![]() However, suppose intrusive thoughts are causing significant distress, anxiety or interfere with a person’s daily functioning. Research suggests that intrusive thoughts are a natural part of the human experience and that nearly everyone experiences them at some point. Intrusive thoughts do not necessarily mean a person has a mental health disorder or condition. How you approach these unhelpful thoughts and self-talk can help you work out different ways of thinking and behaving so you can cope better, whatever life may bring. How Cognitive behavioural therapy works is that it looks at the connection between how you think, how you feel and how you behave. People bothered by intrusive thoughts need to form a new relationship with them-that their content is irrelevant and unimportant. Either in terms of their behaviour or their beliefs and values about themselves and their lives. The examples above are all disturbing to people in one way or another, and what they all have in common is that these thoughts go against what the person knows themselves to be. Self-doubt thoughts: thoughts that you are not good enough or have made a mistake.Harm-related thoughts: getting sick or being in a dangerous situation.Blasphemous thoughts: going against religious or moral beliefs.Sexual thoughts: engaging in unwanted or inappropriate sexual activities.Violent thoughts: hurting oneself or others or causing harm.Intrusive thoughts categorize into five different categories: Shouting out unpleasant comments in public.Pushing someone in front of a train or jumping in front of a train yourself.Examples of unwanted, distressing intrusive thoughts: But so often, there is not it’s merely our immediate reaction to the thought (increased heart rate, questioning the validity, digging for answers) and not a reflection of our life or values that fuels the anxious cycle. This, in turn, makes the thought more threatening and can spiral into a confusing and scary place, showing the brain that there is something to worry about. This reaction then makes the individual think that because they have had the thought, that they may act on it. This reaction often occurs if the theme of the thought targets something very important in that person’s life. How some can let them come and go and how others latch onto them.įor example, an individual with a naturally overactive brain, or anxious tendencies could react to an intrusive thought from a feeling of fear. ![]() But why do they stick with some people when others can let them flow in and out? There is no clear answer to this, but a good analysis would be that it’s down to the response to the initial thought, which can form the path in how the thoughts grow or dissolve. Our brains have a negativity bias and favour negative thinking, and with that, some intrusive thoughts are inevitable. We feel like we have to find out more about the origin of the thought and what it means about us as a person. It’s our anxious response to them that fuels the intrusive thought cycle and therefore, we are not capable of brushing them aside and labelling them as meaningless. These thoughts that can stick with us, often disturbing thoughts that cause us deep anxiety and distress. ![]() Sometimes though, these thoughts can alarm us so much that they stick around for longer, which can result in conditions such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but that is not to say if you have intrusive thoughts that, you have OCD. The content of these thoughts, although they may seem alien, scary, or confusing, can pass after a few moments.
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