I dont want to become like the #1 poster of long-winded rants about my life here, but I find it therapeutic. I am also wondering if this just my brain being checked out, a medical thing, or something everyone has.
I have this thing where my brain decides to think things that I would never do. Its also hard to talk about because then everyone would think I secretly want to do all the things described. Cookie cutter extreme example: it imagines me killing everyone around me or something. I would never want to kill anyone around me, at least usually lol. Most times it’s my family which I care for deeply. Ill just be near something, or someone, and my brain imagines me doing the absolute worse thing someone could do in that situation. It fucks with me. Because I feel like there’s a serial killer describing some really fucked shit in my head as I’m trying to exist. That odd force would never have any power, and it shares no desires with me, it just sits there and acts like I want to engage in horrible acts. Also, I dont see it as an actual entity in my brain, like another person, it’s more like self-doubt but saying things that make me want to never talk to anyone again. Again, does this happen to any of you? Do any of you know what this is?
thanks.
(Also worth noting, much worse shit it imagines as compared to just killing people. Shit that makes not want to see anyone ever again.)
(Edit: I suppose this is relatively normal. I guess no one told me people have thoughts they may not agree with, maybe more of a comment on Amerikkkan education and parenting.)
Having struggled with this in the past, all I can tell you is what you seem to already know; it’s perfectly normal. It’s not even just ‘relatively’ normal; it’s nigh-universal. Even if your thoughts are the most fucked-up things imaginable, as you seem to imply. “But thoughts don’t exist in a vacuum” one might say. Well, maybe not in a vacuum, but we just need to accept that some immutable parts of our brain simply aren’t rational, and attempting to rationalize those parts is futile, and that’s okay, because the rational parts are there to modulate those thoughts. According to some therapists I know, it’s only considered a disorder if these thoughts distress you. Not if they merely exist, which they do for everyone.
This sounds like a stock remedy, but what’s been helping for me is walking and running first thing every day, but that’s only because I have the privileges of having the time, access to a place where I can safely do it, and having an able enough body. I still, of course, have thoughts, but I’ve made peace with them. I’ve “accepted the cringe” because I knew it was all I could do (though, I also think some of my murder fantasies are justified.)
It is something I wish I learned much sooner, and that everyone learned, because the reality is is that a lot of people, possibly out of projection, will judge you for having those fantasies. As a fellow US resident, our education has indeed failed us in this regard, and in a multitude of other regards. It makes me wonder if post-revolution, schools would have a dedicated Ethics class. I wonder if other countries have it, because as it is here, such things are usually deferred to incompetent parents or religious institutions, both of which tend to instill highly outdated, anti-scientific, ableist nonsense that causes us to direct fear, guilt, and shame towards ourselves for the terrible crime(/s) of not being able to prevent our thoughts from straying off the beaten path from time to time.
You comparing the part of yourself providing you with these thoughts to a serial killer actually highlights the difference. The actions os a serial killer are largely premeditated, I believe, as opposed to intrusive thoughts we have the ability to recognize for what they are. They’re just thoughts. Do thoughts influence actions? Yes, but the action these thoughts can influence you into taking can be to simply realize that, as you said, the serial killer has no power. Don’t let it worry you. This “serial killer” exists in just about all of us.