Think of the brain as a pool of subconscious thoughts where only one can rise to the surface of consciousness. To do so, it must be more exciting than the other

Think of the brain as a pool of subconscious thoughts where only one can rise to the surface of consciousness. To do so, it must be more exciting than the other thoughts also competing for your awareness. The decision of what is exciting depends on your past reaction to such thoughts. If you're excited (even if not in a good way) at the thought of harming your children, it will cause more such images to get through the filter more. Because your brain thinks it's an important thought and needs conscious attention. The solution (and I'm not saying this is easy) is to discard these ideas as not worthy of your consideration. Tell yourself that they are not related to your life because you won't do what they say you could do. There was an article here on HN recently that used a nice analogy to explain the concept: The Chamber of Guf[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18259656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18259656