When it comes to understanding mental health, issues like intrusive thoughts can be quiet confusing. These unwanted and mostly uncomfortable mental images might surprise or startle individuals with a feeling of confusion, guilt, and shame. Although these thoughts are not unusual as people think, there is a destabilizing force that can make many people live in the suffering of silence. As a therapist, it is essential to normalize and explain to the person intrusive thoughts in order to get them to a place where they do not have to fear and accept them.
What are intrusive thoughts?
Prominent thoughts are impulsive, uninvited thoughts or mind pictures that are alien and uncomfortable. This may involve scenes of violence, sex and blasphemous or other content that is socially unacceptable. Notably, they do not determine the character or the desire of a person. The most important one is that they are unwelcome: they conflict frequently with the values and identity of the person.
When people get intrusive thoughts, they may ask why they thought so. What does it portray about me?” As a therapeutic perspective is concerned, this reaction is in fact reassuring. The discomfort induced by this thought shows that the person is not in accordance with its content supporting the notion that these thoughts are not deliberate and do not forewarn behavior.
The Psychology of It
Moral failure and madness are not the cause of intrusive thoughts, where these thoughts are quite normal and sometimes a side effect of the brain doing its job. Information is processed, sifted, sorted and in some cases mis-fired by a mind that is continually stimulated by lots of information. The brain might come up with unusual or frightening thoughts in case of stress or when the person becomes tense. These thoughts are intrusive when he or she fixates them thereby paying unnecessary attention and meaning to the thoughts.
There are mental health issues that can increase the intrusive thought attraction. These include:
- OCD
- Anxiety Disorders like GAD
- Post-Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD)
- Depression
Circle of Intrusion
The reason why intrusive thoughts are recurrent includes the psychological opposition that accompanies them. Trying to suppress or avoid these thoughts however reinforces them. This forms a spiral of reinforcement: The more someone tries to control or examine the thought, the greater it is.
This paradox can be described effectively with the help of the so-called white bear problem: the concept that attempting to think about something never to think about a white bear invokes the image because the brain can not forget the image of a white bear so easily. In the same vein, the struggle to get rid of intrusive thoughts usually has the opposite effect, bringing back the passing mental occurrences into constant anxiety producers.
Myths That Prod Shame
Misconception is a significant barrier that people with intrusive thoughts face when they usually believe that such thoughts define some underlying urges or motivation. As a matter of fact, the majority of intrusive thoughts act totally against the ideas and the person. The fact that this is an internal conflict makes the thoughts so distressing.
Experts usually attempt to combat such misunderstandings. The realization that thoughts are not deeds, and that a thought is an intrusive thought does not imply its transition into deeds is one of the key principles of successful therapy. The first step in its normalization is potent.
The other myth is that peace can only be attained by clearing the mind of all the negative or odd thoughts. Therapeutically, this is not realistic and unnecessary. The aim though is not to completely stop the intrusive thoughts but transform the way they are viewed and handled.
Treatment modalities of intrusive thoughts
Many evidence-based therapeutic methods have provided solutions to how many have coped with intrusive thoughts:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
It is one of the best studied ways of dealing with intrusive thoughts, especially those that come with OCD and anxiety. It entails the realization of cognitive distortions and how to confront them or relabel them
Exposure and Response Prevention
ERP is a type of CBT that is adapted to OCD. It is a step-by-step approach wherein each sufferer is exposed to the contents of his or her intrusive thoughts but without involving him or her in his or her compulsive actions. The process prevents the motivating connection with the thought and helps in breaking the pattern of avoidance and reassurance-seeking over a period of time.
Mindfulness-Based Therapies
Mindfulness urges people to view their thoughts without judgment. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) techniques teach people to experience discomfort and stay in the sitting position instead of straining about it. By practicing, individuals will become able to view thoughts as fleeting mental states but not dangerous situations.
Psychoeducation
Giving proper information about the nature of intrusive thoughts can be of great help. By realizing that such thinking is natural and is not a defining characteristic of a person, a lot of the fear is evaporated. As a practice by therapists, at the beginning of treatment psychoeducation is used to establish a space of knowledge and minimize shame.
The Maintenance Factors and Triggers
Intrusive thought is usually aggravated when one is stressed or when one is tired, during hormonal changes or when it is a time of transition. An example is the case when new parents develop revolting thoughts of harming their baby but it is not due to their collection of desires to cause harm but it is induced by their hyper-vigilant brain on the matter of ensuring that their child is unharmed.
The intrusive thoughts can be maintained or aggravated while some behaviors and thought patterns include:
- Seeking reassurance in other people
- Constant self-monitoring
- Prevention of triggering situations
- Checking or reviewing your ideas to excess
- The therapists help the people to recognize such maintenance behaviors and change them and instead use more healthy coping skills.
Value of Self-Compassion
Self compassion is one theme that keeps on recurring during online therapy. Rather than being guided by guilt or fear as a result of intrusive thoughts, people are advised to adhere to kindness and acceptance that comes as a result of being affected by thoughts. This is not to say that one should condone the contents of the mind, but acknowledges the fact that life as a human being covers a broad spectrum of mental happenings.
The time to Get Help
Although every person has had at some point in their life a massive intrusive thought, frequent or troubling thoughts that affect everyday life should be addressed with the help of a professional. Signs that one needs help will include:
Wasting a lot of time with attempts to neutralize, or analyze thoughts
Any person, place and/or situation to be avoided because of fear to act on a thought
Trouble concentrating or sleeping due to mental distress
Using compulsive behaviors as a reliever
Therapist’s role
The role of therapists with clients who have intrusive thoughts is very complex. They act as enlighteners, and explain to people the science and the psychology of intrusive thinking. They are also the supporters where they have credence on the level of emotions that such thoughts may have. Lastly they give realistic tools and strategies that suit and are unique to the person.
Therapy does not endeavor to quieten the mind but trains the individuals on how to choose to live with their thoughts without the latter being able to control their lives. This change of outlook may be very emancipating.
Final Reflections
Intrusion thought although uncomfortable is part and parcel of human thinking but in a controllable measure. People with the proper assistance can be taught to diminish their fear of such thoughts, recontextualize their meaning and afterwards develop a feeling of tranquility and control.
As a therapist, I would say the choice of a healing path is not to wage a war against every thought that would occur, but learn to accept our mind as what we will, an arena of limitless ideas, some significant, some not. Such awareness and caring response then becomes a means of transforming the most disturbing noise of the mind into something much less threatening-and eventually, into something that no longer carries with it any sense of power.