Intrusive thoughts

Just watched a woman's description of shocking thoughts she had about her baby, such as smothering him, as a result of her post partum depression.

The proper term for this is "intrusive thoughts," which is well described in many Internet articles including in Wikipedia. It is a severe problem and is associated with many mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, OCD, PPD and bipolar.

The reason I am mentioning this today is that here is another example of where society as a whole has gone in a totally wrong direction, which harms rather than helps those with intrusive thoughts.

I agree that cognitive behavior therapy is a great help, but CBT is a matter of closing the barn door after the horse is gone. In other words CBT is used to wrestle with and hopefully subdue the intrusive thoughts, yet people remains saturated in intrusive thought stimulation without even realizing it. There are two main weaknesses in society that result in assailing people with intrusive thoughts:

1. Electronic media is a passive means of providing the viewer or listener with thoughts they would never otherwise have had. That's the whole idea of creativity and exposure to new and exciting stimuli, but the problem is that most people have not formed, particularly in childhood, the boundaries of thoughts that people used to have. In other words the past few generations are "thoughts wide open" due to their early addiction and exposure to electronic media. A huge part of normal human development is self awareness and self imposing of not only behavior but also thought boundaries, strong boundaries. The "let it all hang out" generations have damaged this necessary part of normal development. So people who grew up in electronic media times are programmed to have "all channels open to all thoughts, good or evil, wise or foolish, useful or bullshit" and thus are vulnerable to intrusive thoughts.

2. Excessive "spiritual" practices run the same risk, cultivating an undiscipled mind. In fact what passes for "spiritual discipline" in many cults and so forth (and even dabblers in mainstream religion) is actually not discipline in terms of discerning good thoughts and bad thoughts, but being, "open to the universe" and other such bullcrap. Listen, when normal people pray they know who they are and who they are praying to, that being the Almighty God. People who develop excess so called "spirituality" are like lint collectors, opening their minds to whatever crap is floating around out there. Mental crap that floats out there to be collected may be the undisciplined baloney of one's own unconscious mind, the crap thoughts of others via ESP, miasma from the gates of hell, and the urgings of one's own ego to be "special" and to "hear" things that "enlighten" you, but really don't exist. Folks, there is plenty of legit meditation and other spiritual practices, but beware, beware, beware because human ego like a magnet takes you places you should not go for your own good and for that of others.

When I was studying undercover people involved in so called "New Age" and other cult beliefs, I was in horror at the pride many of them had at working on broadcasting their sex thoughts via kundalini and other methods. And you wonder why so many children are beset by victimization. This is just one example of how you should not emit that kind of garbage (it hits more than you intended) plus it prevents you from having natural levees against intrusive thoughts later when YOU need protection.

I hope this helps. Too late, but what the hell.