Print Intrusive thoughts are unwanted thoughts or images that seem to repeatedly come out of nowhere. Intrusive thoughts are like uninvited guests, showing up unexpectedly and bringing along a host of emotions—distress, anxiety, tension, embarrassment, shame, and even disgust. It can feel like you have no control over these intrusive thoughts. Common intrusive thoughts range from doubts about relationships to concerns about safety, religion, death, or unsettling aggressive and sexual thoughts. Sometimes, they’re just random thoughts that defy any logic!
This article will focus on understanding intrusive thoughts and typical cognitive distortions that accompany them.
Understanding intrusive thoughts
Intrusive thoughts are a common symptom in various mental health conditions, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), where they are part of the diagnostic criteria (obsessions). Additionally, stress, anxiety, and even physiological factors, like hormonal fluctuations, can trigger these intrusive thoughts. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that everyone experiences peculiar, violent, inappropriate, intrusive thoughts from time to time and that they are a normal part of the human experience. In fact an international study found that 94% of people reported experiencing intrusive thoughts at some point in their lives. You can read more about common intrusive thoughts people have in this article.
Intrusive thoughts can be very explicit and intense which can lead to people feeling guilty or ashamed about them. As a result you can end up worrying about them, and trying to ‘’fight’’, control them or push them away. Unfortunately, it is actually this meaning you attach to the thoughts and the effort you put into controlling and struggling with them which paradoxically makes them stick and keeps them coming back. In reality, your thoughts, even scary or unsettling ones, are just ‘’thoughts’’—they don’t necessarily define you or hold significant meaning. Learning that the content of these thoughts is often irrelevant and unimportant can help you to detach yourself from them and learn to manage them.
Cognitive distortions
Our brains, brilliant as they are, also love to take shortcuts, leading to cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are biases, filters or misinterpretations that can result in inaccurate or unrealistic thoughts or beliefs and can contribute to our negative emotions such as those associated with intrusive thoughts. We all have errors or distortions in our thinking from time to time. These distortions can come from past experiences and our beliefs but are also just part of how our brain works.
While we cannot eliminate them entirely, we can educate ourselves about these thinking errors and cognitive distortions so that we can learn to identify them, correct our thinking or detach ourselves from these thoughts. Below you will find some common cognitive distortions typically associated with intrusive thoughts.
- Thought-action fusion: This is the belief that having a certain thought can lead us to take action or is the same as taking that action. For example experiencing thoughts about hurting or being aggressive towards another person and believing that you will actually do it as a result.
- Moral thought-action fusion: This is the belief that choosing not to act on an intrusive thought means you want or implies a subconscious desire for the opposite outcome. For example, if you think about a car crash but don’t do anything about the thought, you might start to believe that deep down, you want the crash to occur.
- Thought-event fusion: This is the belief that having a thought about an event can influence or cause that event to happen. For example thinking about a potential car accident and believing this influences the likelihood of it to actually happen.
- Thought-object fusion: This is the idea that an item possesses specific memories, thoughts, emotions, or individual traits. For example, this can also apply to holiday souvenirs or sentimental objects. Some individuals who experience hoarding OCD, do not want to get rid of objects because they represent feelings or thoughts attached to a loved one.
- Controllability of thoughts: The belief that you should be in control of your thoughts and their content. Holding this belief can lead to increased distress when you experience unwanted thoughts or thoughts that do not match how you view yourself. For example, imagine you see yourself as a kind and caring person, but suddenly, while helping a friend, you have a brief, unwanted thought about hurting them. This thought is intrusive and upsetting because it goes against how you view yourself, and the more you try not to think about it, the more it sticks in your mind.
- Inflated responsibility: This belief is that if you have the ability to do something to prevent something bad from happening, you should always make the effort. It involves underestimating the role of other factors in the situation and over-emphasising your own control in the situation. Your responsibility isn’t lessened by other factors, like the small chance of the bad thing actually happening. For example, after having the intrusive thought about a break-in, you might excessively check and recheck the door locks multiple times before leaving home, driven by the belief that if you don’t, you will be directly responsible for a break-in, despite the low likelihood of this occurring.
- Overestimating the chance of danger: This is the belief that a negative outcome is more likely to happen than the evidence or probability actually suggests. This can lead to anxiety or fear. An example would be constantly worrying about a plane crash every time you fly, despite the low statistical risk.
These are just a few typical cognitive distortions or thinking errors that are typically associated with intrusive thoughts. You might notice that some have overlapping elements or relate to each other. There are many more cognitive distortions and thinking errors and you can read about them in this article about thinking styles and this article about thinking patterns associated with anxiety.
By understanding these distortions, it can help you to label your intrusions, detach yourself from them, and treat them as though they’re uninteresting distractions. Over time, this approach will help these thoughts fade away and reduce the negative emotions associated with them.
Sources:
- https://accesscbt.co.uk/thinking-errors-and-cognitive-distortions-in-ocd/
- https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/unwanted-intrusive-thoughts
- Richard Moulding, Meredith E. Coles, Jonathan S. Abramowitz, Gillian M. Alcolado, Pino Alonso, Amparo Belloch, Martine Bouvard, David A. Clark, Guy Doron, Héctor Fernández-Álvarez, Gemma García-Soriano, Marta Ghisi, Beatriz Gómez, Mujgan Inozu, Adam S. Radomsky, Giti Shams, Claudio Sica, Gregoris Simos, Wing Wong. Part 2. They scare because we care: The relationship between obsessive intrusive thoughts and appraisals and control strategies across 15 cities. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 2014.
- Keijsers, G., Van Minnen, A., Verbraak, M., Hoogduin, K., & Emmelkamp, P. (2017). Protocollaire behandelingen voor volwassenen met psychische klachten.
