The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
Writing things down in a lot of detail does seem to have this quality of both reducing the emotional load of whatever it is that thought is about, as well as diminishing the frequency of those intrusive thoughts over time.
Every Sunday: the week’s new conflicts and verdict changes — and nothing else.
Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
What I was told to do and what worked very well for me was to just write down the worst possible outcome that I was concerned about.
So it turns out that if you want to extinguish an intrusive thought, one of the best ways to do that is to journal about that particular thought extensively. So rather than the earlier strategy for intrusive thoughts where they're just on loop, and intrusive because they're on loop and present, but their content isn't disturbing, when that thought is disturbing and intrusive, we know that it's very useful to script out as much detail about that particular thought and the things around it as possible.
And by putting a lot of clear structure to what the thought is exactly and to putting some thought and structure onto paper about what that pattern of not healthy thinking relates to, people often achieve tremendous relief in a fairly short amount of time.
And again, the data really point to the fact that getting close to the specific details around those intrusive thoughts is going to be the best way to extinguish them.