Is it healthy or normal to repress socially unacceptable tho

Guilt as opposed to understanding that it is normal?

Repress as opposed to cultivate and act on?

It's very hard to change someone else's feelings about something and even harder to change your own. If you feel guilty you might also realize that it is perfectly normal, yet the guilt will still be present.

How could you possibly cultivate and act on a thought that would make people shudder?

My stance on this is, generally, that being frightened and ashamed of thoughts is not only unproductive, but somewhat dangerous - I say this because I believe that it is the impulse/thought that we cannot bear to acknowledge, and that we hastily repress, or suppress, or pretend we didn't have, or feel awful about, that does harm - rather than just acknowledging calmly that we have such thoughts, or emotions, and moving on. I believe they do harm if not calmly faced because when thoughts/impulses get denied, we start, or can start, doing stupid things that CAN cause harm, like projecting them onto others and hating them, or hating ourselves, or developing obsessions with our thoughts/feelings, and suchlike - they go feral, as it were, and hunt for odd releases.


There is a rider to this. If we have strong impulses to do harm, or hurt ourselves, or other really negative things, then I think that dewlling on such thoughts can be really unhealthy - eg if we obsess constantly about how much we hate someone, or some institution, or how sexually satisfying it would be to rape someone, or sexually abuse a child - do you get my driftt? I think these fixations hurt us - because, in a sense, we become what we focus on, and, for people with poor impulse control, such persistent fantasizing seems to lead sometimes to harmful action.

So - face 'em calmly, don't run from them, accept them, and say goodbye to them, if they are ethically unacceptable (whole can of worms there - I mean if they are hurtful ones, I guess).

Er, did that help at all? LOL!

Oh, yes, thinking about most socially unacceptable things IS normal!

Perhaps by not understanding that it is normal and then obsessing on it to the point that you either do not care that it's wrong or that you start to justify it.

Dlowan said it well. Everyone has these thoughts, the best way to deal with them is to understand that it's normal and to move on.

Ways to deal with it that do not involve the crucial moving on part can be dangerous (or not).

Thanks, but I wasn't looking for any particular advice for my life. I just wanted to see how other people respond to this common problem. And don't worry, I don't plan on murdering or raping anybody ever.

Should you just skip straight to repressing the thoughts, or should you examine them first and then decide what course of action to take?

Or perhaps not should you... but do you?

Well, I think such thoughts should be calmly looked at, then let go - not so much repressed- just cjhoose to move onto other thoughts.

I take it some of them are real possible courses of action, though? I guess I would examine them and consider them, if they are worthy of consideration. Not sure what sort of thought you are thinking of, here.

I mean, lots of things were once socially unacceptable, and are now seen as good. No decent woman would have been seen without a skirt that reached her feet, once, for instance, or entered university...

Perhaps you might give an example or two, to clarify?

I'm talking about universally unacceptable subjects. Or at least, I would think that most respectable people would frown on this sort of behavior.
I've never had this thought, but if you thought one day about having sex with your son, you would probably try to get that image out of your head as soon as possible. You would feel guilty even though you have no intention of doing anything like that and take some time to wonder how that image ever arrived in your mind.
Just an idea so grotesque that, even though it is a product of your own mind, you can't to think about it any longer.

I can't add anything to what I have already said, then, Individual.

Perhaps others can.

You said: "Thanks, but I wasn't looking for any particular advice for my life. I just wanted to see how other people respond to this common problem."

It is difficult to respond to a question put by you, however generally one may mean what one says, without appearing to give you (the asker) advice! LOL!

I love Tarintino movies for this exact reason. his characters do what I think i'd like to do and man is it good to see some on take revenge in the most bloody of ways on screen. We all have a dark side and Tarintino films pretty much are the picture book of mine.

I always thought of it as kind of forced in there from our childhood and growing with the media and the standard of morals that we are taught to believe in. It's so engraved into are minds that we when when we even think of socially taboo thoughts we repress them of fear that that is who we truly are, and we are afraid of accepting our own thoughts because we are raised to do so, the whole modern era is mass producing fear.

So true

i don't know about modern era, i'm sure it was worse beong alive in Europe through the Dark ages where guitl and supression of sexuality, thoughts and many other things were supressed infact i think the modern era is perhaps in some respects the most liberal if times

There's marketing that makes you fear ignorance, it such a trend/anti-trend. The modern era is more restrained because it is there on such a higher level. With the risk of sounding cliche or being taken worse, an example of media teaching us what to fear is the simple TV ads. If you don't wash your hair with this you won't look right and you won't get a good job and you'll live up living in the streets. If you don't use this cream you'll get acne and you'll be so repulsive you'll never find love. It's funny, In Bowling for Columbine, Marylin Manson sums it up quite well.

Guilt is as valid as the origional thought it followed.
Guilt should be listened to (I would rather not dwell on it though myself) and is as valid as the origional thought it followed. It is natural to have thoughts or feelings that are not and would not be publically or culturally accepted and it is just as natural to supress or not act on these thoughts. We can only know that something is "good" by the knowledge of something "bad". To have that knowledge the "bad" must exist. If we have a thought it is often further processed by our conscience and usually before its actual action. When this happens we draw from our knowledge, beleifs and other thoughts to affect the origional thought. We base some of these on previous experience, beleifs and culture.
This is called thinking.