just finished persona 5 strikers earlier and have realized that I really like how it and p5r made you feel almost like you had friends, even if the overarching story was just alright the character interactions made me realize just how much I craved that kind of friendship, but that's besides the point I wanted to discuss. frequently I get intrusive thoughts, for example: earlier this week I was using some needlenose pliers to try and undo a stripped screw, and I couldn't stop thinking about what It would be like to rip all my fingernails out with it, how the release of tension would feel as the flesh holding the nail to the nailbed gave way, how the cold air would feel on the open wound, how the blood would run down my arm and drip off my elbow. I had to take a break and come back later because it was so distracting, although not particularly upsetting. the reason I mentioned the persona game is because the intrusive thoughts I got when playing the game were far more upsetting to me, enough that I had to stop playing the game on multiple occasions. I would imagine how these characters that had come to feel like friends might react to me doing something deplorable, how would they react if I took the pot I was cooking with and tossed the boiling water at one of them and then beat them with the pot? how would they react if I jumped off the railing 5 stories up mid conversation? how would they react If I forced myself upon one of them just out of sight of the others? I would never do any these things, but I cant help imagining them and It just makes me feel like shit, you know? Like the thought even existing in my head is enough for me to be written off as a monster, a danger to society. I even hesitate to post this imagining the reaction that such a confession might receive here. These games in particular weren't the only games In which I had such intrusive thoughts, but the psudo-friendship that you feel with the characters made it both especially upsetting, and hard to dismiss. even though I like the feeling of having friends that these kinds of games can provide and consider these games to be in my top 10, I think I'll have to avoid them for awhile because Its just so exhausting dealing with these intrusive thoughts.
I dont have any grand revelation or point to make at the end of this rambling paragraph, I just had to get this off of my chest because it was really eating away at me.
I've had intrusive thoughts for most of all my life, but I've gotten pretty good at compartmentalization, dismissing thoughts, refocusing on something else. Idk if the coping methods are the solution that worked for me, or if something else undefined was the solution/cause that allowed those methods to work. And I still have a really hard time with emotionally-loaded and/or interpersonal obsessive/intrusive thoughts that can run circles in my brain.
It's useful to internalize the fact that you aren't defined (solely) by your thoughts, that they aren't you, they're just a single facet of your malleable and fluid and complex consciousness. The "immediate thought" part, which for you and I tends to be intrusive, is talking to multiple other parts of your consciousness: notably your executive function, which can decide not to act on the thoughts, your metacognition and/or internal dialogue, which can choose not to dwell on the thoughts, your self-identity, which can reject the thoughts that don't align with your values, etc. Of the wide array of "voices" that comprise our consciousnesses, one is talking more loudly or taking a larger share of the mic than we'd like.
If mindfulness/cbt-type methods don't seem to work, I know there's medications for this stuff, although I don't have any experience with them. Perhaps a more psychoanalytical exploration of why your mind has developed these patterns, a potential root cause or drive, might also be useful.