3 Ways to Deal with Intrusive Thoughts

An intrusive thought is one that you’d rather just wasn’t there anymore, it is one that can often bounce around inside of your head for hours and is at best unhelpful or at worst harmful.

Intrusive thoughts come into your brain like an annoying uninvited guest and also stay like a guest who doesn’t understand your not-so-subtle hints about leaving. Often, it seems, the more you try and fight the thought out of your head the more it insists that it wants to stay.

In this blog I’ll be teaching you 3 different methods that you can use to combat intrusive thoughts. Each one has its own merits so it’s a case of trying all of them out and seeing which ones work best for you.

It may be that in some situations one works better than others but at other times a different one is best.

There’s no right and wrong, it’s just whatever works for you.

First up we have IAR – Identify, Accept, Re-direct, then we’ll be discussing a mindfulness approach before finally finishing with Socratic Questioning.

Before we crack onto the methods themselves it is first important to understand what thoughts are going through our heads.

Identifying your intrusive thoughts

The identify step is possibly the hardest step in the process as at times when we’re feeling particularly anxious it can be the case that we’re not exactly in tune with the thoughts that are going on in our head.

They can at times feel like a big swirling mess rather than a big neon sign that flashes saying what we’re thinking.

It can often be that it isn’t until after the fact that you realise what was going on in your head.

I would suggest that you begin keeping a record of intrusive thoughts that you have, you can either write them down in a journal or keep them in the notes section of your phone.

Perhaps you have the same types of thoughts again and again that pop up during a particular situation.

In which case you will already have identified the thoughts that go on in your head.

Identifying intrusive thoughts is a skill and it is a habit to get into as such it takes some time and patience to be able to understand what’s going on in your head when you’re feeling anxious.

However if you can be patient and calm with yourself then you will become better and better at it the more that you do it.

Let’s get into the 3 different methods now.

Identify, Accept, Re-direct

I know this is going to blow your mind a little bit but the Identify, Accept, Re-Direct method involves identifying your thought, accepting it and then redirecting it – crazy, right?

The above section has hopefully covered what you need to know about identifying your thoughts.

So we’ll skip straight on to the accept stage.

Accept your intrusive thoughts

In the acceptance stage we simply accept the thought.

And yes, this is easier said than done.

What we really mean by this is that having identified what we are thinking we then recognise it as an intrusive thought.

An intrusive thought is any thought that negatively impacts your mood.

My preferred way of recognising intrusive thoughts is to ask “is this thought helpful or unhelpful?”

Most of the time if I’m at the point where I’m asking this question I already know that the answer will be that it is unhelpful.

Thoughts are not facts

Our brains can think literally anything from “what would life be like if I looked like Ryan Reynolds?” to “I’m utterly worthless, what am I even doing here?”

Just because we think something doesn’t make it true.

In truth on any given day we might well think more untrue things than true things.

Recognising a thought as unhelpful, remembering that it isn’t true and then accepting this is the key to this step.

Once we’ve realised we’re having an unhelpful intrusive thought and accepted that we can then decide how much energy we want to spend thinking about this.

Let’s look at the two different extremes here in an example.

Intrusive thought example

“I’m ugly and no-one will ever want to be with me.”

If you give this thought your time and energy you’re likely to feel pretty terrible, your self-esteem and self-confidence will be affected, your mood will be more negative, you’ll find it harder to accept the opposite as being true, you’ll spend less time even trying to find a partner because what’s the point and hence you’re less likely to get a partner etc etc etc.

Giving energy to this thought doesn’t do you any good whatsoever.

The more energy you give to the thought the more valid you’ll believe it is.

If you however decided to give no energy to this thought then you can simply move onto the next thought and deal with it in exactly the same way.

Redirect yourself from intrusive thoughts

Now that you’ve recognised an intrusive thought and decided not to give it any time or energy you need to move on and distract yourself.

What you do now will be individual to you, what grabs your attention? What distracts you? What keeps you and your brain occupied? Whatever it is you do this.

Put on a podcast, go for a run, call a friend, draw, write, play a video game, watch Tv, do whatever is going to take your mind away from the thought.

The thought might come along again in which case you can repeat the process and you can do this as many times as you need to.

The mindfulness approach to intrusive thoughts

This is my preferred method to use if my mind tries to keep me awake with thoughts at night which happens from time to time. It can of course be used at any time when intrusive thoughts are bothering you.

First of all it is important to become aware of what you are thinking, this may well come from the “identify” stage outlined previously.

I can’t remember ever reading this exactly anywhere or being taught it by anyone, it’s something I started doing – it certainly isn’t original to me, I just don’t know who to credit.

It’s very simple.

1. Identify a thought
2. Say that thought out loud or in your head
3. Follow it up by saying “and that’s ok”

This approach relies upon us truly understanding that it’s ok to think about anything at all because it is just a thought, like we mentioned before thoughts are not facts.

Being able to calmly tell yourself that it’s ok to have thought anything allows you to let thoughts go.

The alternative is to judge the thought and then judge yourself for thinking it and then spiral off into what it means about you as a person for thinking it – that is never going to help.

Instead we just calmly take each thought as it comes, say that it is ok and move on.

I’m thinking about that mistake I made at work…and that’s ok

I’m thinking about how much I hate my boss…and that’s ok

I’m thinking about the girl who serves me in Starbucks every Tuesday…and that’s ok

I’m thinking about how lonely I am…and that’s ok

Etc

This mindful approach does take patience and practice.

It can be the case that you do start to ruminate about one of the thoughts in which case…

…I’m ruminating about a thought that I had…and that’s ok.

Keep calm and tell yourself that every thought no matter how dark, how rude, how boring, how inappropriate it is, is just a thought.

Socratic Questioning of Intrusive Thoughts

If the mindful approach is like gently letting thoughts off with a warning then Socratic Questioning is akin to arresting a thought, locking it up, and then waterboarding it until it speaks the truth.

This can be done after the fact and then applied if the thought ever comes up again.

Socratic Questioning is a blunt, honest and brutal interrogation of a thought to prove to yourself beyond any doubt that there is foul play at work.

Put simply once you have an intrusive thought clear in your mind you ask yourself questions of that thought to get to the truth.

Example of Socratic Questioning of an intrusive thought

Our intrusive thought is “I’m ugly and no-one will ever want to be with me.”

Here’s some example Socratic questions you might ask yourself here.

“Is this something that you know everyone else thinks, or is it just you thinking it?”

“Would you say this to your best friend?”

“Do you have any evidence to disprove this at all?”

“What would a friend/family member say instead of this?”

“Is anything you’re saying subjective?”

“How did you come to this conclusion?”

“How do you know this?”

“Is there a more helpful/kind way to look at your situation?”

“Are you really that unlovable?”

There are many, many questions you can ask here and I’m sure you can see how quickly these thoughts can fall apart when questioned in this way.

My favourite to use in therapy sessions with clients who are insulting themselves is asking if they’d say that to their best friend – this tends to give them a look of being utterly horrified at which point their double standards towards themselves and their loved ones is revealed.

Questioning your own thoughts in the moment can be difficult and it can even be difficult to know exactly which questions to ask of yourself.

I have a list of over 60 different Socratic questions that you might find helpful to interrogate your thoughts with – this is part of an anxiety toolkit which I’ve put together.

If you’d like the anxiety toolkit then simply enter your name and email address below and I’ll send it straight over.

It isn’t uncommon in therapy sessions when I’m doing this with clients that they will try and argue a point back with me, continuing from the example above an “in-therapy conversation” might play out like this. 

• “I’m ugly and no-one will ever want to be with me.”
• According to who?
• “According to me?”
• So does anyone else think this?
• “Probably”
• Do you have any proof of this or are you making assumptions?
• “No, I don’t have any proof but I’ve been called ugly before.”
• And how did that make you feel?
• “It made me feel ugly and sad.”
• So, if being called ugly made you feel so awful, do you think it is helpful or unhelpful to call yourself ugly?”
• Unhelpful.
• What would be a more helpful thing to say?

From here we’d continue in the therapy session to find a more helpful thing for the client to be saying to themselves that would lift them up rather than grind them down.

Socratic questioning of yourself does end up as a bit of an internal conversation because of the tendency for people to say “yes, but” or “no, but”. 

They’re having their very thoughts about something questioned and the natural instinct will be to defend these thoughts despite the fact they are so damaging.

This requires you being able to be accountable and completely honest with yourself, it is certainly a skill but that means that it is in fact learnable.

Conclusion on dealing with intrusive thoughts

Intrusive thoughts can be very upsetting, they can be mood altering but they can also be ignored, accepted or interrogated.

The act of first identifying what exactly you are thinking in a moment of heightened stress or anxiety is a powerful weapon to reduce your anxiety.

By simply having a clearer idea of what you’re thinking you put yourself in a stronger position to deal with any intrusive thoughts that come along.

As I’ve said none of the three methods that I’ve explained are right or wrong, better or worse they are just a bit different from one another so I’d advise experimenting with them to see which works best for you.

Personally I value Socratic questioning very highly at the beginning of helping someone with their anxiety because often, and putting this politely, clients need to be called out on the bullshit they’re saying to/about themselves.

They need this stronger approach to knock them out of the rut they’ve been ploughing for however long it has been. The accountability of having someone they’re talking to prevents them from falling back into the old faulty thinking pattern as easily.

The slightly softer methods of “Mindfulness” and “Identify Accept Redirect” are introduced a little later when a client starts becoming a little more self-sufficient with their thought spotting.

I have put together a free anxiety toolkit which is a resource which contains a whole bunch of helpful tips, links, videos, podcast episodes and advice all directly dealing with the subject of anxiety.

This is designed to be somewhere you can go quickly and easily to find the help and support you need if your anxiety levels rise.

If you’d like this sent over to you then drop your name and email address in the box below.

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