How to Stop Intrusive Thoughts - Q&A with Annie!

When you’re working to heal from anxiety, panic disorder, and agoraphobia, there are often lots of unknowns. You might constantly have thoughts that sound like…what if I never get better? What if I get worse? What if things always look how they do right now? And so on. 

And these thoughts can often become very intrusive. When we hear the term ‘intrusive thought’, we often immediately jump to OCD. But many of these thoughts are simply caused by the fears that come along with recovering from panic disorder and agoraphobia. In this podcast episode, we’ll talk about the difference between the two, and what we can do about intrusive or uncomfortable thoughts.

Before we get started, let’s talk about what an intrusive thought is! Simply put, intrusive thoughts are thoughts that are often out of character, distressing, or disturbing. And often, they might make you think… I shouldn't be having this thought! Am I going crazy? But it’s important to remember that intrusive thoughts are just thoughts, and they aren’t special unless we make them special! 

How to Stop Intrusive Thoughts - Q&A with Annie!

Why Do We Get Intrusive Thoughts?

I often get asked why we get intrusive thoughts, and the answer is pretty simple… because we’re human! Everyone gets intrusive thoughts from time to time, and most often they aren’t associated with a mental health disorder. The issue with intrusive thoughts arises when we give them power and try to solve them. You might notice intrusive thoughts popping up much more often when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed. 

How Do We Navigate Intrusive Thoughts?

If you’ve struggled with intrusive thoughts for any amount of time, you’ve likely wondered how you can stop intrusive thoughts! The truth is that we can’t get rid of intrusive thoughts, but we can take healthy action and change our response to them so that they pop up a heck of a lot less! If you’re struggling with an intrusive thought, do your best to slow things down and let yourself have the thought without attaching a story to it.

These are 3 ways that people often go wrong with intrusive thoughts:

1. Trying to think their way out of having the thought

2. Responding to the thought with criticism, or beating yourself up for having the thought

3. Looking for all of the ways to make the thoughts go away but overlooking some of the most basic ways you can relieve the thoughts, stress, and overwhelm

Bonus tips for navigating intrusive thoughts 

If you’re struggling with intrusive thoughts, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t say anything about you or who you are as a person! One of my favorite tips for navigating intrusive thoughts is to practice self-compassion. When we start responding to our thoughts and feelings with more compassion, it becomes much easier to work through our thoughts and emotions. 

Here are a few bonus tips for navigating intrusive thoughts…

• Don’t try to force or convince yourself they’re not reflective of reality

• Don’t try to replace the intrusive thought with a ‘good’ thought

• Don’t try to get rid of the intrusive thought

And if you’re looking for more insight and wisdom on this topic, make sure to check out my mini-course on Freedom From What-If Thoughts!

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to a healthy push Podcast. I'm Shannon Jackson, former anxiety sufferer turned adventure mom and anxiety recovery coach. I struggled with anxiety, panic disorder and agoraphobia for 15 years. And now I help people to push past the stuff that I used to struggle with. Each week, I'll be sharing real and honest conversations along with actionable and practical steps that you can take to help you push past your anxious thoughts, the symptoms, panic and fears. Welcome. You're right, we're meant to be. Okay, today we have an episode with Annie a q&a. And I'm super excited because it's been a bit since we've done one of these Annie. Like, I feel like it's been a while.

I know, gosh, I don't even remember the last time but I'm happy to be here again.

Yeah, this conversation is going to be super good, because we're going to talk about intrusive thoughts. And I've done a couple episodes on intrusive thoughts, but they've been with guests. So I'm really excited to talk about it and give my perspective and some insights on this topic. So let's dive in. I'm going to hand it over to you, you're going to ask the questions, and I'm going to do my best to answer away.

I love it. I love it. I think this is gonna be such a good one. I'm so excited. Okay, so let's just get started. So the first question we're going to start really simple is what are intrusive thoughts? Okay,

yeah, this is a great place to start, right? Let's lay the foundation. So intrusive thoughts are those thoughts that are like, like, this is disturbing. This is not like a usual thought this is causing some distress. It's out of character. Maybe you see it as being weird. You're just like, What the heck, like, this is a really weird thought. And sometimes with the thoughts and it can accompany even images and the images can be a sort of graphic and be even more distressing. I think just in general, intrusive thoughts can make you feel like, what the heck am I going crazy? Like, why am I having these thoughts? Yeah, I think I know, when I used to experience that I was like, There's something wrong with my brain, like, we need to fix this. So some examples. I think we were just talking about this before we hit play. But I think there are so many examples that I could give of intrusive thoughts, and I'll give a few but I just want to call out, I think there's a bit of a difference. They're all intrusive thoughts. But I think there's a bit of a difference between intrusive thoughts when you're struggling with anxiety, panic, agoraphobia, and a difference when you're struggling with something like OCD or trauma, PTSD, things like that, like the intrusive thoughts can look differently. So if it's more OCD centered, you might have some harm related thoughts, you might have thoughts that are sexual in nature, maybe violence. It doesn't mean that those only happen when you have an OCD diagnosis. But I think those are more common with an OCD diagnosis. And then when you're struggling with panic and agoraphobia, it can look more like what if thoughts? Like I think we all know this, I know what this sounds like. Like, what if I panic? What if I throw up? What if I pass out? What if I lose all control? Like, what if I do something embarrassing? What if I do something inappropriate? Just a lot of what if and then maybe sometimes you might have the like, what if I swerve my car off the road right now? What if I jump off of this really high thing? Like, you can have intrusive thoughts that are totally not based around any anxiety disorder? Like we'll talk about that and go into it, but everyone gets intrusive thoughts. So the big thing to note with intrusive thoughts is, even though they're intrusive, they're still just thoughts, their thoughts that our brain sort of just creates, because we have creative brains, and the thoughts really aren't special, but we can tend to make them special and make them front page news. And that's why they can be really repetitive, really distressing. Really dang annoying. And I know we'll get into that more. But I'm curious, Danny, like, does any of this sound familiar when I'm talking through the intrusive thoughts? Yeah, and

I love the way that you put this because I totally agree, I think there really is quite a difference between the two that you mentioned, because personally, I've experienced a little bit of both, like when I was younger, I had a real issue with like washing my hands and like germs and stuff like that. And when I look back at my mindset, in that it was very much about I have to do this or else Or else like, it wasn't so much like what if as much as it was like a really sticky belief in my head that I kind of had to work through. Whereas with like, panic aspect, I tend to be more like, will I get better what if I, what if I die when I panic? What I've read this one is that it's yeah, very different. But in some ways it can feel kind of similar. So I can totally see how there's confusion about it. For sure. Yeah.

Oh, I'm so glad that you shared that. Because it can look very different in from person to person, it can look completely different. You know, somebody who struggles with panic, agoraphobia, OCD, you can have very different intrusive thoughts. And they can sound differently. Maybe some people get images and people don't like it just varies from person to person.

Exactly. And I think the biggest thing, too, is like, it's nothing to be ashamed about. And usually I feel like, the common denominator across everyone I know with intrusive thoughts is the reason why they have them is because it's something they care deeply about. And it's like the absolute opposition to whatever they believe. So I think that's important to remember, too.

Yeah, I'm so glad that you mentioned that because they think they are jolting. Like sometimes when you experience them and you want to sort of associate the thought with it, meaning something about you or it meaning that you would you would do that thing, or you would act on that thing. Or in it's just it's usually the complete opposite like it has. It's so distressing and disturbing, because it's really out of character for you. And it's not something that you would ever do. It's not something that you would act on. You know, I used to get them on being on high things. And it's like, I know, I'm not going to jump, but I'm getting this really silly thought. So yeah, I'm glad that you shared that.

Totally. Yeah. So let's go on to our next question, which is another really good one. And that's why do we get intrusive thoughts? Oh,

my gosh. So I love this question. We get them because we have a human brain like that is the simplest answer to this question. We all get intrusive thoughts, I think we tend to think that the intrusive thoughts are associated with having a mental health disorder. But that is so incorrect, we all have them, you can have them if you don't struggle with your mental health, you can be you know, very functional, healthy in a good place and still experience intrusive thoughts. So we get them because our brains are creative. They think that's their job, their job is to think and they do a lot of it. And sometimes they just spew out these crazy, weird, outlandish things. But the important thing is to really let yourself acknowledge that they're intrusive thoughts, and they don't say anything about you. You know, like we were saying just a minute ago, it doesn't mean that you're crazy. It doesn't mean that you're weird. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. But I think something important to highlight a reason as to why we get them is usually stress is a big contributor. A lot of times people will say to me, like I am stressed, I'm overwhelmed. Is there a correlation? I noticed that I have more anxious thoughts or more intrusive thoughts when I'm stressed? Like, yes, yes, like, that's a very good awareness to have. And we often overlook these things. Because we think there's got to be a bigger, better reason why I'm having the intrusive thoughts or more anxious thoughts. But sometimes it's just very basic, you'll notice them because you're more stressed, you're more overwhelmed, maybe you had a stressful event happen, maybe you had a life event, like you had a baby or you got married, or you graduated or you moved or any of these things, you know, our bodies, when they experience stress, they don't know good stress and bad stress, it's just stress and overwhelm. And sometimes it can just make you really activated and cause you to have more thoughts. So I think it's important to highlight that, but maybe for you, you stress overwhelm is maybe not so much a part of it. Maybe for you, it's just you've had intrusive thoughts for quite a while, and you are really attached to them, and you're giving them a lot of attention. And your body is often very activated in in the fight or flight response. And so you're probably getting hit with them a lot, which makes sense. So, you know, I think I titled this episode, getting rid of intrusive thoughts. And it's sort of click Beatty, and I sort of feel bad, but I don't, but it's because they want people to hit play. You know, the important thing in with intrusive thoughts is we don't get rid of them. We have them because we're human, and we have a human brain. And the goal is not to get rid of the intrusive thoughts. But of course, if you start responding in a more healthy way to them, they'll start popping up less and less. And that's, you know, really the goal is to change our response to them, change how we're sort of treating ourselves so that they pop up less and cause less distress and just general frustration, annoyance. Yes,

I love that so much. I feel like you really hit the nail on the head, like so true. And on top of that, it really helped me to kind of realize like, it's just another protective measure that our brains use, like dissociation or panic or any of that and I feel like And remembering that has really helped me as well. Yeah,

I'm so glad that you said that it's just part of our brain like there's nothing wrong with your brain in will. I know, well, we'll probably get there with the well, what then do I do? Like? How do I get them to stop popping up less? Right?

Well, let's move on to our third question, which is how to manage the thoughts when your brain gets so hyper focused on them? What do you do?

It's so easy to get hyper focused on them, right? Because they suck like they can be scary. The thoughts bring the feelings. Honestly, I feel like the thoughts were like, you know, kind of shitty, but the feelings were like, oh, no, like, oh, no, this is this is real. And I've got to do something about this. So, you know, I think having this response, oh, no, like, my brain is so focused on this, I'm going to do something about it is normal. And it makes sense. It's like a normal reaction, right. But this is why I talk about so much the importance of slowing down and acknowledging, okay, this is an intrusive thought, I'm pretty focused on it. And I'm going to just do my best to let myself have this thought maybe over and over again, and I'm not going to create a story about it, I'm not going to analyze it, I'm not going to try to find meaning in these thoughts. Like, I'm really just going to do my best to let the thoughts be here. And I know, it sounds super simple. I know, it's not easy, it is really hard. But I think I want to highlight three areas where people go wrong, because it really helps you to sort of see how you can do the opposite of these things. Because a lot of anxiety recovery is doing the opposite of what you are doing. So the first way that people go wrong, right, is they try to think their way out of having them. Like I don't want to have the thought, how can I get rid of the thought? How can I not have the thoughts and trying to think your way out of anxiety never works. So resisting trying to do that will be incredibly helpful. I think the second way that people go wrong with intrusive thoughts is responding with criticism, right? That, oh, my gosh, I shouldn't be having this thought This is bad. And you convince yourself that there's something wrong with you, or that you're going crazy. Let's not go there. Let's not, you know, let's not make it have meaning, especially not meaning about you like oh, my gosh, it does not mean anything about you. And then I think the third way that people go wrong is they look for all the ways to make them go away, including having a healthy response to them, but they overlook what we talked about, right, the basic ways that you can relieve anxiety and relieve intrusive thoughts. And, and all of that is by reducing stress, when you reduce stress when you reduce overwhelm when you allow yourself to have healthy outlets and, and ways that you really allow yourself to work through anxiety, it relieves a lot of the anxious thoughts and the symptoms and, and all the things. So I think it's really important. You know, I, I know people are always like, but Shannon, what do I do? But these are very practical things that you can do that will actually help to relieve the thoughts. Yeah,

I absolutely love that. I totally agree. I mean, that's one thing. My therapist has always said to me, too, it's like, I don't have a fix for you. I don't have some one solution. And the reality is, is, you know, it just it takes time, and it takes uncomfortable work. And sometimes it's not as deep as you think it is. Sometimes it's just doing nothing. And that's a hard thing to wrap your head around when you're really struggling for sure. Yeah,

well, it's you convince yourself it would almost be easier if you told me I had to run 10 miles and then I had to jump over this brick wall. And then I had to drink this grow string like that is like okay, I'll do it. But right, right, but saying no, no, I don't want you to do any of that. I don't I don't want you to try. That's like Oh, shit. But no, that doesn't feel good.

So we'll move on to question number four, which I'm excited to hear your response on this one. And that is Do you still have intrusive thoughts yourself? Yeah.

Oh, shit, right. I would love to tell everyone. No, and I never get them. And life is great. And it's just magical. Like, I still get intrusive thoughts. But nowadays, right? It doesn't look how it used to. I'm not going down the rabbit holes. I'm not telling myself a story about it. I'm not trying to find meaning. I'm practicing everything that I learned and what I know to be helpful and they don't lead to the symptoms. They don't lead to me freaking out and you know, altering my actions and behaviors. It's just like, Oh, weird, like weird that I had that thought. And yeah, so I get them of course, because I'm a human being I don't get them very often. But I will say I want it I want to be vulnerable and share. And this is, this is a bit tricky to share. Because I think, as the listener, right, you can probably acknowledge, it is tough to share intrusive thoughts because they can carry some embarrassment, they can carry some shame, they can really make you feel like there's something wrong with you, you can convince yourself, I cannot share this with anyone. So of course, when I sat down and thought, Okay, we're going to talk about intrusive thoughts, and I, and I was like, do I share this? And I was like, Yes, but I know this is gonna be hard. So I don't know. I can't remember when this was it was probably like six months ago, maybe a little more. We, I feel like we're sick all the time. And people know this, right? I'm sick all the time. But my daughter, she's five, she started kindergarten this year. And of course, everyone warned us she's going to be sick all the time. Well, we have gotten sick time. And it's incredibly stressful, incredibly overwhelming. Her starting kindergarten is getting sick all the time. We've had some life things happen. Like I've obviously been more stressed, and my system has been a bit more activated. And so I had this thought relating to Amelia. And I never had thoughts like this when I was struggling with or I should say, never had a thought like this when I was struggling with panic and agoraphobia. Mine were always very What if centered, like, what if? What if? What if this thought was in relation to Amelia and it was like harm centered? And I was like, well, this does not feel good. Like, this is one of those thoughts that you're like, why am I having it? Ill like, you can quickly go down rabbit holes, but I knew what to do. I knew I this is an intrusive thought. I know why I'm getting it. I've been so stressed out. So overwhelmed. It makes sense. I did everything that I knew to do. And the thought popped up like maybe three four times over the course of a few days. And I knew it would pass. And I knew it wouldn't like, cause any big issues. I didn't convince myself, Oh, my gosh, I have OCD. I have harm OCD, I need to see a therapist. It was just like, No, let me slow it down. Okay, I'm more stressed and more overwhelmed and make sense. It's an intrusive thought I know what to do. And I'm just gonna do my best to keep responding to it in a healthy way. But I know when you experience these thoughts, it can feel so dangerous, it can feel so gross, it can feel so scary. Like it can feel like you are batshit crazy, like, I get it. But I'm sharing this because this is somebody who's been recovered for seven years, I don't struggle with anxiety disorders, I don't struggle with OCD. And I still got an intrusive thought that was hard, really to know is very out of character and nothing I've ever gone before weird. It didn't stick it out. I haven't had it since then. And it just went on its way. So I just think this is a it's very important to talk about the really hard stuff, but also acknowledge like, you can have intrusive thoughts that are like this that are very scary, they're very overwhelming. And it doesn't mean you're always going to have them like they will go on their way. But it takes that dedication and practice to consistently respond to them in a healthy way for that to happen. Yeah,

wow, you're so brave for sharing that. And I think it's really gonna help a lot of people because I think so many people in general also just struggled, even voicing their intrusive thoughts of them is just often so ugly. And so against what you actually want. It's so just hard to even talk about, but that's nice. I just love that. Yeah. So I think we're moving on to number five, which is another really, really good question. And someone asks, when you're flooded with anxious thoughts, it's difficult to rationalize. And remember, they're not affected. They're not reflective of reality. It's easy to do this with when the mind is calm, but hard when you're feeling really anxious. And what can I do in this situation? Oh, my gosh,

I think it's so hard when you're flooded with anxious thoughts, period. So like, let's just recognize that right? Like, it is hard to function when you're being flooded with a ton of anxious thoughts and feelings. And those thoughts usually bring about some feelings. So I think what I want to highlight here is it's important to not try to rationalize your thoughts. I think we want to because we want to convince ourselves like this is okay and I'm going to be okay and like this doesn't mean anything and blah blah blah. I think if I had done that with the thought I I had relating to Amelia, I could have gotten myself into a really sticky situation like I, if I went down that hole of like, you know, you wouldn't hurt Amelia like, you know you and and do this like you, you know. And then if I went changing a bunch of things because I had this thought it would have created a whole lot more intrusive thoughts and feelings. So I think it's important, we don't really want to rationalize, we want to just acknowledge, call out like it's an intrusive thought, and sort of let yourself be in that uncomfortable space. I know it sucks to be flooded with intrusive thoughts and to feel a lot of anxiety. But the more you try to think and do your way out of feeling anxious, the more chaos and anxiety you're going to create. So don't try to force don't try to convince yourself right, these thoughts aren't reflective of reality, they're not true. They're like, we know that we don't need to tell ourselves and like try to force logic into anxiety. So really just doing what we've talked about, right, we're not going to try to get rid of them, we're not going to try to place meaning to them, analyze them, we're not going to try to replace the thoughts with better magical unicorn and rainbows thoughts, we're going to actually recognize, right, our systems activated, maybe it would be incredibly helpful for me to practice some self care, slow down, practice the mindfulness. You know, this is the stuff that people overlook. But this, the simple basic stuff is oftentimes the things that can prevent the anxiety from really even popping up in the first place. Because remember, right this place in your brain, this the system is kicking in, like you've said, as a protective mechanism. And it's showing up for a purpose for a reason it thinks, but the more you tell it like yes, this is bad, this is problematic. We need to do something, the more he is going to keep popping up. Because that's that's what it's designed to do. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that response is really like key to just everything, which really leads eautifully into our last question, which is how do you respond with compassion instead of frustration?

I love this. Oh, my goodness, it's so it's frustrating. And I think it's okay to allow yourself to feel frustrated, I think we have these expectations, right, that we somehow need to respond in the best way the right way. Like, we need to think that's such bullshit, like, let yourself feel frustrated, it's frustrating. But then slow down, right? And say, okay, how can I respond to myself in a healthy compassionate way? You know, think of how you'd respond to somebody else who's having the intrusive thought that you're having, you know, if your partner or your sister or your mom or your dad, like if somebody came to you and said, I'm having this thought, and it's really distressing, I don't think you're going to beat them up about it and say, Oh, my gosh, you're a weirdo. Like, there's something wrong with you, you know, you need to do something, get rid of that thought, don't have that thought, No, you're going to just hold space for them, say, you know, it's okay that we all get interested that it makes sense that you're having this thought, and we don't need to fight it, like I'm here with you. And I think, you know, self compassion is hard. It's one of everything that we talked about. It's hard, like acceptance is hard. Not doing anything as hard slowing down as hard. Practicing self compassion is hard. All of these things take practice. And that's really, what I want to reinforce here is practice, like being consistent with how you're responding to the thoughts and to yourself is so important. Like these two things are tied together, like how you're responding anxiety and how you respond to yourself. So tied together. So the more you practice responding in a gentle and kind way yourself, while letting yourself feel whatever the heck you feel like that will actually allow you to feel more peace, even with the distressing thoughts and maybe images or feelings being present. So yeah, I, I don't know, I think we want to, we want everything to look pretty and right and perfect. And it's like it doesn't work that way. So let yourself work through all the things like practice this stuff and be gentle with yourself for how it looks because it's not gonna look pretty and that's the reality and that's okay. Right?

I know. I feel like so many of us are like perfectionist too. And this is just one of those things recovering from anxiety is just not something you can perfect and so I'm away. It's like a really good lesson to teach yourself once you figure it out. But in the moment, it's not very fun, but I really love that advice. It's so good.

Yeah, it's I love this topic. And I you know, I mentioned I'm now committed, I'm so old, like I've got to do a masterclass on intrusive thoughts because I know that this is something that a lot of people struggle with. And I really want it to be centered on panic disorder and agoraphobia because they think that When you struggle with these disorders, you have very specific thoughts like intrusive thoughts. What if thoughts? So many of us have the similar thoughts, you know, I'll share some thoughts on social media and people will be like, Oh my god, I thought that I was the only one. And I'm like, No, we all have creative brains, like the anxiety spews out all the very same stuff. And you can convince yourself, it's just me. Nobody else has this thought. And it's so far from the truth. So, yeah, I think expect a masterclass on this topic, because that will be really good. And this is, you know, Annie, this is something that we dive into in panic TVs, we talk about intrusive thoughts, we work through what if thoughts, like all of it, and it's just so incredibly helpful, I think why the masterclasses and the program is so helpful as people can actually see and connect with other people. And really acknowledge like, I'm not alone, and I'm not crazy. And other people share insights of what's helpful for them, and it resonates. And so it's not just me and my wisdom, like it's, it's just the group like, it's so so powerful.

I'll never forget because I mean, I don't know anyone in my life that struggles with this stuff. And I'll never forget. And panic tepees. Just hearing someone say, I am terrified to go to the back of the grocery store. And I was like, Yeah, right. People are gonna read me.

Yeah, yeah. And it's just, it's stuff like that. It sounds so crazy in your brain, and then you say it out loud. And even for me now I say, it's so validating that so many people will say, Oh, my gosh, Shannon, it's like, you're in my brain. It's like you're saying exactly what goes on in my brain and what happens in my body, and it's even validating for me now, because I'm, like, so removed from it, but being able to sort of heal that part of me that I always saw as being super broken and messed up and something somebody that I needed to get rid of. It's like, that was never true. That was never true. So Oh, yeah. So good.

I have a conversation. This is.

I love this conversation. It's so good. It's always good chatting with you on the podcast. And Ian is so nice for me because I'm like, I can just chat and have a conversation. And it's not like, I don't know, I love my solo episodes, but this is just like, it's nice. I

know it just laid back. I got my coffee. Loving me. It's always so fun to just talk with you. Yeah,

thanks, Danny. All right, well, we'll not make it so long in between our next one.

Definitely.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of a healthy push. If you want more, head on over to a healthy push.com for the show notes, and lots more tips, tools and inspiration that will support your recovery. And if you're hoping for me to cover a certain topic, be sure to join my Instagram community at Aldi push and let me know in the comments what you want to hear next.