Intrusive thoughts can be frightening and confusing, but they’re often a normal part of being human. Here, Caroline Butterwick unpacks why they happen, how they can affect us, and shares some resources she uses in order to navigate them and find relief.
Words: Caroline Butterwick
A while ago, my husband and I were driving to a friend’s house for dinner. ‘Are you sure the hob is switched off?’ I said a couple of minutes into the hour-long journey.
‘Yes. And we haven’t cooked today. It’ll be off,’ he said. ‘But I don’t remember checking it before we left.’ I tried for a minute to think of other things, but I kept picturing the hob left on, and then us returning home in a few hours to find the whole place burnt down.
Really, there was no reason to think the hob would be on, but the unwanted thought stuck unnervingly in my head. ‘Please can we go back and check? Sorry. If I don’t, I’ll be worrying about this all evening.’
We drove home, and I jumped out the car and quickly checked. Yes, the hob was off.
And, as I locked the front door, the front door was definitely locked. We were a few minutes late to dinner but, I told myself, at least I wasn’t worrying about the house burning down.
The problem is, this kind of thinking happens to me quite regularly. Talking about experiencing intrusive thoughts can be difficult — we may feel confused or upset by them, or think other people won’t understand.
According to the charity Mind: ‘An intrusive thought is an unwanted thought that pops into your mind.’ They explain that this thought could be experienced in various ways, such as a feeling or sensation, memory, urge, or mental picture. Sometimes, there may be a trigger, or it might occur without an obvious reason.
‘We have intrusive, impulsive thoughts all the time, and this is just part of being human,’ says clinical psychologist Dr Marianne Trent. ‘And of course, we were never meant to be subject to as much stimulation as we are in our very modern worlds that then keep our brains so active and risk us burning out on a daily basis. We’re doing our best to get through this world of ours with these complicated, tricky human brains.’
If you experience intrusive thoughts, you’re very much not alone. They are a common experience — we have thousands of thoughts a day, after all, so it’s perfectly understandable that some of these may appear as confusing or random to us. But many of us don’t openly talk about experiencing these thoughts, which can then make us feel more alone or scared. It’s important to note, intrusive thoughts aren’t inherently ‘bad’.
‘Our brains are so influenced by what’s around them,’ Dr Trent says. ‘We experience new stimulation, new thoughts, new feelings, what we overhear in the supermarket, and then our brain will literally shower down multiple thousands of thoughts per day.
‘And that’s absolutely fine, so long as we know these are just thoughts.’ Sometimes, intrusive thoughts can be part of a mental health condition like obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
Find out the top three symptoms of a number of mental health issues so you can learn to spot them better here.
‘With OCD, it’s how intrusive thoughts spiral out of hand,’ Dr Trent explains. She gives the example of thinking about a loved one, and how you’ve not spoken to them today, and then thinking, ‘Maybe they’ve had a crash’. ‘And then you start to think, “oh, what does that say about me?”’ says Dr Trent.
‘So you have the thought, but it’s the meaning that you make and the meaning that you take from the fact that you’ve had that intrusive thought. And then it’s the behaviour, or the thought cancellation, to “neutralise” the threat, to cancel it out until it feels “good” enough’ — this is the ‘compulsive’ part.
With OCD, some people find they ruminate on their intrusive thoughts. ‘It’s like laying down that path — the neural pathways become strengthened [when you ruminate on the intrusive thought], and then before you know it, all roads are leading to that thing, because the brain was trying to be helpful,’ explains Dr Trent.
You might be reading this and recognise that you often feel upset by intrusive thoughts, or that you use compulsions to bring relief.
Around half a year ago, my husband, gently, suggested this might be what I experience — that things like the unbearable feeling the house is going to burn down unless I turn back and make sure the hob is off, was affecting me.
I read up on intrusive thoughts and OCD, and a penny dropped. There was a name for how I felt.
Recognition and relief
With some trepidation, I spoke to a doctor about it. Without giving a diagnosis, she suggested it sounded like OCD. I’m now waiting for therapy. It is still hard to talk about — and I know that therapy itself can be a difficult thing to go through — but I felt such recognition as I read up on OCD and it corresponded with how I feel.
Of course, not all intrusive thoughts are a sign of a condition like OCD, though they can still be difficult.
I ask Dr Trent when it might be worth seeking support.
‘If, for example, it’s meaning that your life feels less enjoyable, if it’s taking up more headspace than you might want, or if it’s stopping you from pursuing goals,’ she says.
But for many people, intrusive thoughts — especially once we realise how common they are — are just part of daily life that can seem a little odd at the time, but are part of our human experience.
So how can we manage them? Dr Trent emphasises that it’s not about ‘stopping’ the thoughts, even though our temptation may be to ‘push’ these thoughts away.
‘Actually, what you need to be able to do is to accept and control the thoughts, rather than having them control you,’ she says. Being able to name a thought as an intrusive thought can acknowledge it without falling into rumination.
If we’ve had a thought about something upsetting — like the scenario about a loved one having a car crash, for example — Dr Trent says: ‘Sometimes, we need to, gently, just take a breath and think, “Gosh, I understand that I’m having these thoughts, and it’s really normal to have them, but it really would be incredibly distressing for this thing to happen. And of course, I know that I don’t want that to happen.”’
Dr Trent highlights the ‘54321’ technique to gently ground yourself. It involves noticing five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell, and one you can taste.
Focusing softly on deep breathing can help too. Dr Trent says wriggling your toes at the same time can keep you feeling present. Finding a distraction that’s enjoyable and relaxing can be useful.
But it’s important that this doesn’t become a form of avoiding or pushing away the feelings. ‘If you’re finding relief [by doing something to distract you], that’s great,’ she says. ‘But it’s when it starts to feel like it might be avoidance, that’s when we might actually want to engage with therapy.’
A frustrating irony is that things to help calm intrusive thoughts can occasionally become unhelpful compulsions themselves. If you feel you ‘must’ do a set exercise or routine every time you have an intrusive thought, this may be a sign this has become a compulsive response, and that it might be worth seeking support.
Thriving and understanding
For many, just knowing what intrusive thoughts are suddenly helps us make sense of our minds. If you’re finding them difficult to deal with, there are some good online resources — the charity, Mind, for example, has some really useful information on understanding intrusive thoughts and what support might help.
If intrusive thoughts are affecting your day or how you feel, it may be worth looking at whether speaking to a qualified therapist who’s used to supporting people about intrusive thoughts could help. You shouldn’t have to struggle. As Dr Trent says: ‘I genuinely believe that people deserve to thrive.’
Dr Marianne Trent is a clinical psychologist and creator of the ‘Our Tricky Brain’ Kit.
