoughts are a major symptom of it.
Why am I sharing this with you? Well, I’m not exactly shy for sharing things that afflict me, of course. But there’s always an ulterior reason, right? My point is that you might be suffering from something like this too. I’m not naïve. Mental health is this thing that gets bandied about only when a white dude shoots up a shopping mall or a politician is accused of impropriety big enough that it might take them down (that never happens anymore, you can tell my age since this kind of thing did happen once) or when a Canadian telecom giant needs to mine political goodwill on Twitter. But it’s something that I think still gets the short shrift.
Men in particular aren’t encouraged to talk about their feelings even now with the virulent strain of macho dickwads both on the right wing and in popular sports media. Even on the center and left, you see glib attitudes towards it, and the group known as “men” only encompasses a small fraction of the people for whom mental health is sort of this taboo subject most of the time. People all along the LGBTQ spectrum, for example, have mental health issues foisted upon them by a society that still is trying to deny them their rights. How can you tell a trans woman that she doesn’t have mental health issues when the biggest children’s author in the world is pumping money into making sure she feels demonized as a sex predator by her very existence? Then you have the neurodivergent, many of whom are told their autism is a “disease” by “charities” like Autism Speaks. You don’t think they have weight? Minorities, women, the poor… if I had to think, the only people who don’t have endemic mental health issues are rich asswipes trying to tell everyone to suck it up, but even they have a mental disease known as insatiable greed. The point is, if you’re alive, there’s a good chance you have some unresolved issues.
The point isn’t to point out that you have issues though. The point is that you can talk about them. I’ve found that talking in general is a good thing. If you’re talking about them, you can hear out loud your issues, and if you know someone is listening, be they someone close like family or friends or a trained professional, you know that someone cares. If you’re talking about something else, like sports or food or video games, then your mind isn’t on what is bothering you. Talking is good. But talking requires listening.
For those who aren’t really feeling issues at the moment, are you listening to your friends? They’re not talking to you, sure, but are you making them feel like they can? I’m not trying to cast a hot gaze at you at all. Society, especially in America, has taught everyone to look out for number one, and that can lead to a lot of unintentional self-absorption. I hope if you see this, you can maybe shake out of the daze and be the person who listens. Who knows, someday you might have to be the one speaks, y’know? I’ve been having to speak for a little bit, and sometimes, I feel like I’m intruding on people in group DMs or on Twitter or in my own living room. But the best people in your life, your friends, your spouses, your parents, will immediately tell you that no, you’re not intruding. They want to hear you even if they can’t offer any real insight.
But at the end of the day, it’s not shameful to go see a therapist or someone who is equipped to handle this. We’ve come a long way since Sigmund Freud and his pals over in Europe were pioneering the field. They got some things wrong, like penis envy, but they got a lot right, and people have been building on it since then. My therapist helped me for a good while, and even though I stopped seeing him, I don’t regret the time. Sometimes, you just need a few months of help. Sometimes, you need more. Just don’t ever feel like you’re alone out there. As the modern day poet, Michael Stipe, once sang, “everybody hurts. Sometimes, everybody cries.” Sometimes, that person among everybody could be you. Don’t let it define you.