While your first instinct may be to simply ignore your disturbing thought, ignoring it is not a good idea. If you try to ignore the thought or block it out, it may recur with greater intensity. Trying to suppress your disturbing thoughts may even lead to an unhealthy obsession with the thought. Instead of trying to block out a disturbing thought, acknowledge it and begin to examine it. Identify the content of your disturbing thought. What is it about and what is so disturbing about it? Writing down your disturbing thoughts can help you think of them in different ways. Also, the very act of writing it down can help keep some of the thoughts out of your head and reduce their frequency. The next time that you have a disturbing thought, take a moment to write it down in a journal. As you write about the thought, consider the following questions to help you to examine it:  What is it about the thought you find disturbing?  The fear of acting on it? The fear of having the thought at all? Social stigma? How often do you have the thought? Keep a tally the number of times the thought occurs to become more aware of any patterns like when in the day or week the thoughts occur more frequently. Is there a trigger for the thought? Do you always have the disturbing thought after seeing something or someone? What do you do after the thought pops in your mind? Do you keep thinking about it in detail?  Do you talk about it? Do you try to ignore it? Is it the same thought or are there a few different thoughts? Are they similar thoughts? Are you having anxiety about the thought itself or are you worried about the thought? For example, are you actually worried you will actually throw the baby against the wall, or are you more bothered by the thought of having the thought? Are you more concerned about the thought or the way others would perceive you for having such a thought? Is the thought of others knowing your thoughts and judging you for them bother you more than the thought itself? Do you feel like you must think about this thought? Some disturbing thoughts may be recurrent because you have to take action, like making a decision based on them. Others may be recurrent because of anxiety, but there is no reason you have to keep thinking of them. Is there something you can do/act on to make yourself feel better? In other words, is there something that you can do to change the situation? How do these thoughts make you feel? Use feeling words like angry, sad, excited, etc. to label these free-floating feelings. Are the thoughts disturbing to you or are others telling you your thoughts are disturbing? Trying to trace each thought to its source may help to ease your concerns over the disturbing thought. For example, if you are constantly imagining someone breaking into your home and assaulting you, try to figure out when you first had this thought and why. One study showed that watching media coverage of violent events contributes significantly to acute stress and causes people to experience disturbing thoughts with more frequency. Take a look at how often you watch or read about violent acts. If you find that you have a lot of exposure to violent news and that this may be contributing to your disturbing thoughts, stop watching or reading the news for a while or focus only on positive stories. In most cases, disturbing thoughts about sex don't mean anything at all. If the thoughts that you are having are repulsive to you or they involve violence or other illegal activities, then your mind might just be trying to understand those things. For example, someone might fantasize about raping someone who is unattainable to them. But in the process of thinking about raping someone, the person imagining the act would also imagine how the other person would be hurt by that act. Understanding the pain that the act should cause the person imagining the act to stop thinking about it.
اعترف بالفكرة المزعجة. اكتب عن أفكارك المزعجة. حدد منشأ أفكارك الوسواسية. ضع في الاعتبار الطريقة التي قد تشارك بها وسائل الإعلام في صنع أفكارك المزعجة. افهم معنى الأفكار الجنسية المزعجة.