UNWANTED INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS: How to overcome sticky, frightening, obsessive, or disturbing thoughts

By MARTIN SEIF, PHD AND SALLY WINSTON , PSY.D 

Everyone has passing intrusive thoughts that seem to come from outside their control: The content may feel alien, absurd, or threatening, and may pass after a few weird moments. Intrusive thoughts can be frightening worries about what might happen to you or someone you care about, or what mistake you might make, or what terrible impulsive act you might possibly commit.  

For some people, intrusive thoughts are part and parcel of panic or intense anxiety. These types of intrusive thoughts feel like they are a result of, or about the anxiety itself, and they function to add more fear to the anxiety you are already experiencing. The intrusive thoughts keep the anxiety going and maintain the fear-producing spiral. So, for example, you might think, “What if I have a heart attack?” in the midst of a panic attack. Or you might envision yourself knocking people over as you rush to exit the room.  

However, there is another class of intrusive thoughts: Unwanted intrusive thoughts. These are stuck thoughts that cause great distress. They seem to come from out of nowhere, arrive with a distressing whoosh, and trigger anxiety, guilt, disgust, panic, or misery. The content of unwanted intrusive thoughts often focuses on sexual or violent or socially unacceptable images. Typical examples include killing someone, torturing a pet, stabbing or molesting a child, throwing someone (or yourself) out of a window or in front of a train, raping someone, taking off your clothes in public, or grabbing a stranger’s hand. Some refer to sudden doubts, like “Did I hurt someone or make a bad mistake and not realise it?” “What if I am not who I seem?” This is not a complete list, but it gives you a good sense of the content of these thoughts.  

People who experience unwanted intrusive thoughts become afraid that they might commit the acts they picture in their mind. They also fear that the thoughts mean something terrible about them. Many become ashamed and worried about these thoughts, and therefore keep them secret.  

Many unwanted intrusive thoughts have more benign content—repetitive doubts about relationships, decisions small and large, sexual orientation or identity, concerns about safety, religion, or death, or worries about questions that cannot be answered with certainty.  

The problem for people who have these thoughts—one estimate is that more than 6 million people in the United States are troubled by them—is that unwanted intrusive thoughts feel so threatening. That’s because anxious thinking takes over, and the thought—abhorrent as it might be—seems to have power that it does not. People tend to try desperately and urgently to get rid of the thoughts, which, paradoxically, fuels their intensity. The harder they try to suppress, distract, or substitute thoughts, the stickier the thought becomes.  

People bothered by intrusive thoughts need to learn a new relationship with them—that their content is irrelevant and unimportant. Virtually everyone has occasional weird, bizarre, socially improper, annoying, or violent thoughts. Our brains sometimes create junk thoughts, and these are just part of the flotsam and jetsam of our stream of consciousness.  

Junk thoughts are meaningless. If you don’t take them seriously or get involved with them, they dissipate and get washed away in the flow of consciousness. In reality, a thought—even a very scary one—is not an impulse. People with unwanted intrusive thoughts don’t have a problem with impulse control. On the contrary, their problem is one of overcontrol. They are trying to control their thoughts. And we all know what happens when you try not to think of pink elephants. However, sufferers get bluffed by their anxiety and become desperate for reassurance, which only works temporarily: People can become reassurance junkies. The only way to effectively deal with unwanted intrusive thoughts is to reduce one’s sensitivity to them. Not by being reassured that it won’t happen or is not true, but by rising above it.  

Unwanted intrusive thoughts are reinforced by getting entangled with them, worrying about them, struggling against them, and trying to reason them away. They are also made stronger by trying to avoid them. Leave the thoughts alone, treat them as if they are not even interesting, and they will eventually fade into the background.  

Here are the steps for changing your attitude and overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts:  

Label these thoughts as “intrusive.”  

• Remind yourself that these thoughts are automatic, unimportant, and not up to you.  

• Accept and allow the thoughts into your mind. Do not try to push them away.  

• Float and practice allowing time to pass.  

• Remember that less is more. Pause. Give yourself time. There is no urgency.  

• Expect the thoughts to come back again.  

• Continue whatever you were doing prior to the intrusive thought while allowing the anxiety to be present.  

Try not to:  

• Engage with the thoughts in any way.  

• Push the thoughts out of your mind.  

• Try to figure out what the thoughts “mean.”  

• Check to see if this is “working.’  

This approach can be difficult to apply. But for anyone who tries it for just a few weeks, there is an excellent chance that they will see a decrease in the frequency and intensity of unwanted intrusive thoughts. There are nine myths about thoughts in general that contribute to intrusive thoughts becoming stuck. Busting these myths with facts will go a long way toward helping keep such thoughts from getting stuck.  

Myth 1: Our Thoughts Are Under Our Control  

Fact: Many of our thoughts—perhaps most of our thoughts—are not under conscious control. There are times when we welcome this fact: An insight or inspiration can help solve a problem. Ask a poet or songwriter how she finds lyrics, and she might say it just comes to her. 

Belief in this myth leads to the common but unhelpful suggestion to replace negative thoughts with positive ones because that will help you control what you think. The facts indicate that you can deliberately think positive thoughts and distract your attention, temporarily, from unwanted thoughts to chosen ones. But thoughts you are trying to replace tend to persist and usually return even more forcefully. Research has shown that the more distressing the thought, the stronger the rebound after trying to suppress it. (Wegner, 1994)  

Myth 2: Our Thoughts Indicate Our Character  

Fact: Thoughts have nothing to do with character. Character is a reflection of how you lead your life and what you actually choose to do or not to do. Thoughts are what pass through your mind. Character is about the choices you make in life, not what pops into your mind. Everyone has pop-up thoughts they do not approve of.  

Myth 3: Our Thoughts Indicate the Inner Self  

This is the belief that whatever is in our mind is a reflection of our true thoughts and feelings, no matter how we might protest. Fact: Everyone has passing weird, aggressive, or crazy thoughts. If every thought spoke to underlying character, then 90 per cent of people would be weird, aggressive, or crazy. That is because about 90 per cent of people acknowledge having intrusive thoughts that they characterise as weird, aggressive, frightening, or crazy. And think about popular horror movies and TV shows: These awful, weird, aggressive, and crazy scenarios are thought up by normal, creative people.  

Myth 4: The Unconscious Mind Can Affect Actions  

Fact: Analysing the meaning of Freudian slips, automatic associations, and dreams are popular ways of trying to understand the complex workings of the unconscious mind. But the momentary thought of dropping your baby certainly does not reveal any unconscious wish to do harm. And the sudden thought that you could jump off the balcony because the railing is low does not reveal hidden unconscious suicidal wishes. A moment of doubt about sexual attraction or identity is not a “signal from below” that you are ignoring latent tendencies.  

Myth 5: Thinking Something Makes It Likely to Happen  

Fact: This is a complete misunderstanding of what is known about thoughts. Psychologists call this myth thought-action fusion (Amir et al, 2001, Salkovskis, 1985) or magical thinking. The fact is that a thought is not a message about what is going to happen. Similarly, a thought is not a prediction or warning of an awful future action or occurrence. Thoughts do not warn of plane crashes, automobile accidents, or natural disasters. And certainly our thoughts cannot make actions or events happen. Thoughts do not change probabilities in the real world. They do not move objects, nor can they hurt people.  

Myth 6: Thinking Something Makes It Unlikely to Happen  

This is the exact opposite of myth 5. An example is worrying about someone as a way of protecting them.  

Fact: Thoughts do not change probabilities in the real world. While worrying about someone might make you feel like you are doing something to protect them, in reality you are only training your brain to reinforce a cycle of worry.  

Myth 7: Only Sick People Have Intrusive or Weird Thoughts  

Fact: No one is entirely free of weird, repugnant, or disturbing passing thoughts. This means that just about everyone you know, including friends, colleagues, teachers, and doctors have also experienced intrusive thoughts. In fact, even Mother Theresa confirmed that she had unwanted intrusive thoughts (Teresa & Kolodiejchuk, 2007). So do your favourite celebrity and your pastor.  

Myth 8: Every Thought is Worth Thinking About  

Fact: Like cable TV, we have many different channels of thought going through our minds at the same time. It is impossible to think about them all, and some channels are just full of junk (like the infomercial channel or the local high school announcements). Not all are worthwhile to think about. But when an intrusive thought arrives with a whoosh—no matter the content—then, if you believe that all thoughts are worth thinking about (i.e., you believe that there are no junk channels of the mind), you might choose to focus on that one thought and grant it meaning and attention it does not deserve. Your attention may be hijacked by junk.  

Myth 9: Thoughts That Repeat Are Important  

Fact: The importance or meaning of a thought has little to do with how much it repeats. Thoughts tend to repeat if they are resisted or pushed away. Any thought that you attempt to squash is more likely to keep repeating, like “Don’t think about that itchy spot,” or “Stop noticing the piece of food in her teeth.”  

When we invest energy in any thought, it builds up neural connections and makes the thought more likely to happen (Pittman and Karle, 2015). This applies to any thought, regardless of its importance. The simple fact is that attempts to keep certain thoughts from coming into your mind are what makes them come round again and feel stuck.  

Believing even some of these myths can be responsible for ordinary intrusive thoughts becoming stuck. Knowing the facts will make intrusive thoughts less likely to stick.  

Martin N. Seif, PhD,  is a psychologist  and a founder of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Sally Winston, PsyD, is a founder and co-director of the Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland.  

This article is reprinted with permission from two of the blogs on the Psychology Today series, Living with a Sticky Mind, by Dr Martin Seif and Dr Sally Winston.  

References

Amir N.,Freshman, M., Ramsey, B., Neary, E., & Brigidi, B. (2001). Thought–action fusion in individuals with OCD symptoms. Behaviour research and therapy, 39(7), 765-776.  

Pittman, C. M., & Karle, E. M. (2015). Rewire your anxious brain: How to use the neuroscience of fear to end anxiety, panic, and worry. New Harbinger Publications.  

Salkovskis, P. M. (1985). Obsessional-compulsive problems: A cognitive-behavioural analysis. Behaviour research and therapy, 23(5), 571-583.  

Teresa, M., & Kolodiejchuk, B. (2007). Mother Teresa: Come be my light: The private writings of the Saint of Calcutta. Image.  

Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological review, 101(1), 34. 

IAHIP 2022 - INSIDE OUT 97 - Summer 2022