Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #intrusivethoughts
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Right, following on from this thread about #IntrusuveThoughts, a lot of people have commented about embarrassing memories that pop up out of the blue and make them cringe all over again.
That's a different, if related, phenomenon. Here's my understanding of why it happens
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That's a different, if related, phenomenon. Here's my understanding of why it happens
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First and foremost, it's important to recognise that the fundamentals of the human brain's memory system were laid down looooong ago. Before we were even human. Consciousness and rational thought are far more recent developments, evolutionary-speaking
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One upshot of this is that our memory system is often the result of new software running on old hardware.
A lot of the brain is like this, in fairness, and it causes a lot of issues. I *may* have written a book all about it
amazon.co.uk/Idiot-Brain-Ne…
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A lot of the brain is like this, in fairness, and it causes a lot of issues. I *may* have written a book all about it
amazon.co.uk/Idiot-Brain-Ne…
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Ok so this is actually quite a common thing. It's 'intrusive thoughts', and it's invariably a harmless, sometimes even helpful, phenomenon. It's often just the sign of a human brain operating as normal. That said, things can go wrong.
WHY does it happen? Well...
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WHY does it happen? Well...
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One particularly useful power of the human brain is its ability to create simulations and scenarios. i.e. we have a powerful imagination
But it's not used solely for fantastical stuff; a lot of the time we use it to model scenarios of everyday things that might/could happen
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But it's not used solely for fantastical stuff; a lot of the time we use it to model scenarios of everyday things that might/could happen
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Basically, our brain is pretty much constantly coming up with hypotheticals. "What if this happened?" "What if that occurred?" "What if I did this?" "What if they did that?" etc.
This helps shape, guide, and reinforce our decision making and behaviour
#IntrusiveThoughts
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This helps shape, guide, and reinforce our decision making and behaviour
#IntrusiveThoughts
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