My Own Brain, My Annoying Roommate
So, this has been on my mind, literally. These thoughts about sex, just popping up. All. The. Time. Didn’t matter if I was trying to work, watch TV, or even just make a sandwich. Boom. There they were. It got pretty distracting, and honestly, a bit worrying sometimes. I kept asking myself, why can’t I stop thinking about this stuff? Am I the only one?
My first brilliant idea? Just stop thinking about it! Yeah, right. Like telling yourself not to think about a white bear. Guess what you’re thinking about? That darn white bear. So, that strategy was a total bust. Actually, it felt like it made it worse. The more I tried to actively push the thoughts away, the more they seemed to dig their heels in and shout louder in my head.
What I Started to Piece Together
I wasn’t about to just let this run my life, so I started to pay more attention, trying to figure out what was going on. I did a bit of reading, you know, just poking around to see if this was common, or if my brain was just extra weird. And I found out some interesting things. One thing that kind of clicked was the idea that brains are just… well, brains. They produce a ton of thoughts, all sorts of them, all day long. Some are useful, some are random, and some are, frankly, a bit out there.
I came across this idea that sometimes your brain just spits out these thoughts, and they don’t necessarily mean anything profound about you. They could just be like, mental static, or little blips of activity. That was a bit of a relief, I gotta say. It made me think that maybe I wasn’t “broken” for having these thoughts. But then there’s the other side of it – what if these thoughts are really messing with your day-to-day? I read that if they’re super persistent, causing a lot of distress, and you just can’t shake them, it could be something more, like a type of OCD focused on sexual thoughts. That made me pause and consider, okay, where on the spectrum does my experience fall?
Things I Actually Did About It
Once I realized that fighting the thoughts head-on was like wrestling with a greased pig, I decided to try a different approach. It wasn’t like a magic pill or anything, but I found a few things that helped me manage the situation better.
- Label and let go: Instead of freaking out or getting sucked into the thought, I started to just acknowledge it. Like, “Ah, there’s that thought pattern again.” And then I’d consciously try to redirect my attention to whatever I was doing, or to something else entirely. It wasn’t about suppressing, more like… not engaging with it.
- Getting absorbed in something else: This was a big one. If I was really into a task, whether it was work, a hobby, exercise, or even just a good conversation, my brain had less idle time to just cycle through those repetitive thoughts. Active engagement was key.
- Understanding my triggers (sort of): I noticed that when I was more stressed, tired, or even just bored, the thoughts seemed to be more frequent or harder to ignore. So, working on my overall stress levels and trying to keep my mind occupied in a healthy way seemed to indirectly help.
- Self-compassion, man: Beating myself up for having these thoughts? Totally counterproductive. I had to learn to be a bit kinder to myself and accept that brains are complicated, and sometimes they just do weird stuff.
I also considered if I needed to talk to someone, like a professional. For me, these steps helped enough that it didn’t feel like it was totally derailing my life, but I kept that option in my back pocket. If it had felt completely out of control or was causing me huge amounts of distress, I think that would have been my next step, for sure.
Where I’m At With It Now
So, do I never think about sex anymore? Nah, that’s not realistic, and probably not even healthy. But the thoughts don’t own me like they used to. They don’t send me into a spiral of worry or distraction. It’s more like they’re just part of the general background noise of my brain, and I’ve gotten better at tuning them out when I need to, or just letting them pass by without making a big deal out of them. It’s been a learning process, for sure. Lots of trial and error. But I guess the biggest thing I learned is that it’s less about making the thoughts disappear entirely, and more about changing my relationship with them. It’s my brain, and I’m learning to navigate its quirks a bit better every day.
