thenewdeal

So my quandary is when the brain thinks of a thought say a bear it forms a nuerochemical pattern or pathway associated with that thought. By thinking about "bear" the brain reinforces that pattern in the brain ie "use it or lose it". And when the brain is busy thinking about something else that pathway weakens. So say you have two unrelated thoughts positive and negative, bacon and the death of a loved one for example, by just having those two thoughts simultaneously present in your brain a connection or association be it weak could form between the two. There is no logical reason they should be associated except for the fact they popped in the brain at about the same time. There is now a neural link between two unrelated thoughts and the more one thinks about it the stronger that superficial link becomes, creating a snowball effect. Is there a way to sever this link? I know the more I think about something the less my brain wants to keep thinking about it and wants to think about anything else, but I don't know what this mechanism is called. I also know synaptic pruning plays a role in trimming thoughts and connections that are underused. I've made a disturbing association between two things I don't want connected and not wanting them to connect seems only to connect them more, as I am painfully aware that on a brain biochemical level I'm only reinforcing this association whenever I think about it. I don't know how to break this self reinforcing chain in my mind. I used to think that thinking was a neutral act, I didn't understand that I reinforce whatever I'm thinking about. Now that I'm aware that I cannot think about things without charging or strengthening them in my mind neurologically I'm afraid that whatever I think about particularly negative things have the chance to get stuck in my brain. Like a hamster wheel that only gets progressively faster the more you think about it. I suspect that the answer might lie in caloric conservation and management, thinking about a thought, firing that pattern of synapses repeatedly depletes its chemical resources so the brain almost automatically switches its firing and thinks about something else while said synapses replenish themselves. Again I am uneducated in this field of brain science so any information as to how these things work would be illuminating. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

So let me start by saying I do have clinically diagnosed OCD I take medication for it and have a therapist, its a constant struggle but generally I am able to overcome my ocd's through logic and reasoning but this time I'm stuck in a rut and hope that maybe someone with a neuroscience background might be able to help me. The problem is regarding something I like to call hamster in a wheel logic, basically I came across someone who told me that the very act of thinking about something strengthens that connection or neural network associated with that thought and so he said that the more you think about something the more you will think about it (in the future) because you're strengthening the particular thought just by thinking about it thus making you think about it even more and more like an endless loop that only speeds up but goes nowhere. Now this is obviously a gross oversimplification of how neural networking in the brain works and is blatantly false but I just don't know/understand why it is false. I know that the more I think about something the longer I try to focus on one thing, the more my mind tends to wander, especially if I am for-example studying George Washington in a history class, as soon as that class is over and I no longer have to focus my attention on thinking about George Washington I completely forget about him unless someone or something brings him up (I know Pavlov's dog). I guess its like listening to a song too many times or watching the same movie numerous times, eventually you get sick of it if you have too much. If any of you understand how this forgetting mechanism in the brain works at least from the point of view of how neural connections are strengthened or weakened, it would be greatly appreciated. Now the real issue, my younger gullible and ignorant self buying into this faulty logic started making random associations between things that I liked about and horrible thoughts. These associations are completely random and have no logical connection except that one thought randomly popped into my head while thinking about the other and defacto this random association was "strengthened" and created. So that whenever I think about one thought I instantly also think about the other one even though they have no relation to each other. Now I like everyone else have my share of random disturbing thoughts along with whatever thousands of thoughts that pop into my head and that's okay the context of a bad thought doesn't really bother me its this faulty logical system I've created in my mind that bothers me. Its like a logic virus program in my operating system. Ill give you an example, I skateboard and while I was skateboarding I was doing kickflips and while kickflipping I randomly I thought about this crazy marine who held me up at gunpoint( it was a pretty scary situation) and just like that now whenever I kickflip or even think about kickflipping I think about that crazy marine even though kickflipping has nothing to do with this marine. Now these disturbing associations are starting to increase in my other thoughts. Anyways thank you to anyone who read this and any help in debugging this virus logic program from my brain would be greatly appreciated, thanks again.