The Biblical Way to Live with the Intrusive Thoughts
A horrible experience inside a floating tank
Hello lovelies,
I hope you’re well and your week has been awesome.
Last Saturday (29th June 2024) I went to a floating centre with a friend. It was part of my curiosity because floating has been touted as improving anxiety symptoms and benefitting your physical health. Why not?
However, it didn’t go so well.
Trigger warning: health anxiety
In retrospect, I think it was induced by the fact that the floating centre has this New Age vibe. I'm always cautious about the New Age as I'm a practising Catholic so I avoid yoga and other spiritual practices. My fault as well that I didn't check the interior vibes/images from the website, or maybe I did but it's only available a little. I saw the spiritual decoration statuettes and was immediately on guard, my fight-or-flight response was up. But then again, I tried normalising my breathing and knew they could serve as decor.
Inside the tank, my brain couldn't shut off, ever. Although it wasn't entirely about the vibe, there was a thought after thought popping up thinking that many things could go wrong.
The floating tank.
It started on the wrong foot because as soon as I got into the water, the saltwater stung my hand. I hopped out to apply some vaseline, but it triggered my danger alert system.
During the floating, the racing thoughts came from the what-if scenarios, for example:
- what if my body absorbs the salt and can't break it so now I would get kidney/liver problems
- in the waiver email that we read and signed before coming, it mentioned that if we're diabetic in any form or with any heart disease we need to consult with our GP first. I don't have any of those, but then the thought propped up again: what if I did but never caught and would finally show up in this tank experience?
- what if the salt water that got into my ear could lodge in and cause infection
The entire experience was likely worsened by my head position, which in a way felt so heavy (I used the neoprene pillow but then let it go some minutes later), so all the blood was probably flowing downwards and made me feel nauseous/dizzy.
Also, I don't know if other people noticed it, but I felt a little bit of saltiness in my throat/tongue. That was probably a phantom reaction because the salt couldn't possibly get into my throat through skin absorption and the water didn't reach around my lips so there was no way it went by ingestion.
I kept reciting some prayers inside the tank and humming some hymns, not because I was afraid. I'm not claustrophobic and was fully aware that the door was completely in my control. I left it ajar for safety reasons so the door was not the source of my torture.
I kept praying and humming hymns because I wanted to silence the anxious thoughts that kept attacking me like in spiritual warfare. I didn't know why I was triggered, nothing was a rational source: I could get out of the tank any time I wished, nothing was locked, and there was no physical danger. I also rationally knew that the dizziness was due to my head position and it would absolutely get better once I was vertical again. It was also JUST a one-hour experience, and it wasn't physically challenging by any means.
So why, why was my mind behaving like this, spewing anxious thought after anxious thought, upon which I needed to call upon my guardian angel and patron saint and recite the rosary to ward off...
The thought that floating was MEANT to be relaxing but the inability to relax at all made me spiral down further, thinking that I couldn't achieve the objective of the money I paid.
So the one-hour supposedly relaxing experience turned into a one-hour spiritual warfare where my mind battled itself (or the anxious thoughts it spewed off) by challenging the thoughts rationally and calling upon help from my faith.
My racing thoughts were heightened by the wish that the session would finally end so that my psychological torture would disappear. And so, when the last 5-min music played, I was relieved (still in the middle of my rosary chanting).
If someone asked, why I didn't get out of the tank when I felt uncomfortable and then got back in, that was because I also wanted to challenge myself. After all, I knew that it was my brain playing a trick on me, trying to make up stories about threats in a new unfamiliar environment without any distractions. So I wanted to stay, but on the other hand, I wanted to wave a white flag to flee the battle.
I won't go floating ever again.
Reflection
I found a good Reddit thread on intrusive thoughts based on Thomistic rational psychology. Also, summarising from other similar threads, and the current Bible study I’m engaging with – the Bible in a Year by Fr. Mike Schmitz on the Hallow app, everything that happens in our life happens for us. Each thing is allowed by God to happen. He’s not on auto-pilot. Our living God knows what’s happening in our life, yes, every single one of us.
Including intrusive thoughts. If you struggle with this predicament, remember how St Paul experienced thoughts in the flesh but Jesus said that His Grace was enough.
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
2Cor 12:7
I’m on the book of Job in my Bible study, and yesterday Fr Mike beautifully remarked that we might not understand right away why God allowed Job, a pious man, to experience all those. But the Bible is His love letter to us. And since I’m still in the early chapters, I don’t have any specifics to say or to conclude about my intrusive thoughts. Hence, I title this post as “to live with”, instead of “to get rid of”.
Rationally, I know that I need to submit all my anxious thoughts to the Lord. But it sometimes is futile. I didn’t see any relief right away. And perhaps, it’s indeed my cross that I need to take up to walk on this faith and healing journey.
My note I took yesterday morning when pondering upon the daily reading and this case of my intrusive thoughts highlighted the part of:
“I know what to do, but I still believe I can’t.” This is a problem of cogitative power – about judgement, instead of just the cognitive or rational.
Therefore, the practical steps for a believer living with intrusive thoughts are:
To keep praying the rosary, to keep saying our prayers, to regularly receive the Eucharist, and to nurture our faith in the truth.
From my experience, our fear-based judgement will not wane immediately. It’s like oceanic waves, there are days when it’s peaking and days when it’s normal. I noticed the intrusive thoughts became heavier recently, while they weren’t much of a problem a month ago.
By submitting to the Lord about our predicament in handling the intrusive thoughts, we allow Him to accept who we are.
Why is this important?
Intrusive thoughts have different causes. I don’t know what mine are. And because I don’t know, I ask the Healer to shine light on the root cause.
It is by bringing the thoughts into the light that will we allow God to act on them. Surrendering ourselves, baggage and intrusive thoughts included, to the foot of the Cross helps.
Thomistic rational psychology also points out that the root cause and the war between our thoughts and cognitive power can manifest in our bodily symptoms. Well, do you notice this central idea is what “The Body Keeps the Score” is based on?
I haven’t read the book, btw. Reviews are welcomed.
Bring the thoughts to Him, showing Him what they are where you are, even though you don’t know the root cause and how to completely heal from it. That’s the beauty of our faith, we don’t have to think of everything alone. We don’t have to walk alone.
This week, I also had a lovely video call with my friend, Chang Shuang Min. She’s a thriving life and executive coach from Taiwan.
When I shared my intrusive thoughts problem inside the floating tank, she explained to me that it was quite normal as the mind became less busy, it kept making up stories to occupy it, especially in those anxious people.
Moreover, what she usually does is just ignore them because thoughts are just thoughts. I found a striking similarity to Thomistic psychology which says we are greater than our thoughts.
Shuang Min also masters the art of detaching from her feelings when she writes or recounts a story of her past. They are quite emotional stories but she managed to share hers neutrally without re-experiencing the journey.
This is my problem because retelling old stories, heavily charged with emotions, would make me walk the journey again. Hence, it can be triggering for me.
She mentioned the same thing that I understood from the self-induced secondhand trauma experience, that our minds can become deceptive by altering our memories about some facts.
Also, I recommend you to have a chat with Shuang Min. She can be contacted on her LinkedIn. You can have a complementary 1:1 initial call to help you determine if her service is the right match for your needs.
It works this way:
Suppose you experience a thing. Your mind, during the event, might register it objectively. But perhaps, an hour later when you reflect upon it, your emotions could take over and impart some nuance to the event. In a way, your memories have been altered. The objective facts might not change. You could still perfectly recall who said which or what the weather looked like. But the emotions you latch onto the event will be carried over in the future whenever you recall that event.
Our brain couldn’t go so far as to retrace the original event. It’s because of the path of the least resistance, which is a natural thing for organisms to do in nature. The shortest and easiest source of information is accessible to the brain from the last time you remember the event, not from the actual timeline of the event.
Therefore, when you recall a traumatic event, it will be inevitable for the deposited emotional triggers to come with it. And, the more you recall the event, the closer the pathway to our present moment is. Hence, the trauma perpetuation.
This is why breaking the bond of traumatic past events by telling our bodies that we’re now safe takes a serious effort. Fortunately, our brain is plastic.
Neuroplasticity is what allows us to introduce a new habit, a healthier and safer one. The plastic brain can learn that we’re in the present and that the past and future hold nothing against us in the current moment.
This is what I tried when writing down this experience. Although it was quite unpleasant for me, I managed to detach from the floating tank experience. My body was no longer in that floating centre, battling intrusive thoughts, as I wrote down this Substack post.
Instead of ruminating over the intrusiveness, I’m constantly training my body to recognise the arising thoughts and send them off properly to where they belong.
Offer them up to the foot of the Cross.
That’s all for today, lovely folks. I wish you a great weekend and the week ahead.
As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments.
And I wish you a lovely weekend ahead.
Highlights of the week
Visited Carfin Grotto, Glasgow.
Homemade foods
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Until next time,
