Overcoming Unwated Intrusive Thoughts

by Sally M Winston

  Myth 6: Thinking Something Makes It Unlikely to Happen

  Myth 6 is almost the exact opposite of myth 5. Specifically, it is that thinking something will make it less likely to happen or make it less true. You may believe that thinking about a person you care for—specifically worrying about someone—is a way of protecting that person, showing love and loyalty, and keeping bad things from happening. Staying involved with worry thoughts seems like a way of remaining vigilant—and somehow more prepared—for danger.

  Fact: Once again, thoughts do not change probabilities in the real world. While worrying about someone might make you feel like you are doing something to protect him or her, in reality you are only training your brain to reinforce a cycle of ongoing worry. Remember that feelings are not facts. Feeling that you need to stay engaged by constantly thinking about someone is falling for the false alarms of anxiety.

  Myth 7: Only Sick People Have Intrusive Thoughts

  This refers to the mistaken belief that only disturbed people have intrusive or weird thoughts.

  Fact: The fact is that no one is entirely free of weird, repugnant, and disturbing passing thoughts. This means that just about everyone you know, including your friends, your work colleagues, your teachers, and your doctors have also experienced intrusive thoughts. In fact, Mother Teresa had unwanted intrusive thoughts (Teresa 2009). So, most probably, does your favorite celebrity and your pastor.

  The big difference is that just about everyone has passing intrusive thoughts. Your intrusive thoughts feel very different because they are repeated and sometimes become stuck. This makes them feel particularly disturbing, like they are the product of a disturbed mind. But the stickiness of these thoughts has nothing at all to do with your character or your value as a human being. And it certainly has nothing to do with being a disturbed person. The stickiness has a lot to do with how you think and feel about these thoughts and the methods and intensity you are using to try to rid yourself of them.

  In chapter 5, we will show you how a passing intrusive thought—which everyone has—becomes a stuck and unwanted intrusive thought through no fault, personality defect, or mental illness of your own.

  Myth 8: Every Thought Is Worth Thinking

  Myth 8 is that every thought is worth thinking about, so it makes sense to and it is worthwhile to explore the content of any thought that crosses your mind or comes to your attention.

  Fact: The fact is that you, like cable TV, have many different channels of thought going through your mind at the same time. It is impossible to think about them all, and some of your channels are just full of junk (like maybe the infomercial channel or the local high school announcements). Not all are worthwhile to think about. Imagine that you are listening to your radio and something went wrong, so instead of listening to one station at a time, you were listening to two, three, five, or ten at once. One channel might be great music that you want to hear; another might be an absorbing discussion. Others might be a boring repeat newscast, a song that you hate, and a story that you have heard a hundred times before. Without giving it much thought, you would work to focus on the things that seemed interesting and let the other channels pass you by.

  Similarly, you have more than one “thought channel” going through your mind. Mostly you pick and choose what to focus on without putting in very much effort. Some thoughts just seem more interesting to pursue than others. But when an intrusive thought pops up—no matter what the content—if you believe that all thoughts are worth thinking about (i.e., if 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. This is especially true if you believe the intrusive thought is really important or if you believe that you have been issued a message or a signal or a warning sign. In cases like this, you can get stuck, and the thought will keep recycling through your mind, asking for your attention.

  In truth, all minds are chock full of junk thoughts not worth taking seriously. If we wander into junk thoughts and they are not granted meaning, they just pass on by.

  Helpful Fact: Your attention may be hijacked by junk.

  Chapter 7 explains how to remain more focused on the natural flow of your thoughts. We will show you how it is possible to care so little about intrusive thoughts that they recede into the background and do not need your attention at all.

  Worried Voice:I am trying to study, and all I can think about is whether or not I should marry my boyfriend.

  False Comfort:You have only known each other a few weeks. Don’t think about that now. You have to study.

  Worried Voice:Yes, I know, but I feel like I should think about it because I had the thought that he will ask me.

  False Comfort:Do you think that means he really will ask you?

  Worried Voice:Well, sort of. I should be prepared; shouldn’t I? What if he does ask me? I really need to be studying. If I do poorly on the exam tomorrow, I could lose my scholarship.

  False Comfort:Remember what you put yourself through with the last guy?

  Worried Voice:But this time it feels like a real issue.

  Wise Mind:Hey guys, you are both listening to the junk channel. Just because it popped into your mind does not mean it requires your attention. Just because someone lobs a football at you does not mean you have to catch it. Junk channels lob junk at us all the time.

  Myth 9: Thoughts That Repeat Are Important

  You may believe that thoughts that repeat must be important. After all, it would seem, if a thought were not important, it would just fly out of our mind and be forgotten. The fact that the thought keeps recurring must mean that it is significant.

  Fact: The fact is that the importance of a thought has very little to do with how much it repeats. Actually, thoughts tend to repeat if they are resisted or pushed away. So if you have a repeating thought that you are resisting, that same thought will start to fade away when you stop trying to resist it. Any thought that you attempt to squish is more likely to keep repeating, like Don’t think about that itchy spot, Stop rerunning that commercial jingle through your mind, or Stop noticing the piece of food in her teeth.

  Remember the theme that “what you resist persists” and the carrot exercise in chapter 1? This is actually how your brain works. When we invest energy in any thought, it builds up the neural connections and makes the thought more likely to happen (Pittman and Karle 2015). This works with any thought; it has nothing to do with the importance of it. The simple fact is that your attempts to keep certain thoughts from coming into your mind is what makes them come round again and feel stuck. One example of this is what happens when you try to stop thinking when falling asleep. Everyone has the experience of watching thoughts amplify, elaborate, and repeat the harder we try to banish them and attempt to “stop thinking.” We have to be willing to let the mind wander and not fight with it in order to fall asleep naturally.

  Helpful Fact: Thoughts that repeat are stuck, not important.

  We hope that now you have a better understanding of some of the common myths and misconceptions about the way thoughts work in people’s minds. You are therefore better prepared to understand the unwanted intrusive thoughts that currently upset you, how they got stuck, and how to relate to them in a different way. They do not mean what you think they mean, there is no reason to fear them, and they won’t go away by resisting them.

  Believing even some of these myths can be responsible for ordinary intrusive thoughts becoming stuck. Knowing the facts behind these nine common myths will make intrusive thoughts less likely to stick. Now that we’ve busted the myths, in the next chapter we will answer some of the common questions that people often ask.

  Chapter 4

  Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts Q and A

  So far we have talked about thoughts in general and described the varieties of unwanted intrusive thoughts. We have introduced you to the way that Worried Voice and False Comfort struggl
e with each other over thoughts, and how Wise Mind can offer a way out of this struggle. Still, you—like most people—may have very specific questions about issues that are particularly bothersome. And you may not be able to ask these questions of others as you are afraid of or ashamed of revealing these struggles. Here are straightforward, specific answers to the questions our patients most frequently ask. Remember that anxiety loves ignorance, and the more facts you know about stuck thoughts, the better equipped you will be to deal with them. Some of these specific answers review topics we have introduced in earlier chapters.

  Does thinking about hurting my children mean that “deep down” I harbor anger and aggression?

  No. This idea was probably started by the old psychoanalytic belief that fearful thoughts are related to unconscious wishes. This notion was quite popular in the 1950s and earlier, and there are plenty of references about this in traditional psychoanalytic literature. You may have heard some variation of this idea, and maybe you have grown to accept it as true. Perhaps a past therapist has implied this to you.

  However, it is now clear that that there isn’t one iota of truth to this. This idea is particularly disturbing because it has generated so much misery and guilt in people who have absolutely no reason to feel that way. Unfortunately, there are still a number of psychotherapists who believe it to be true. There are therapists who may try to focus on your wishes in order to uncover denied unconscious feelings as a way to cure your intrusive thoughts. Worse still, some therapists erroneously believe that your thoughts are an indication that you might actually do something harmful to your children. So you are encouraged to understand and “come to terms” with your thoughts, which actually make them even stickier!

  Remember that sticky thoughts are the opposite of wishes. They become sticky and intrusive precisely because you reject them and fight with them. They are not pleasurable fantasies. They are not unconscious desires. They do not indicate truths about you that need to be explored.

  On the other hand, it is entirely normal to sometimes feel loving feelings and sometimes angry feelings toward your children, as well as a full range of emotions that includes guilt, resentment, frustration, and pride. This is normal and part of the emotional life of every parent. Remember that we are talking about intrusive, bizarre, unwelcome thoughts and the horrified feelings that go with them. These are fundamentally different from actions you choose to make, the normal ebb and flow of emotions, and real-life behaviors.

  I have unwanted intrusive thoughts of hurting or sexually abusing children. Could I be a child molester or a secret pedophile?

  No. And let us be clear: we are not talking about people who are, in fact, very angry and have a history of acting violently or abusively when they are angry or intoxicated. We are also not talking about people who get pleasure out of imagining or having sexual contact with children. Instead, we are talking about violent and sexual thoughts that make no sense to you, that seem alien and against your nature. They feel offensive and horrific, as well as frightening. They seem to come out of nowhere and redirect your attention. You might avoid contact with children because of them, and we hope that you stop doing that. You are not dangerous, and children do not need protection from you. Remember that your anxiety is maintained and reinforced by avoidance.

  Why do some of my thoughts feel like impulses?

  Even though unwanted intrusive thoughts are signs of overcontrol and not impulsivity, you may actually feel that you have to put a lot of effort to keep yourself from acting on the thoughts. This is an illusion. They feel like impulses even though they are not.

  You are actually feeling the effects of anxious thinking, which is an altered state of awareness. Once your brain sends out an anxiety alarm signal, your perception of many things becomes markedly different. One very consistent change is what psychologists call thought-action fusion: when the line between thoughts and actions becomes fuzzy and indistinct. Ordinarily, the differences between thoughts and actions are quite clear, and thoughts are a safe way to rehearse actions without consequences. But when you are anxious, this difference seems to fade away. When you fight hard to avoid a thought, anxiety will skyrocket, and so will your perception of the profound differences between private thoughts, on the one hand, and actions in the real world that have real consequences, on the other. But even if your perception has become distorted by anxiety, it does not mean that the thought is actually an impulse or has any more ability to make you do anything you do not choose to do. A more comprehensive explanation of how the brain sends out false alarms is presented in chapter 5.

  But I get so scared; the fight to control myself feels so real. Why?

  Another reason why thoughts can feel like impulses is because of the fear the thought provokes. Here is how it works: When we are startled or surprised, or when something happens that tricks us into thinking there is danger, the alarm system part of our brain called the amygdala sends out a danger signal. It instantly makes many things happen in the body that enable us to run away or fight if there were a real danger. You may know this reaction as the fight-or-flight response. This happens automatically, whether the alarm is false or indicates a true danger. The amygdala is not very smart and cannot judge true danger from a false alarm. It just responds to a trigger—real or imagined—with the only thing it can do. It sends out an alarm. If we are startled by a thought and our amygdala automatically sends out such a danger signal, then we react emotionally as if there is danger. The sensations in our body make the thought seem dangerous, impulsive, or important. We discuss this further in chapter 5.

  But our brain has a second mechanism located in the higher brain or cortex that has the capacity to say, “Wait a minute—this is just a thought.” The cortex is where we think, reason, and judge. The problem is that the message from the higher brain gets there about a half of a second after the first automatic alarm has sounded. So you are feeling like you are in danger, even before your higher brain has the chance to step in. Our trio illustrates how this goes.

  Worried Voice:I just felt like I was going to jump up and shout something profane in church. It took everything I had to hold back.

  False Comfort:Maybe you should listen to the radio in church to keep you distracted; you sure wouldn’t want to do that.

  Worried Voice:This is crazy. You wouldn’t believe what I was about to shout. I can’t even say it.

  False Comfort:These impulses are just horrible! Maybe you should stay home and listen to the church service on the radio. If you have to blurt something out, at least no one will know.

  Wise Mind:It feels like an impulse, but it is actually an unwanted intrusive thought, not an impulse. The more you fight it, the stronger it feels, right? So try to act as if it doesn’t even matter, because it really doesn’t.

  Think of Worried Voice as representing a false danger signal from the amygdala. False Comfort falls for the trick and tries to figure out what to do about it, as if the danger is real. It is Wise Mind who knows it is a false alarm and that no response is needed.

  Why do I have to fight these thoughts all the time?

  Here is the really great news: you don’t! That’s right. Not only do you not have to fight these thoughts, but fighting the thoughts is a major reason why they become stuck and cause so much psychological misery in the first place.

  Remember, you try to block the thoughts because their message feels so unacceptable. And as you continue to fight, they become more persistent and more anxiety-arousing. (This is the ironic process once again.)

  What is wrong with me?

  What is wrong with you is that you have unwanted intrusive thoughts—nothing more and nothing less. Psychologists know that about nine out of ten people experience intrusive thoughts at least occasionally. So you are one of the nine out of ten. What has gone wrong in your situation is that you have taken your thoughts too seriously and believed that the content of your thoughts meant something important about the person you are or the sort of beha
viors that you might commit.

  I try to avoid things that trigger my thoughts, but some things are unavoidable. What can I do?

  You can try to avoid your avoidance. Reading about violent acts might make you have thoughts about violent actions. Or hearing a radio program about a suicide may provoke unwanted images. But this is unrelated to your behavior. In fact, as we show in chapter 8, deliberately provoking these harmless but upsetting thoughts is part of the treatment. It takes the power away from the thoughts when you no longer have to try to avoid or control then

  Thoughts don’t cause any type of behavior. The facts are that at any given time, you are having a wide range of thoughts on a number of topics. Your brain is broadband, although you might not be aware of most of the channels that are playing.

  What you do, however, is choose your actions, based on your will, your mood, your preferences, and the type of person you are. The suffering over your thoughts actually lies in the way you evaluate them and react to them, not the content of the thoughts themselves. Trying hard to avoid the thoughts will prevent you from learning this.

  I was diagnosed with OCD. Is this a part of that?