Psychological Safety Part 2: Intrusive Thoughts

Although my psychology studies were so long ago that some constructs I was taught have been completely altered, there are some things that have remained.

The concepts of "norms" is well established. We humans generally all experience a full spectrum of psychological states. We all experience periods of sadness that on their own, or sustained for long periods would be indistinguishable from clinical depression. We all express elation and euphoria that sustained for long periods would be diagnosed as delusion or mania. We can even have auditory hallucinations - we hear things that aren't there but it is no cause for concern if it is not repeated.

We all experience trauma events that can mark us for long periods but in the "norm" of the human experience we are actually designed for that so we generally creep back to homeostasis. We evolved in pretty harsh environments so we are designed to experience a degree of suffering and trauma.

But we obviously also know that these traumatic or severe events can have lasting and debilitating impacts. One of the key indicators of the severity is intrusive thoughts. When the event is replayed in our minds at random or unexpectedly. When the memories are triggered and we stop being able to function "normally" - whatever the hell that is.

I have only experienced it in small doses. Living through the Canberra bushfires where a group of us were forced to defend our property by hand (literally with rakes and water backpacks) as the fire front swept down upon us. For weeks following that event the sight of someone running - anywhere - would trigger this anxiety and sense that we were under attack again.

On our round the globe journey when my 6 year old daughter fell from monkey bars and broke her arm in a remote town on the China/Vietnam border. Randomly at night I would close my eyes and see her body paused in mid air at that horrible 45 degree angle with her little arm outstretched.

But these are the negative intrusions. We don't often hear about the positive intrusions.

But this happened the other day - not to me but my brother.

He and I went surfing on a Victorian Autumn day that defied superlatives. Clear skies, beautiful swell, green water, offshore winds - not many surfers in the water. We surfed for over 2 hours before I paddled in just before him.

As I chatted to a few people on the beach he came running up to me and asked excitedly if I had seen his last wave. He had been "spat out" of a barrel.

Now for the uninitiated - this is probably the pinnacle of surfing.

Firstly - the barrel. This means a wave that breaks at the perfect speed over the perfect bottom contour so that the wave throws outwards in a sheet of water. If you are lucky and skilled enough as a surfer you can position yourself INSIDE the wave. So this sheet of water throws outwards over your head and you move horizontally across the wave. You end up being locked inside this moving, gurgling, rumbling, roaring, moving glass cave.

THEN...in an even more dramatic display of physics, a perfect wave will roll along trapping the white water inside this moving cave. In rare circumstances the whitewater inside the wave gets pushed along then has nowhere to go - so it erupts out the opening you are staring out of.

This is known as the "spit". Watch waves at Hawaii's Banzai Pipeline and the spit is like a canon that blow surfers off their boards. Even in smaller waves it is such a strange and fantastic phenomena that even a riderless wave that spits far off down the beach in the distance will be met with a chorus of hoots or exclamations from a pack of surfers.

So there was my brother - locked inside this perfect green watery cavern before being pushed out into the sunshine as the wave exploded behind him.

He was very quiet as we walked up to the car and he just had this distant, thinking smile on his face. I could almost see the replay of the wave running through his mind as he got dressed in the gravel carpark.

But it was later that it struck me about the power of peak natural phenomena.

I texted him to ask how some gardening was going and he sent this beautiful simple reply:

"Yep, all good. I keep having this intrusive memory about the wave...."

I imagined him - working away in the garden - and his mind suddenly flashing to an all consuming, pixel perfect video replay of dropping into the wave, pulling inside it as the water arced over his head, the hole in front of him closing in as he raced to the exit then bursting out into the daylight with this loud WHOOOSH and a shower of water like a tropical downpour spraying over him.

An intrusive thought of the most glorious kind.

So I wondered how often people get this? I realised that mine will generally be about nature or an interaction with my family or a loved one. It will be a peak moment, energised, intensified, raw. The ocean, a wave, a mountain, a rainstorm, a rainstorm IN the mountains.

I have never had a positive intrusive thought about the last time I checked the internet.