An intrusive thought is something that we all experience from time to time. An intrusive thought is when you have an unwanted and involuntary thought, image, or idea that is upsetting or distressing pop into your mind. Some people realize that these thoughts are not based on reality and they can easily brush them off and move on to a next thought. While others have a hard time dealing with these intrusive thoughts and find themselves in a destructive thought loop. Most people find these types of thoughts disturbing and spend a lot of time questioning their reality because of it. Intrusive thoughts are more common and frequent for someone who experiences depression and/or anxiety. Below are some ways that you can handle these intrusive thoughts if they do come into your mind and disrupt your thinking.
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with psychotherapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, and couples with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, and life transitions.
Identify the thought
The first step is really to just notice that you are having the intrusive thought. This can be harder than it seems. Most people are not in tune of every thought that pops into their head. Sometimes they will become aware of their thoughts after they have been worrying about something or have been thinking about something for awhile. We have so many thoughts each day that it is a hard to notice all of them. Like any new habit, it will take a lot of practice to accomplish this.
Intrusive thoughts usually have a negative impact on your mood in which it makes you feel bad, disturbed, anxious, sad, and/or worried. Intrusive thoughts may come into your head as an image, an idea, or a statement. You should start to become more mindful of your thoughts and try to decipher if a thought is an intrusive thought or a regular thought that does not impact you as much.
An example of an intrusive thought would be while you are waiting for the subway train, you get an image in your head that someone is going to jump in front of the train. This may make you feel scared or concerned about your surroundings. The image in your head may upset or disturb you. While a non-intrusive thought may be thinking about what you are going to have for dinner tonight.
Another example of an intrusive thought is having a thought, “You are worthless and no one likes you.” This can cause you to feel down on yourself and decrease your self-esteem. You may think that just because you had this thought then it must be true. It could cause you to become so upset that you then distance yourself from others who care about you. This will then make you feel that this thought is even more valid. While in actuality you probably are not worthless and there are probably people out there that do like you. Just because this random thought popped into your mind, it does not make it true.
Redirect the thoughts
Once you are able to identify that you experiencing an intrusive thought, then you next want to allow your brain to move on to the next thought. You want to be able to label this thought as an intrusive thought and not give it weight so you can move past it quickly.
You should be able to tell yourself that this is just a random thought that popped into your head and there is no evidence in front of you that makes it true. The next step is to the re-direct your thoughts onto something else. You may need to distract yourself to do this. Using the example above of waiting for the subway, you may tell yourself that this is only an intrusive thought and everything seems safe around you. Next, you will put on a Podcast or read a book on your Kindle App as you wait for the train to help re-direct your thoughts.
A phrase to help you remember these steps is:
Identify -> Accept -> Redirect
Practice Self-Care
If you do experience intrusive thoughts and it rattles you, then you want to practice some self-care. You may feel too upset to go directly into a distraction. So maybe you take some deep breaths and do something that will soothe you. There are some Apps that you can download for your phone that will help you breathe slower. If you were jolted by an intrusive thought, you want to bring your heart rate back down and relax a bit before moving on. And be kind to yourself. Our brains work in weird ways and it means absolutely nothing if a crazy thought appears in your mind. Don’t blame yourself or put yourself down for having a random thought.
Get Support
For someone who experiences anxiety and/or depression, they may experience more intrusive thoughts than others. These intrusive thoughts may also be hard to identify as such and therefore play on loop. It can be hard to sort through what is reality and what is just a thought on replay. If you experience this, then it is important to reach out to others for help. You can talk to someone you trust about these thoughts so that they can help you realize that these thoughts don’t have any reality to them. Or you can see a mental health therapist to get help to decrease these thoughts and their impact on your daily life. You don’t have to tackle these thoughts alone.
Your Thoughts Are Just Thoughts
Just because a thought pops into your mind, it does not make it true. You need to realize that your thoughts are just that- thoughts. You want to always take the next step to ask yourself to come up with evidence to prove if this thought is real or not. When it comes to intrusive thoughts, you will have a hard time finding clear evidence to show that this image, idea, or thought is actually true.
Rationalize Your Thoughts
Once you recognize that this is an intrusive thought then you may need to reassure yourself as to why this is such. You should take some time to rationalize all of your thoughts. Some thoughts may be easier to rationalize than others. If you find that some thoughts are hard to rationalize then you can most likely identify them as intrusive and irrational thoughts. It is important to recognize them as such and place them out of your mind. The more you practice this throughout your day, the better and quicker you will get to rationalizing your thoughts and not feeling impacted by them.
It takes a lot of practice to get to a point that you can recognize and identify your intrusive thoughts as such. And then it takes even more practice to recognize that these thoughts are meaningless and random therefore you can move onto the next thought. If you find that the thought impacts you in a negative way then you may to the extra steps to take some deep breaths and then distract yourself. If you find you are struggling with your intrusive thoughts then it may be time to reach out to a mental health therapist to help you.
Courtney Glashow, LCSW
is a licensed psychotherapist practicing in Hoboken, New Jersey. She specializes in helping teens and adults with anxiety, depression, and life transitions through counseling. Courtney can help NY or NJ residents through telehealth (video/phone) therapy sessions as well.
