How do you get horrible, horrible, images out of your head?

Try to remember the faces of your classmates from when you were a child.

You got some hard shit lying around? Down it. Or, funny as it may seem, watch some TV.

@LeotCol and @Symbeline both good suggestions. Thank you.

Refrain from thinking of Sarah Jessica Parker naked. Neigh good can possibly come of such a hideous vision.

Star Wars.
Or play with a pet. :)

Or play this

This can be so hard. For me, I use imagery. First, I sometimes need to acknowledge the image and somehow imagine it floating or flying away (sometimes I picture the image growing wings and flying off or tying it to a balloon and letting it go). Then I try to replace it with other images that are soothing.

Play a few rounds of this.

An old video like The African Queen or anything nice and light – Mary Poppins maybe? – would help do it for me. Also, maybe a brisk walk outside; particularly with a friend.

Alcohol.

Other images like this, this, and like this

Play a timed game like bejeweled. You can get lost in it, kind of zoned out, and determined to hit a certain score.

thank you!!

I go out and put holes in paper. Or turn clay pigeons into clay dust.

focus your min do something else. Play a game, read, watch tv, try and remember memories or what you did that morning with the senses smells, the people you saw etc Oh I have another one.. go on Fluther ;)

I have the same problem every time I go to sleep.

I personally think it’s my imagination – I think up scenerios which arean’t in a cat in hells chance possible!
Having an imagination is fantastic but when your on your own you literally can’t controll what your thinking, all my fears bundle together.

If this is the case then I have no help really. What type of images are you seeing?

Hard work and happy music.

I have this problem from time to time (obsessive thoughts, which can be images or words). In the immediate short run, I focus very hard on another (happier) image or sing to myself (in my head) very loudly. As soon as humanly possible, try to lose yourself in something else like a stupid TV show. Good luck!

Talk to someone – anyone – about anything, just blah blah blah, to switch your mind to something else. Better not to be alone if at all possible until it subsides a bit.

My experience is the opposite. I have seen a lot of really, really unpleasant things and I find that if I sit down with a close person and describe exactly what I saw and how it made me feel and what parts of it were troubling to me, I am much better able to release the hold these troubling images have on my brain.

If I do things to mask the feelings or try to distract myself, it can just make it worse. I just jump in with both feet and really assess what I saw, what the image means to me, and then I can start to let it go.

Even if you have to find someone via an anonymous blog or call line then do as @Kayak8 says and talk to someone. I know from experience there are things I didn’t want to share with anyone who knew me because they were so frightening to me and I’d feel pitiful afterwards for anyone to know what had happened to me. When I kept these things to myself then so much anger and weirdness built up, you can’t imagine or maybe you know exactly what that feels like. I’m telling you though, better late than never to talk it out and have some release instead of destroying yourself.

Drugs….. dope, coke, whatever’s ur tipple.

Talk. Good talk. With a good person.