Show Your Intrusive Thoughts Whose Boss! OCD Help for Women In South Carolina
What Are Intrusive Thoughts
Intrusive thoughts are disturbing or unsettling thoughts, images, or urges that feel unwanted. Intrusive thoughts are incongruent and threatening to who you are and what you value and care for. They feel like you are being punched in the face by your own mind. Intrusive thoughts take your worst fears and warp them to make you feel like you’re in a living nightmare and you're responsible for it. Given this intensity, it makes perfect sense that compulsions often follow the intrusive thought. You want to do whatever you can to make the distress go away, even if it is short-lived.
Intrusive thoughts thrive in areas that are ambiguous when there’s not a clear answer. For example, doubting your sanity, sexuality, integrity, intentions, or anything that can be easily seen or detected. Intrusive thoughts are a necessary part of an OCD diagnosis but many people struggling with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, or no diagnoses may experience the unpleasantness of intrusive thoughts.
Your Intrusive Thoughts Might Look Like This:
What if I have an STD?
What if my kid falls off his bike and gets run over?
What if I hurt myself?
I’m going Crazy.
Did I leave the stove on?
I’m going to fail.
What if this is cancer?
What if the results are wrong and I do actually have an STD and I spread it?
What if my dog dies?
Was that a bump in the road or did I hit someone with my car?
I hit someone with my car.
I should cut myself with that knife.
What if I’m pregnant?
Am I dying?
What if I give my grandma the flu and kill her?
What if I accidentally said something racist and get cancelled?
What if I never find a purpose?
Am I really here or is this existence fake?
What if that person wants to take my baby?
What if I drove my car off the road?
What if my kid has cancer?
What if God heard me and I go to hell?
What if God didn’t hear me and I go to hell?
What if I have cancer and I’m dying and I don’t know?
I have cancer and I’m dying and the test results are wrong.
What if I’m not attracted to my partner like I thought I was?
I said the wrong thing and they aren’t going to forgive me.
What if I’m not attracted to my partner anymore?
The Intensity of Intrusive Thoughts
For many people, reading this list could be validating of their intrusive thoughts that activate their whole body and nervous system. For some people, reading this list might help them realize the unlikeliness or commonness of their thoughts. And for others, they may often suffer from being plagued with thoughts like these, but don’t feel the need to enact the compulsion. Either way, intrusive thoughts are not easily thwarted. They feel so terrifying or unsettling the nervous system is activated to a state of hypervigilance and urgency that no answer is good enough to calm yourself into a safe, relaxed, and mentally clear response.
Fortunately, when we are able to see our intrusive thoughts for what they are, they can become more manageable. Try some of these strategies to work on showing your intrusive thoughts who the boss is and not letting them control you any more. These thoughts themselves aren’t ridiculous, they are often pretty common, but the intensity on the dial is just turned up several degrees too high because they feel so scary and counter intuitive to you.
6 Tips To End Intrusive Thoughts
Write Out Your Intrusive Thoughts
Writing out your intrusive thoughts is a great way to externalize them, reduce their power, and help you see them more clearly. A great time to practice this exercise is to write them out when you're feeling overwhelmed, but an even better habit is to practice writing them out regularly. This helps to clear your mind of them and consistently create a practice of “letting go.”
2. Accept Your Intrusive Thought
See your intrusive thought for what it is. It’s a junk thought. It’s an intrusive thought. It’s not who you are. It’s a product of either trauma, a predisposition of OCD, or your brain working out logistics. Sometimes we just have thoughts that mean nothing. Your brain is wired to scan for safety and explore options. Your brain is just looking out for you or it’s just filtering through what it knows. Your brain is sorting information which includes the facts that a knife can cut you, your car can run over someone, and your child could get hurt. But, just because your mind is exploring these possibilities, it doesn’t mean these bad things will happen! By accepting these thoughts for what they are we can change the way we talk to ourselves and the need to act so quickly or at all to make them go away.
3. Practice Mindfulness and Grounding
Mindfulness and grounding are challenging but very helpful ways to break or lessen the intensity of obsessive thinking. When an intrusive thought comes up, practice a body scan to find where there may be tension or hyperactivation in your body. Your head might feel dizzy in your head, tight in your arms, or tingling in your fingers. Sit with this sensation and practice taking deep breaths in through your nose, filing your diaphragm or belly, and exhaling through your mouth. This exercise can help to calm your nervous system and lessen the intensity of the experience. The 5-4-3-2-1 exercise is great for grounding and being more present as well. State 5 things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste to get out of your head and back in your body.
4. Share Your Intrusive Thoughts
Intrusive thoughts thrive on shame and isolation, so sharing what they are with someone you trust can help to lessen the power they hold over you. Talk to a friend or loved one that you believe can meet you without judgement. Or, share your intrusive thoughts in therapy or a support group. Keeping them in only magnifies them and the embarrassment you feel related to them. Don’t let them control you. They are just thoughts, but you can take actions to help you feel better.
5. Laugh At It’s Ludicrousness
If you can, find the humor in your intrusive thoughts! Practice this: “Ha! That was just a dumb thought. That’s just my OCD, OCDing.” and then be done with it. This skill is hard and is usually only an available option after having more acceptance and mindfulness of your intrusive thoughts. It’s also easier to use after being able to share and relate with others who have experienced something similar. This form of self-talk and finding humor in the situation without putting yourself down can be a powerful tool.
6. Explore Underlying Factors
Intrusive thoughts can be better understood and reduced overall when we understand some of the underlying factors. Stress, shame, control, trauma, life changes, emotional awareness, and our unique values have a large impact on our intrusive thoughts. Learn more about these factors in the next blog in this series.
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