Think back to the last time you had a bad thought. The person who cut you off in traffic, a rebuke from your boss, your child being bullied at school (or worse still, you get the dreaded call that your child is the one doing the bullying). These are examples of incidents that can trigger bad thoughts and for most of us, it is not a big issue. We can differentiate between fantasy and reality and we have the moral fiber to either not act on those thoughts or, if we do, to act on them in a socially acceptable way.
For the vast majority of people, bad thoughts are just a part of life. We have them, we accept them for what they are, and either deal with them or dismiss them. Life goes on as normal. There is some argument in clinical circles that suppressing bad thoughts is detrimental to one’s emotional and physical well-being (and it also appears to be the case for good thoughts). So for most of us, it should be more of a question of appropriate expression and not how to suppress such thoughts. Suppressing negative thoughts or emotions tends to inhibit expressive behaviour and, over time, could lead to a range of more serious conditions.
Appropriate expression is the pressure valve that releases the negativity. However, for some people, the moral filters to behaviour are either impaired or non-existent and there is an inability to express or deal with these bad thoughts. And it is here where the inability to properly process bad thoughts can be terrifyingly destructive. In 1996, an intellectually impaired 28 year old man walked in to the Broad Arrow Cafe on the Port Arthur historic site in Tasmania, Australia and opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon. That person was Martin Bryant and by the end of his shooting spree 35 people would lose their lives, 21 others would be injured and a nation would be scarred forever.
What sparked this tragedy? Disregarding the conspiracy theories that arose in the media in the wake of the shooting, it appears to have been a series of events. Due to Bryant’s intellectual impairment, all involving bad thoughts – teasing from other children at school, being laughed at in a North Hobart restaurant, his father’s failed efforts to buy the “Seascape”, a bed and breakfast guest house, and the death of his two closest (and possibly only) friends, Helen Harvey and his father, Maurice – he was unable to deal with these incidents and they eventually culminated in what happened at Port Arthur. This was Bryant’s reaction to the accumulated bad thoughts in his life.
The first reaction to such tragedy is to argue that this was all the result of a mental disorder, probably more than one, and his intellectual impairment. Possibly, however that belies the fact that his father was able to manage his son and keep all the bad thoughts in check for more than 20 years. His father, and Helen Harvey, provided the outlet and acceptance necessary to prevent things from spiralling out of control. In another sense, by trying to make his life as normal as possible, it exposed him to the scorn of a world that tends to reject or ridicule anyone damaged or different.
Martin Bryant’s life and the tragic events at Port Arthur provide an extreme example of why it is wrong to suppress bad thoughts. Without the mental acuity to properly process such negative thoughts, they festered in his mind until they reached a point where he dealt with them in an entirely inappropriate way. A combination of counselling and medication may have prevented the overwhelming burden of paranoia, anxiety and rejection. This is not to excuse Bryant’s behaviour in any way, but rather an effort to try and understand why such things happen and to minimize the risk of them happening again. In Bryant’s case, the intellectual impairment was a contributing factor but it should never be thought of as a limiting factor that prevents the average person from reacting inappropriately to bad thoughts.
We have argued that bad thoughts for the average person are not really an issue and that appropriate expression is the best way of dealing with them and preventing them from causing physiological and psychological damage. Where the normal moral and behavioural filters are impaired or lacking, it may be necessary to seek treatment through a combination of psychological therapies and medication. The difficulty, of course, is in recognizing when such intervention is desirable or necessary. Dr Lee Baer’s excellent work “Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Obsessive Bad Thoughts” provides a comprehensive resource for recognising the warning signs and the range of treatments available.
Bad thoughts are an everyday part of life, but it is the inability to properly deal with them that can lead to functional difficulties and potentially escalate into something harmful or worse.
