Make the demons in my head go away

I have a similar issue, in that I'm very good at calling up excrutiatingly embarrassing memories at any given moment. I recently realized that I was addicted to the very minor adrenaline rush that such recall brings on. So when the memory comes up I direct my attention to that rush and concentrate on that, rather than on rehashing my horrible past foibles for the 10 billionth time.

One thing that will help you is to know this: This is fairly common. I had it. I suffered from very vivid and extremely disturbing obsessive intrusive thoughts in my mid twenties. I thought I was going nuts. I thought I was the only normal person in history who had this. It was such a relief to know how common it is. It is indeed a mild form of OCD, usually also related to depression. I can pinpoint exactly when it started and ended with me. My episode started with an excruciating nightmare I woke in the middle of.... and some how the imagery stuck with me. Prompted I think by a horror movie or something. The entire phenomena centered around the woman I lived with at the time — my first real intense adult relationship—which exacerbated the guilt and self disgust. And that was the trap. You have to see a shrink. There are layers of shit at work here. Deep — I mean DEEP seated feelings of things like inadequacy and guilt — that keeping you from letting go of what is normally 90% of the time are harmless intrusive images and thoughts. I was at that time terrified of being in the serious relationship. Deep deep down. And the thought that these horrible images of abuse could come into my mind, images from the news or from movies would pop in my head and I could not shake them. Yet I KNEW it was bullshit. I knew I was in love with this person and wasn't nuts. The tension between these these two mental states keeps the obsessive cycle going. I don't think going through this alone is wise. A shrink will give you cognitive and behavioral tools and exercises to alleviate the anxiety and rid your self of specific images and thoughts. You need to confide in somebody who is 100% objective. You need to be able to express thing with total honesty and hold nothing back. And it will go away. It only took a few visits to a shrink to really help. That combined with time and exercise to rid the body of tension/ depression. It has never reoccurred. See how normal and well adjusted I am? Um. Well the problem never reoccurred anyway.

http://www.kottke.org/07/03/zodiac

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_blocker are widely available and safe for a number of indications. Some psychiatrists have been experimenting with them to deal with post traumatic stress disorder. The idea is, after memory recall, the memory has to be reconsolidated. If there's a problem reconsolidating, one can lose that memory (to a certain extent, at least). So PTSD patients are given an acute dose of beta-blocker and asked to recall the traumatic experience in as much detail as possible and the blocker interferes with reconsolidation and thus relieves some of the impact of the memories. Phase 3 human trials were supposed to be finished any day now, but I'm not "in the know" so I don't know if it's an effective therapy. Results will probably become available within a few months (if the results are staggeringly good), a year or so (if the results are good) or in about a year and half.

I struggle with this. Various shrinks have all told me it's part of my anxiety disorder(s). Are you in your late 20's or early-mid 30's? I've been told that's when latent anxiety disorders come to the surface. As for artists/writers/etc, I kind of think that one of the reasons they come up with disturbing stuff is that they've got in their heads to begin with and use their art to stop obsessing about it. In addition to seeing a mental health professional, perhaps consider finding an artistic outlet for some of these things (as unsettling as it might feel to actually give these images form) . . . ?

Helped me to stop watching the news or reading news sites, unless I go straight to the politics/technology pages. I couldn't handle reading stories like that.

I agree with many of the above in filtering, skimming or avoiding the news at times ( or alot of the time). I have never been able to "empty my mind" at will but came up with a more practical solution for the immediate times- say at bedtime or 3am - which is, of course, the absolute worst for those hideous memories or thoughts. When the thoughts start overwhelming me, I start picturing & focusing on the image of white sheets hanging on a clothesline; flowing in the breeze - just white sheets. Another one is a white wall - just a white wall; another is white curtains in a breeze. You get the 'picture'. I realize this sounds silly, but it does work, most of the time. But you must focus only on that one image and THAT does take work.

If the images bother you that much, you might consider hypnosis. I have no personal experience with it, but it's something I would be willing to try. Perhaps the hypnotist will be able to figure out why you are imagining such scenarios and possibly get you to stop doing so.

Another tiny, practical suggestion for tonight: do some meditation-like activity that blanks the mind. The one I'm using these days is http://www.planarity.net/. It's a very simple game like untangling string. Do a few levels, and when the levels are at a level of complexity you like, you can just hit "scramble vertices" (the circled arrow icon at bottom right) rather than "I'm done; next level", to get a new puzzle of that complexity. I like level 4, not taxing at all, but involving enough that I forget about other things.