Our mind has a fertile imagination. It can come up with all kinds of weird and wonderful things, and we might wonder where it got that idea. Our anxious mind is incredibly active, and uses this creativity to find the things that really scare us. It does this so effectively that we believe the crazy intrusive thoughts it comes up with and treat them seriously.
But the thoughts are just that – thoughts. They are not real. They can simultaneously seem both crazy and convincing, but they are just the ramblings of our Voice of Fear.
These thoughts are also intrusive. They come into our conscious minds frequently at all times of the day and night, unbidden. They can come with such force and persistence that we are neither able to stop them nor ignore them.
The combination of the thoughts being frequent, random, powerful, crazy and convincing can make us seriously question our own sanity. But we are not going crazy; it is just how our anxiety manifests. Though very worrying, these anxious thoughts are actually not serious at all.
Understanding Crazy Intrusive Thoughts
Crazy intrusive thoughts come in all shapes and sizes, covering every topic imaginable. Our anxious mind (Voice of Fear) can come up with literally thousands of “What if____?” type thoughts.
Most of these thoughts are fleeting, but if any of them cause a reaction in our minds, they stick, and then our Voice of Fear will keep throwing them at us over and over. That is how the anxious mind works – once it finds something that really bother us, it keeps giving it to us. Those thoughts become persistent and intrusive, and we can get drawn into trying to solve them or answer them.
Types of These Thoughts
A very common type of intrusive thought is the health worry. We experience a physical symptom, and immediately begin to speculate on what could be causing it. The idea that it might simply be anxiety (by far the most likely explanation) provokes no reaction of fear, so that is easily dismissed. But the idea it might be a life-threatening illness provokes a strong fear reaction, and that thought becomes sticky. We become more and more concerned until we seek medical advice. But the thoughts can be so persuasive that even doctors’ opinions or negative medical test results won’t dispel it.
We fear that we are going crazy.
Another common type of “What if____?” thoughts are about losing our mind. We wonder if some serious permanent damage has been done to our mental/emotional well-being. We may seriously wonder if we are going crazy, or developing some mental degeneration. If these thoughts scare us sufficiently, they can become persistent and intrusive.
We may worry about losing control or doing something unthinkable. This can often relate to thoughts about harming ourselves or someone else. We know we would never do it because the idea of doing so is abhorrent to us. But still we cannot help wondering why we are getting these thoughts, and have that nagging question – what if we were capable of acting on these thoughts. This really scares us, and the thoughts persist.
NOTE: I should distinguish here between these common and harmless anxiety-based fears of causing harm, and the rare but more serious contemplation or plan of actually causing harm. If you are contemplating or planning to cause harm to yourself or someone else, you need to seek medical help right away.
Other crazy intrusive thoughts are the compulsions to do something very specific – an action that we know is not necessary or doesn’t make sense, but the thought of not doing it causes us great anxiety. These obsessive thoughts can cause compulsive actions (a condition referred to as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). OCD has some particular characteristics that I have described in this web page.
Dealing with Crazy Intrusive Thoughts
In all these cases what is important are not the thoughts themselves but the reaction you have to these thoughts.
How you think about your thoughts makes the experience very different. A fiction writer might enjoy the thought and find inspiration for their next book, whereas an anxiety sufferer will be more likely to react with fear about having such thoughts. Your relationship to the thoughts is what matters, and this can be changed.
Instead of fixating on the “message” of the thought (which is just nonsense invented by our Voice of Fear), we can focus on the way our mind tries to fool us into engaging with them. As we become more aware of this tendency to entertain the thought, we can respond instead with: “Wow, that’s an interesting thought. What a creative troublemaker my mind is.”
When we stop reacting, and a thought loses its power to engage us, our Voice of Fear often tries other thoughts instead. It seems determined to get us to bite. It can throw increasingly absurd thoughts at us, in the hope we will react. We can observe the part of our mind that tosses out such thoughts, and laugh at how ridiculous it is. We become the observer of our mind and the thought, rather than the creator or victim of the thought.
Do the opposite.
As stated earlier (it cannot be stressed enough), it is not the initial thoughts themselves that create anxiety, but our reaction to them. So rather than try to fight, stop or change those thoughts, we simply change our reaction to them. We do the opposite:
- If you notice you are desperate to avoid them, don’t push them away:
- Invite them in by saying to yourself: “Bring it on!”
- If you are reacting to them with fear, don’t take them seriously:
- Laugh at them, saying: “You’re pathetic, you’re a joke!”
- If you keep trying to work it all out, don’t engage with them:
- Become indifferent to their message by responding to them with the attitude: “So what?”
- If you find yourself searching for positive thoughts, don’t try to change the intrusive thoughts:
- Face and accept them by telling them: “Do whatever you want.”
- If the thoughts are relentless, don’t desperately try to stop them:
- Allow it all to happen by inviting the thoughts to: “Do your worst.”
Why This Approach Works
All of these messages communicate to our anxious minds that we are not afraid of the thoughts, we are not taking them seriously, and that we are willing to just let them happen.
It can help to take the view that you are not responsible for everything that your mind thinks, and understand that the mind can create crazy thoughts, images, and scenarios all on its own. Perhaps think of it like having a television in your brain with a broken channel changer and off switch. You can’t turn it off, and you don’t control the sound and pictures that play; all you can do is choose how to respond.
The thoughts that play in your mind are no more real than a television program. Your reaction to them however is real, and that is what you can choose and change, employing the 5 steps above. The more you do this, the weaker and less intrusive and troubling the thoughts become.
