Good evening bc48, warm welcome to the forums.
I'm so glad you've joined us and hope you find this a safe, supportive and HELPFUL space :-))
Intrusive thoughts are yuck.
The thing to remember IS that you DO have control over your own body, so unless you want to follow through, you won't.
I've found that most intrusive thoughts are rooted in our 'trauma responses' to events that happened, some times WAY back in our life.
So you can Journal on these if you wish to trace back the root cause / person who triggers these.
You can share any experiences here and / or get an experienced Psych who specialises in trauma if that's a thing for you?
I want to say don't fight with yourself over these thoughts. Let them flow past.
If they bring up negative emotions of anger etc then ASK "What can I do to soothe you dear anger?" questions like this help settle your emotions very well until they melt away. I used my own funny visualisation to dispel these if you're interested?
Apparently 95% of people have thoughts like: "losing my loved ones because of a car crash etc".
This can happen when things are going okay too!
The remedy for this is to practice GRATITUDE - see Brene Brown's research on YouTube or Netflix.
I'm so happy to know you're meditating. Keep going! Pay a small bit of attention to the feelings you have when these thoughts come.
Also doing BIG movements that match your anxiety levels help a TON. Vacuuming energetically was a good one for me. Walking at a fast pace. Swimming laps. Raking leaves.
Lastly, your brain has created habitual "feedback loops" which will go on repeat until you CUT that thought out and REPLACE it with a far more helpful set to create AWESOME feedback loops.
Dr Joe Dispenza has GREAT clips on YT and amazing books from his research eg "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself" lol. Fun title.
Once you KNOW HOW to change your thoughts, and the fact you CAN control them, you'll break free from these. Might take a bit of work, but you are SO worth it!
Love EM
