What sort of ideas become obsessive thoughts?
All kinds of thoughts can become persistent – from going over old troubling conversations, or thinking about a particular person all the time, or fretting about something awful that you ‘might’ do, to being unable to relax and enjoy yourself because you can’t stop thinking about work. And the trouble is, it’s not just the thoughts themselves that are a problem – soon you find yourself worrying about the worrying too. Is obsessive thinking a sign of ‘madness’ or ‘badness’? You’ll have noticed that just telling yourself to ‘stop it’ seems to have little effect. It’s as if you can’t stop. And this is where many people begin to worry about something new – “Is there something fundamentally wrong with me that I am thinking this stuff?” The good news is that having loads of intrusive and pre-occupying thoughts is actually a normal experience. Studies undertaken by psychologist Stanley Rachman showed that almost everyone experiences ‘bad thoughts’, and becomes pre-occupied with them (1). This
