Intrusive thoughts

First of all, sorry if this is in the wrong place. It's related to casting spells, but I'm not sure if the topic is general enough to be here.

Anyway, as the title suggests, I have frequent intrusive thoughts. I've been practicing magickfor several years and it's never been a problem when it came to casting, but since the things I obsess over tend to change, it's starting to impact my practice. I've started having thoughts that spells won't work while I'm performing them, and occasionally I'll have thoughts that a spell will do the opposite of what it's supposed to do (for example, if I did a spell to protect my house, I might have thoughts that it would inflict danger on the house and residents instead).

It's making me a bit concerned that the spells will either not work, or, worse, cause the opposite things to happen, so I've stopped casting for the time being.

I'm just wondering if anyone has experienced this and knows a way to cope with it, or if there's a way to ensure that the thoughts won't interfere with my casting.Or would it be better to simply wait until my mental health improves before resuming casting?

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This thread has been moved to Misc Topics from General Info.

This is actually a very common experience in my experience. This is why practicing grounding and centering before, during, and after a spell is such an amazing thing. I don't know too much on centering but I have heard it can help with this problem while spell casting.

Grounding It's an amazing thing to do to help get rid of any unwanted thoughts before a spell. Having anger, netagive thoughts, doubt, and anything related to those three can prevent the spell from working or decrease the success rate. In my experience thoughts, intentions, and doubt have a huge impact on the spell.

When you ground yourself to the earth you're releasing any unwanted thoughts before the spell. Even do it after the spell if you feel like your after-spell thoughts can have an impact on the spell.

Thanks for you reply! I have found grounding to be quite helpful. Thank you for reminding me of it; I sometimes get rather lazy and don't spend as much time on it as perhaps I should. My obsessions do override things like that sometimes, but I definitely think spending more time on grounding would help. :)

First of all, I would like to explain that even though an intrusive thought is most often unwanted, it is just not like any other unwanted thought, which just passed through the mind of a normally wired person. Certainly all of us have thoughts that do not comply with our core believes and accepted models of behavior. However, intrusive thoughts are very persisting, and they often bring forth also a strong sense of anxiety. They arise most frequently in the brains and minds of people, who already have natural tendency towards general anxiety disorder and in some cases perfectionism and obsessive compulsive disorders or any combination of all of these. An intrusive thought, which persist in the brain of very anxious and or ocd person should never be mistaken for unwanted thought passing briefly though the mind of a brain, which has normal psychology and brain chemistry (connectivity). Simply because the level of intensity and the distress caused does not compare and cannot compare. Just ignoring the intrusive thought, due to its intensity and respective physical reaction, is often beyond the reach of the person, without doing a lot self-realization and some internal work. To begin with there is some internal process, fueled possibly by additional past experiences, which triggers their appearance. For a person to tackle the symptom they need to find the cause for its appearance.

I would agree that in normal circumstances grounding and some meditation work would work. However, if an intrusive thought brings forth full blown anxiety such practices are last on your mind because the body, the mind and your emotions are all in distressed state. The body will be looking for a shelter to try to calm down, the mind will be trying to analyse the situation and make sure that you survive the danger. The danger of course is often not really life threatening at all. The emotions will be all over the place.

Additionally, anxiety in its strongest physiological form of expression causes shortness of breath and heart beat increase. One needs to take care first of bringing their breathing back to normal, which would calm down the heart rate. First step is the realization of the nature of these type of thought that it is not like any normal thought wanted or not, but it is intrusive. Once this is established, you need to realize that these thoughts are product of your brain and its inner workings rather than product of your intend or will. This will allow you to accept them, without trying to push them away or make them vanish out of being. Just observe them, but try to not engage with them and just let them go. Do not be in rush, but allow some time to learn to not focus on them. Try to focus instead on what you want to do next. For example grounding or some meditation work. Allow everything that exists in you to be present, without resisting it because anxiety is all about resistance, control and fear. Acceptance is opposite of resistance. Being present and accepting all your states removes the need of control because if you can cope with something you do not need to control it. Believing in your capability and resolve to survive helps with fear. Self-compassion helps with acceptance. Changes within you will not gonna happen immediately. You have to train your brain to actually adopt this approach in favor of its natural anxious approach to things and this takes time and practice.

It will be good for you, if you actually do some insight meditation on the changing nature of things.

I personally will never do magical workings, while I am anxious or have intrusive thoughts. I take care of them first by changing my internal view of the things that triggers them, by using self-realization, insight meditation and then grounding. For me magical workings are all about being in the flow, and being in state of anxiety and having intrusive thoughts simply do not allow me to be in the flow of things.

Thank you for your reply, Artindark.

My intrusive thoughts are a result of OCD (professionally diagnosed). I should have specified that in the original post. That's part of why I was concerned; they become so overwhelming and vivid that I start to believe them.

Thanks for your recommendations on how to handle the anxiety that comes with the intrusive thoughts. It's a bit overwhelming sometimes. The breakdown on how to recognize and accept the intrusive thoughts definitely seems helpful. I'll try the meditation technique, as well; I have found meditation in general to be helpful for my overall anxiety levels.

I think it would probably just be better for me to take a break from magickal workings in general until I make more progress in dealing with my OCD.

Thanks again for your reply. I really appreciate it.