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Let's face it ... we all have forbidden thoughts and plenty of them every day! If we truly pay attention to our immediate thoughts, free associations, self-talk, or whatever you wish to call them, it would really freak us (and others) out! We have all sorts of impulses and thoughts that we certainly wouldn't want our mothers to know about (or our spouses, our children, God, or anyone else for that matter). And if we are running for political office, we sure wouldn't want the voters to know them either!
Perhaps we want to run over a co-worker we have conflicts with who we happen to see in the parking lot as we drive by. Maybe we want to have sex with our best friend's spouse or our co-worker. Or we'd like to slap our teen who is talking in a sassy way to us. Maybe we really do want to shake the baby when he or she cries in the middle of the night. And of course there are all the eating and drinking impulses to deal with each and every day. Yes, we really do want to eat the whole gallon of ice cream or maybe the whole box of cookies. Or, we really do want to drink the whole bottle of wine or have that second or third beer. You get the picture. There are so many thoughts and impulses that cross our mind every minute of every waking hour that it would be disturbing to focus on any one of them. So, forbidden thoughts are a way of life. What do we do about them?
First, it is important to recognize that they exist, everyone has them, and then don't really cause much harm unless you act on them. As I have discussed in several previous PT blog posts, perhaps the most important thing to remember that will predict success in life is to control impulses. Just because you have an itch doesn't mean you have to scratch it! Sure, we want to eat the whole cake, yell at our boss, sleep in rather than go to work, have sex with our neighbor, and slap our child but we don't do it. We count to 10 instead or find other productive and healthy and distracting ways to cope with our impulses. We try to control our environment, find productive distractions, or engage in a behavior that takes us away from our thoughts.
So, while everyone has forbidden thoughts not everyone manages these impulses and thoughts very well. Working on doing so is certainly the right thing to do for ourselves and for those around us.
Yes, we do have an id as Freud described. But our ego and superego can help to keep that id in check.
So, what do you think?
