You’re standing on a subway platform as a train approaches. Suddenly a thought pops into your head—I could jump onto the tracks. This thought doesn’t mean you’re suicidal or that there’s anything wrong with you. Virtually everyone experiences weird intrusive thoughts from time to time, according to multiple studies, including one led by researchers at Canada’s Concordia University. We may assume that such thoughts are rare and concerning because our friends and acquaintances typically don’t mention the thoughts that pop into their minds. But for certain people, intrusive thoughts are not just a distressing distraction—they can have life-altering consequences.
Bottom Line Personal asked Sally Winston, PsyD, coauthor of two leading books on this topic, to address these rarely discussed topics—“What are intrusive thoughts?” “What do intrusive thoughts mean?” and “How to stop intrusive thoughts.”
An intrusive thought becomes a potential problem only when it recurs frequently, either exactly the same or with slight variations, which happens if you get entangled with it, worry about what it might mean or build a catastrophic story around it. These unwanted “sticky” intrusive thoughts tend to be extremely disturbing—they often involve violence or off-putting sex. Experiencing such thoughts or seeing such images over and over can be highly unpleasant. Some people even reorganize their lives in ways they hope will keep these thoughts away—perhaps they avoid taking the subway if the unwanted intrusive thought involves jumping or pushing someone in front of a train. When unwanted intrusive thoughts occur, people typically try to push them away…and/or engage in mental rituals that they believe prevent them from acting on those thoughts. Often, the thoughts spread to other situations.
Many people conclude that they must be terrible people to be drawn to something so disturbing. In fact, not only do unwanted intrusive thoughts not reflect people’s desires, they reflect precisely the opposite. Thus, people who are gentle by nature might have violent unwanted intrusive thoughts…those who are extremely faithful to their partners can get stuck with unwanted intrusive thoughts involving infidelity…and deeply religious people can end up with blasphemous intrusive thoughts.
Virtually everyone has an intrusive thought on occasion, but unwanted intrusive thoughts—the “sticky” ones that repeat frequently—are a symptom of a mental health condition called obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The best-known symptom of OCD is a need to perform repetitive behaviors—someone with OCD might check, recheck and re-recheck that he remembered to turn off the stove, for example…or she might wash her hands over and over again after touching something potentially germy. People who have OCD don’t just double-check and re-do especially important things for safety’s sake…they often expend significant amounts of time and mental energy on their compulsions. But this compulsive repeating behavior isn’t the only symptom of OCD—people who have this condition also are likely to experience recurring thoughts. In simple terms, the mind of someone who has OCD is prone to getting stuck…and when a sticky mind becomes entangled with an intrusive thought, the result can be that the thought comes back again and again. Some people reading this will inevitably think, I have a repeating intrusive thought, but I don’t have OCD. These people probably do have OCD, they just don’t know it—the condition often goes undiagnosed because both the obsessions and the compulsions are mental.
Exception: It is not OCD when a recurring disturbing thought involves an actual traumatic event that previously happened to someone—that can be a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD recurring thoughts are unrelated to the unwanted intrusive thoughts discussed in this article. In addition, ruminations that are part of depression can be quite different
The natural response to unwanted intrusive thoughts is to try to resist them—but that won’t work. When someone who has OCD fights against a thought, his/her mind assigns more importance to that thought, which encourages this “sticky mind” to return to that thought even more often.
So if trying to stop unwanted recurring thoughts doesn’t work, what can be done about them? If you search online, you’ll find numerous step-by-step instructions for overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts—those won’t work either. The general strategies these instructions offer often are sensible, but following a formal, step-by-step to-do list will only encourage the sticky OCD mind to assign even more importance to the topic—and that tends to make the situation worse, not better.
Instead, the best way to solve this problem is to stop trying to solve it—stop searching for ways to prevent your unwanted intrusive thoughts from returning…stop trying to push them away when they occur…stop engaging in rituals to prevent yourself from acting on these thoughts…in fact, stop treating them as a meaningful part of your life at all. Treat them as nonsense that got stuck because you cared about them too much. They lose their fuel if they don’t matter.
When the thought occurs, just let it occur and get on with your life. Recognize that the intrusive thought is there, but it’s not an important thought and it’s really not even your thought. Example: If when you’re driving, you have the unwanted intrusive thought, I could crash my car into oncoming traffic, simply think, There’s that thought again, and go on with your drive. It’s as if you noticed something familiar but inconsequential along the roadside. The goal isn’t to not see it but rather to see it for what it truly is—irrelevant to your life. The less importance you assign to the thought when it occurs, the less often it’s likely to occur.
Ironically, not making an effort to overcome unwanted intrusive thoughts can be more difficult than making an effort to do so—it feels unnatural. Don’t get discouraged if your attempts are not immediately successful. This is a process of changing your relationship with your own mind.
If you want help: Choose a therapist who lists treatment of OCD among his/her specialties. Therapists who lack a background with OCD sometimes mistakenly assume that the disturbing content of a patient’s unwanted intrusive thought reflects that patient’s secret desires rather than precisely the opposite, leading to treatment that’s unhelpful or worse.
Warning: Resist the “confessional compulsion.” Some people who experience unwanted intrusive thoughts feel driven to confess these disturbing thoughts to a loved one out of shame, fear or confusion. That’s usually a mistake. This loved one might conclude that your disturbing thoughts must reflect your latent desires even when informed that the opposite is true. Or your confession might cause this loved one to act differently around you or repeatedly raise the topic with you, either of which could inflate the importance of the unwanted intrusive thought to your sticky mind.
