[House] WRT F: some ideas from slack.

[Robin Lee Powell]

Naomi Rivkis [Today at 17:38]
in #parenting
@rlpowell, my daughter has experienced something of the kind; her therapist calls it "intrusive thoughts" and says that everyone has it sometimes, but that some people have them more often than others and have a harder time pushing them away than others. There are therapy techniques which are pretty effective at training the mind to be better at pushing them away -- often, guided visualization works really well for young children on this kind of thing; when my daughter was younger, we did something which helped a good deal, involving the visualization of "worry bullies," which were the entities which stood on your shoulder and whispered things in your ears that you didn't want to think about, to make you worry. My daughter learned to push them off her shoulder first, and then to laugh at them, and then she figured out herself that it worked even better to give the worry bullies a different job so they'd be kept busy with something _useful_ to her, instead of making her unhappy. It's come back somewhat recently, as my daughter enters her teens, and we're trying to get her back into therapy for it, but she was only about eight when the whole thing began, so not much older than yours. I definitely encourage the therapy; cognitive behavioralism seems to work really well on this stuff.


10 replies
rlpowell [13 minutes ago]
Thanks.  At one point I walked her through visualizing a calm blue sea when she was upset, and she kind of latched on to it (it became “her blue fishy friends, because she visualized a bunch of fish), so yeah, seems like that sort of thing might help.


Naomi Rivkis [11 minutes ago]
One thing to be aware of is that "worry" and "intrusive thoughts," while they are related (the intrusive thoughts cause you to worry, which is the unhappy-making part of it) aren't the same thing. Calming oneself may not alone get the thoughts to go away, and if you don't find a way to send the thoughts packing, the worry will come back. If you can harness the stuff that seems to help her a little and that stirs her enthusiasm, though, such as the "blue fishy friends" to do things like _chase the thoughts away from her_, it can really be useful in addressing the intrusive thoughts themselves, not just the collateral worry, (edited)


rlpowell [10 minutes ago]
That’s great, thanks.  I was better at this stuff when I myself was younger, but I’m out of practice.

rlpowell [8 minutes ago]
And I’m very clear on the distinction you’re pointing, having myself been to therapy for this thing.  :slightly_smiling_face:

rlpowell [7 minutes ago]
Counter-factual intrusive thoughts (worries about things that didn’t and couldn’t reasonably have happened) in particular is pretty familiar.

Naomi Rivkis [7 minutes ago]
Our family uses imagination *a lot* as a tool in managing our own minds, so I'm used to both doing it for myself and coming up with ideas for my kids. The best ideas come from the person whose mind it is, though, so if you can coach her through the process of coming up with her own imagery it'll be most effective. "What do the worry bullies look like? Where do they sit when they're talking to you? What would you like to say to them? Who have you got in your imagination who can come help you chase them away?" That kind of thing can help elicit her own images, which as you've seen with the fishes, are pretty powerful.

Naomi Rivkis [5 minutes ago]
Sometimes when mine were younger, we would "unpack boxes" of images for this kind of purpose. "Here's your box that has the tools you need to make the worry bullies leave you alone. What does it look like? Let's open it. What's the first thing on top when we open the lid?" etc.


rlpowell [4 minutes ago]
:smile:  So helping, thank you.


Naomi Rivkis [3 minutes ago]
You're very welcome. I'm glad our experiences might help make it easier for somebody else with similar problems; it always makes it feel a little less frustrating to have the problems oneself in the first place. I think my daughter will think so too; do you mind if I tell her about it, without names?


rlpowell [< 1 minute ago]
No, please, go for it. I don’t even much care about names.