Anna, congrats on your first post and well done for reaching out. Great stuff.
If intrusive thoughts that you are referring to are suicidal thoughts, then i suffer from them constantly, although a lot less now that a few months back.
When i was in hospital for PTSD, depression and anxiety, I was handed a document with the title, "Thoughts are not facts". I didn't read a single word of the document because I took so much out of the heading, I didn't want it to diminish my interpretation of it.
You see if/when I have intrusive thoughts, my instant reactive thought is that it is not factual and it leaves me. Now this takes some practise and constant reminding to get it imbeded into your psych, however it can be done.
I do not know enough about them to see if they will last a lifetime or not but this is the way that I learnt to control them. They used to cause me some great deal of stress but now it is minimal, just kind of pisses me off. Do I want them? Hell no but I have kind of accepted that I may have them for life. I hope not but something that I need to research and find out more about them.
Cheers
Mark.
