Two Decisions That Paradoxically Make Intrusive Thoughts Worse

Intrusive Thoughts can feel like one of the most difficult experiences of anxiety.

One can argue that other anxieties have some semblance of sanity and normalcy. A generalized worrier’s concerns about his job feel relatable. Perhaps we can see that the specific person's fears are a bit much, but at least the source of such worry is conceivable.

We can say a similar thing about the socially anxious. It’s generally reasonable to be concerned about one’s social relationships.

Even in the case of the health worrier, isn’t it natural to be concerned about one’s health?

But bizarre, scary, disturbing intrusive thoughts do not generally fall in the categories that are typically perceived as normal. Many sufferers say that they feel they are in the realm of sheer insanity.

To make matters worse, intrusive thoughts don't seem to build up gradually, and instead, they can come at a speed of light, and often, out of the blue.

Intrusive thoughts can be a difficult experience for the uninitiated, and they continue to be difficult if they're not addressed correctly.

But the good news is that intrusive thoughts can be quite responsive to change.

In this post, I’ll share some thoughts.

First, let's try to take step back.

Maybe you and I can work together to reconfigure some semantics.

When people say “I suffer from intrusive thoughts”, I have always struggled with hearing this, because to me, the language of this statement suggests that you are a victim to it. When we say that we suffer from something, it usually implies that this something is external to us and that it's been done to us.

But actually, intrusive thoughts can become that way because of the things the person himself is doing in the process. Correcting these mistakes can go a long way in getting relief.

Another fact is that any thought can become an “intrusive” thought if we decide we don't want it around. To the extent that your anxieties are related to unwanted thoughts, any anxiety can be called a problem with intrusive thoughts.

A generalized worrier’s distressing thought “What if I get fired” starts to become an “intrusion” when he tries to push it away. This is pretty much the situation with all anxieties. Any anxiety can include thought obsessions and intrusions.

But in the anxiety world, the term "intrusive thoughts" represents a certain kind of experience.

It's a struggle with thoughts that, we’ve told ourselves, go against the expected and established standards of morality, safety, ethics and sanity.

Common examples of the types of intrusive thoughts include picturing being violent towards a loved one, engaging in improper sexual behavior, offending moral authorities, and losing control over one’s mind.

How often we hear of that innocent, new mother who is in utter fear and heartbreak because she was hit by an intrusive thought while cutting vegetables that said "What if I lose control and use this knife on my child".

Or driving on the freeway and having a thought that shows you swerving your steering wheel into oncoming traffic. I say “shows you” because thoughts aren't just sound, but are also visual. So you can picture yourself doing these things.

Another common example of an intrusive thought is a public speaker having a thought "What if, in front of everybody on stage, I lose control of my bladder and pee in my pants".

While we hear of these as common examples of intrusive thoughts, they are, by no means, exhaustive. In fact, there really is no limit to what the mind is capable of creating as a thought.

People suffer very much because of intrusive thoughts.

And they suffer in silence.

They are terrorized from these intrusive thoughts. They don't want to think about them and they don’t want to talk about them. They also feel ashamed of having them, and this feeling gets compounded by not being able to get rid of these intrusive thoughts.

People suffer in silence, and this suffering can be harsh.

What they have to do to overcome intrusive thoughts is the same as they have to do in any and every anxiety: approach and accept the intrusive thoughts and perform some new behaviors.

With intrusive thoughts, actually acceptance is the main behavior. With these internal, obsessional thoughts, often there's no outwardly behavior to do. Acceptance is the behavior and it's an internal one.

But people who struggle with intrusive thoughts find acceptance hard.

And the task is to understand why.

We’ll take up two of the core reasons in this post.

The “Why” Cluster

The first place of getting stuck is what I like to call "The “Why” Cluster".

Why did I think this? Why did this thought come?

Many people are deeply invested in finding an answer to "why". They want to know what causes their intrusive thoughts. The hope is that getting this answer will solve the problem.

Let's cut to the chase first.

The best answer that I have found to give to the why of intrusive thoughts is randomness.

Realize that this is a randomly-generated process.

But so many people find it really hard to appreciate the randomness of intrusive thoughts. Instead they try to figure out the "why".

And right there is their first mistake.

In fact, it's right there in the language of the statement “Why did “I” have this thought?”.

The belief that you, yourself generate your thoughts.

I thought it.

I brought this thought to life.

I gave it birth.

I generated it.

This is an error in the context of intrusive thoughts.

It can be hard to see it as an error at first because it is not an error in regular life.

In our day to day life, we see how we consciously create our thoughts. We see that when we're thinking, we have activated that process generally by our own will and effort.

This is largely true, but with our executive-function thoughts, our problem-solving thoughts.

For example, planning my vacation.

I can plan my next vacation only by first generating some thoughts about it, right? I have to think about it. It'll be my thoughts, coming about because of me. It's not going to be my dog doing it. It's not going to be my computer doing it. It’s me.

So yes, we can generate our executive functioning thoughts.

But if you think about this a little more, you'll see that we're also at the receiving end of some very random and automatically generated processes.

The best example that I can think about over here is when we have a song suddenly pop and play in our head. It just comes out of the blue. People say that “I just woke up with a song playing in my head”. It's happened to me, and I bet that it's happened with you as well.

So let me ask you.

Did you consciously create the appearance of that random song in your head?

No, you didn't.

Another example is how you’re doing something, engaged in an activity and suddenly you have a memory from childhood pop up in your head. It comes out of nowhere. Baaam. And you're like “Woah, where did that suddenly come from?.

Now let me ask again.

Did you consciously create that?

No, you didn't.

And it's the same process with intrusive thoughts.

But you have a much harder time appreciating the randomness of intrusive thoughts.

It’s because of their content.

You don't like the content.

But not liking the content does not mean that the solution lies in convincing yourself that you created them.

If you insist that you created your intrusive thoughts, then shall we also start insisting that you created the appearance of that song that suddenly came in your head?

Try to answer this objectively and truthfully because we have to help you practice the same depersonalization in the case of intrusive thoughts as well.

“WHAT DOES THIS MEAN”

The other thing people do is insist on finding the meaning behind these thoughts.

What does it mean if I have these scary, bizarre intrusive thoughts?

Trying to find the meaning of something is again, a very natural process. It's the intuitive way to go about life. If a pain or crisis exists, I'm going to try to find out the meaning behind the experience.

But with intrusive thoughts, you're going to generally find that you truly cannot find the meaning in an absolute way. Because it's impossible to answer thoughts with absolute certainty.

And in fact, when you do that with intrusive thoughts, you'll then subsequently find that in that process of all the hypothesizing, you will have freaked yourself out even more. By spending more time on the topic than you needed to, you’ve now become more attached to the idea.

All of this continues to remain an arbitrary endeavor, but of course, now you’ll have a much harder time seeing it.

Let's take an example.

Did I have a thought to swerve my car into oncoming traffic because I want violence and destruction?

The truth?

No you don't, and that's why you are so uncomfortable with these thoughts.

The fact that you are so pained by these thoughts is a large proof that you are not the kind of person who the thoughts depict.

These thoughts go against your values, they go against your morals, they go against your character. The pain you are in is a sign that you are probably the exact opposite of such thoughts. You're probably too conscientious a person to begin with. You probably have an inflated sense of goodness, responsibility, character and morality.

But the intrusive person is insisting on finding the meaning behind the thoughts. “Am I a violent person if I had a thought of violence?”.

But how do you make your mind speak that certainty as an absolute 100% certainly? How do you get your mind to say, "No, you're not violent".

You can get your mouth to say it. You can get your heart to say it.

But the mind?

Questions about absolutely any thought, not even intrusive thoughts, for any human, will be answered by the mind with a counter-question, saying "How do you know?".

“No, I'm not a violent person” will be answered by the mind with “How do you know?”.

And you'll say "Well, I know because I know I. I feel it".

And the counter-question from the mind will say "Well, how do you know that this feeling is correct?".

Round and round and round you'll go.

And strangely, this exercise will now start to convince the person even more that there really is some danger here.

There isn’t.

But the fact that you can't prove it to the mind and by the mind (which no one can), will start to be taken by you as a even worse signal of threat.

This is a brutal suffering.

And now step back.

Why are you doing this?

Because you want to know the “why" behind the thought and the "what does it mean".

And why are you doing that?

Because you think that getting the answers will make your intrusive thoughts go away.

Sorry, it doesn't work like that.

Intrusive thoughts go away only when you accept them. We can try to tell ourselves that we need not make it more complicated.

But still.

If you are someone who insists on knowing the “why", I have found the best answer to give is “Randomness. This is randomness ".

If you struggle with this impersonal answer, then ask yourself "Why am I okay with random songs suddenly popping in my head and not this?".

In the next post, we’ll continue with more strategies on how to deal with intrusive thoughts. They’ll be linked here.