Allowing Intrusive Thoughts To Exist.
Allowing intrusive thoughts to be there. How to not judge or engage with intrusive thoughts. Letting go of intrusive thoughts.
When dealing with OCD, anxiety or stress in general, we might run into thoughts that are intrusive and unwanted. Thoughts that can cause us distress and leave us feeling triggered. It can be easy to want to fight against the thoughts. To push those thoughts down and never want to think about them again. And when they inevitably pop back up, were right back in the fight again with the thoughts. Thoughts to some degree we cannot control, they will happen automatically.
Thoughts are something that happens naturally to us. All day every day we will be having thoughts. Having thoughts is apart of being alive and healthy. We might have thousands of thoughts throughout the course of the day; some people may naturally have more thoughts than others. When thoughts become problematic, it can seem like a swarm of hornets are flying around me and stinging me. That in and of itself is distressing and problematic. Within certain disorders such as OCD and anxiety disorders, these intrusive thoughts might cause so many issues in my life that it negatively impacts my functioning. When the intrusive thoughts pop up, a person might feel the urge to engage with the thought to try to get it to go away.
What I might come to find out is the more fighting I do against my thoughts, the more they might start to come back. It is so easy to get involved in the fighting with my thoughts. I might have the thought that I am a bad person, and I immediately want to counter it with the thought that I am a good person. I get pulled into this struggle with the thoughts, engaging with intrusive thoughts. Trying fight back and change them. This is a endless battle. There is an endless amount of thoughts we have in our lifetime. There is not enough time in our life to challenge EVERY single thought that comes up. I want to learn how to let thoughts pass without much engagement. To not get involved in a fight that I cannot win. If there is a endless amount of thoughts, how will I ever win then? Our goal is then to accept and to let go.
I want to be able to accept thoughts for what they are. Simply just thoughts. Thoughts being biologically based, because were human and were alive. Just because a thought comes into my head does not mean that it is true. It is simply just a thought. How often do we hear of someone driving on the highway and have a thought of “what if I drove into oncoming traffic”. For that person, they might laugh it off as just a crazy, intrusive thought with no meaning attached. They might not feel distressed because of that thought.
But for someone with OCD or anxiety, that thought might cause a lot of distress. They might start engaging and doing compulsions because of that thought. They are slowly getting involved in this fight with thoughts where there is no chance of victory. If we can learn to accept thoughts for what they are or to not engage with them, we take away a lot of their power. When I say engage with it, I mean we don’t want to be bringing on all the “should, could, must, have to, what if” thoughts that leads to further investment in the thoughts. This is getting us back into the fight with the thoughts, giving the thoughts more power.
Intrusive thoughts are like parasites, the more we feed it (engage with them) the bigger it gets. The more noticeable it will become and the more problems that arise. When we tell our brain that we “cannot” or “should not” have certain thoughts, were are basically allowing those thoughts then to be used against us. We want to take away judgements we have towards our thoughts. That we do not have to interpret or figure out the thoughts. Rather to just simply notice and observe the thoughts, without any engagement. In therapy, we will look at how we can change the relationship with our thoughts. To take away distress from intrusive thoughts and hopefully react in a more positive way.
Below is a video linked that I feel that gives a good metaphor on how we should treat thoughts. Give it a watch and let me know what you think about it. From the video, we can take away a few concepts and ideas and learn some skills associated with managing intrusive thoughts more effectively.
As a licensed mental health therapist, I can help you gain the insight and learn the right skills to make positive changes in your life. If you feel that your mental health has had a negative impact on your life, you might consider counseling to learn how to handle it more effectively. Please feel free to reach out for a free consultation, where we can discuss the benefits of counseling.
