Why Having an Intrusive Thought Does Not Mean You Wanted the Intrusive Thought

The OCD and Anxiety Podcast by Robert James Coaching. Music. Hello and welcome to The OCD and Anxiety Podcast where we explore how to have a more positive relationship with anxiety disorders disorders taking back control so that you can start living the life you choose and not the one chosen by your fears. Music. Hello and welcome to episode 431 where today we're going to be discussing why Why having an intrusive thought does not mean that you actually wanted to have that thought.

Now, if you would like to get some support for your OCD, you can actually get a free session with me. To get that, you can head over to my website, robertjamescoaching.com. There you can book in directly for that free session. Or if you prefer, you can send me a message and let me know about what you're struggling with.

With now if you're not subscribed to the podcast i would really love for you to consider doing that it really does help the podcast a lot so i would really appreciate that also if you would like to follow along on instagram you can my instagram handle is at robertjamescoachinguk and you can also find the podcast in various different formats on youtube so many thanks guys and if you have any questions at all do please let me know off we go.

Here's our quote to get us started today. It's by Katie D'Aff and Rob Wilson. It's not the thoughts, but rather what you do with them that maintains the OCD cycle. So try to bear this quote in mind as we go along today. What do those thoughts mean? Why do I keep getting them? These are the kinds of questions many people with OCD seem to struggle with.

It's in the nature of intrusive thoughts to start to question yourself, to come out of the present and start that rumination process, to try to figure it out or reassure yourself that there is no meaning to it, but somehow holding on to that nagging feeling of uncertainty that asks, but what if there really is meaning to it? It. The reality is that intrusive thoughts don't actually mean anything at all.

Rather than being a mirror to our deeper selves, they are a reflection of what you don't want. What you don't want to see and what you don't want to think about ever again. OCD is an expert, perhaps the best expert in the business at drawing us in and getting us stuck. It knows exactly what What kinds of thoughts and what kinds of themes are going to get you ensnared in its trap? And it knows exactly when to give you those thoughts, the moments when you are most likely to take the bait.

It knows all of this because, of course, it's coming from us. But again, not from the part of us that consciously chooses those things, but rather from the part of us that does not want to actually experience those things at all. OCD uses a well-known psychological trick the fact that when we don't want to think about something and in fact we try really hard to not think about that thing.

We end up thinking about it even more. In an article for Hayes Sigmund, psychologist Karen Young states that research by Daniel Wegner, a professor at Harvard University, found that when we try not to think of a thought, one part of our mind will avoid the thought, but another part will keep checking to make sure the thought isn't coming to mind.

It's ironic, but the process our minds engage to not think the thought actually makes us think the thought and when we look at the problem of intrusive thoughts from this perspective we begin to see that our intrusive thoughts really don't mean anything after all that in reality it has a lot more to do with us having an anxious mind that likes to check for things but when we do check and we see the things we we didn't want to see we have been been wrongly attributing meaning

to it rather than you know seeing it for what it is which is the workings of a busy and anxious mind and and this might be this might be so but perhaps you're thinking well how do I get rid of these pesky anxious thoughts and you know the answer to that question is not straightforward as to a certain extent having a busy and anxious mind is actually part of being a human.

Jung goes on to say in the same article that anxious thoughts are a sign of a strong healthy brain doing exactly what strong healthy brains are meant to do, keep us safe. We humans are designed to pay more attention to threats and negative information than to positive information. This is because for our survival it's more important that we're aware of things that could hurt us than the things that could make us happy.

So this isn't to say that we shouldn't learn techniques that can help us to be more calm and relaxed. But again, it does help us to see that whilst on one level our intrusive thoughts are horrible and obnoxious, on another they are meaningless passing phenomena. And when we don't pay them too much attention, they tend to move on of their own accord. Ultimately, learning to bring compassion and acceptance to our cognitive and emotional experiences can give us a sense of freedom back.

We do not need to get held back by our fears related to our thoughts this is just another trick of the OCD but once we shine a light on its sleight of hand we now know a little bit more about it and the next time it tries to get us stuck we will actually know that we don't have to go along with its game sometimes we will still want to take the bait and that is the nature of the challenge of OCD but it's all about just trying to to make some progress each day every time that you let go

of a thought and bring acceptance to it you're actually changing your relationship to OCD and giving yourself the chance of starting to let go of it so there we go guys I really hope that you enjoyed that one and found it helpful I think it's a really important topic to understand you know that your your thoughts are just thoughts they do not necessarily have all this meaning at all that we tend to give to them that actually you know as I pointed out today this is just a trick of the mind and

you know they don't actually have meaning at all so I really hope that you uh you found it helpful please do follow along it really does help the podcast and I will see you next time. Just a quick reminder that if you want to get a free session, all you need to do to get that is to head over to my website, www.robertjamescoaching.com. And there you can leave me a message and we can arrange the free session. And now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer.

Any information that you view on my website, Instagram page, Facebook group or anywhere else online or any information that you listen to on the podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for actual medical or mental health advice from a doctor, psychologist or any other medical or mental health professional. Music.