Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 383. The psychology of intrusive thoughts About this episode Intrusive thoughts can feel shocking, confusing, and deeply personal - especially when they show up out of nowhere and go completely against who you are. But in reality, the majority of us have them. In today’s episode, we’re unpacking the psychology of intrusive thoughts - why they happen, why they feel so emotional, and what actually helps when your mind won’t let something go.
We explore:
• How common intrusive thoughts really are
• What intrusive thoughts are - and what they aren’t
• The most common intrusive thought themes
• The white bear effect and the ironic process theory
• Alternative tools to help manage the thoughts
If you’ve ever been frightened by your own mind and wondered what it says about you - this episode is for you.
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3:11 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
3:31 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. So today, we're talking about something that I can pretty much guarantee you've experienced at some point in your life, maybe even today, in the past week, in the past hour. Today, we are talking about intrusive thoughts. And when you hear that, you might immediately think we're going to be talking about OCD again. That's definitely, definitely a big element of it. But in reality... The majority of people experience intrusive thoughts on a daily basis without having OCD.
4:14 Jemma Sbeg? And they can feel really, really scary, really hard to let go of, just so confronting. And I think when you don't know why they're happening or what they mean, that fear can become even more intense. One of the biggest pieces of evidence of how common this actually is comes from a massive international study led by this guy called Adam Radomski and his colleagues, where they interviewed over seven hundred students across thirteen countries using a very structured interview process. And they found that amongst these students, ninety-three point six percent reported experiencing an intrusive thought in the last three months alone.
5:00 Jemma Sbeg? And that estimate may actually be kind of on the lower side. Another study found ninety-nine point four percent of participants interviewed had experienced an intrusive thought in the last, in the last three months to six months. They can feel so shocking, so shocking that it can be hard to, you know, admit to them or talk openly about them, but they're also an incredibly normal part of the human experience that is linked to everything from very minor stress to health anxiety, to postpartum depression, PTSD, eating disorders. And sometimes they just are entirely random for like no other reason.
5:43 Jemma Sbeg? The good news is we actually have some really helpful mechanisms for managing intrusive thoughts and some very smart people have been on this for a while. And they've come up with some great ways to kind of take the sting out of them. And I think just firstly, understanding why the heck your brain just throws these weird thoughts at you is honestly the first step to feeling less afraid of them. So that is exactly what we're going to do here. Break down the psychology of intrusive thoughts, break down their structure, where they occur, and also how to move past them. So stay with us.
6:21 Jemma Sbeg? So I've spoken about this on the podcast before, but I've had intrusive thoughts for years. Intrusive thoughts like, what if I accidentally ran over my dog and like I didn't realise it? When I was younger especially, I would like obsessively believe that I had committed some grave sin without realising it. So I'd have to pray in a very specific way every night to be forgiven. Another one that I think is really common that I get is like weird graphic images from the news or from videos will like suddenly appear in my mind and like linger on. My brain has two favourite intrusive thoughts of late and we can laugh at them together.
7:03 Jemma Sbeg? The first is that if anyone is looking at me on the tube or in public, I begin to think that I've just screamed really loud and forgotten about it. And now they're all watching me to make sure I like, don't do it again, which makes me wanna scream. And then I feel like any second I'm gonna do it again, crazy. Secondly, the other intrusive thought that I've been having is that anytime I order Uber Eats, someone has poisoned my food. I literally threw out like thirty dollars worth of sushi the other night because I was convinced that because the lid had felt fallen off, it had been poisoned. Who exactly is out to poison me? I have no idea. That's not the point. They're super bizarre, super weird.
7:48 Jemma Sbeg? And the reason I give these examples, and I have many, many more, is because it shows something really important about the nature of these thoughts. By nature, they are unwanted, they are taboo sometimes, they are against our values, but specifically they're against how we wanna live or how we wanna be perceived or what we actually wanna think about. The defining features that can help you determine is this an intrusive thought? Or I guess a normal thought is it's unwanted, you don't wanna be thinking about it. It's involuntary, you didn't choose to think about it. It interrupts your thought process, it doesn't just pass naturally.
8:31 Jemma Sbeg? And it tends to be attached to some kind of emotion. Whether that is anxiety, disgust, um dread, shame, guilt is another big one. This is very different to what we call impulsive thoughts, but they kind of operate in a similar space. People often like confuse intrusive and impulsive thoughts. So I think it's really important you know the difference. Impulsive thoughts are erratic and they go something like, I wanna knock that cup off the table. And then you actually, you go and do it. Or like, um, what if I just dyed my hair black tonight?
9:13 Jemma Sbeg? Or what if I just did actually place that $500 clothes order? They're not inherently harmful in the way that acting on an intrusive thought would be harmful. Um, and they also don't cause us significant distress. They're very often associated with ADHD or uh impulse control conditions. But because they enter our mind sometimes just as fast and dramatically as an intrusive thought, we can confuse them and believe that they are the same thing.
9:47 Jemma Sbeg? This is where I think it actually gets scary. Because you might have a mix of both intrusive and impulsive thoughts. And because you sometimes might act on your impulsive thoughts, you start to think that eventually you could act on your intrusive thoughts. And that, that thought in itself, that idea that that could happen is in itself just terrifying. Uh, so it's important to note they are very, very different, even if they feel like they have similar structures. The key thing is intrusive thoughts are not intentions. Our, they're not desires, the same way that an impulsive thought might be. Intentions involve choice and they involve endorsement. And intrusions are often the opposite.
10:32 Jemma Sbeg? They are experienced as very alien, very upsetting, very inconsistent with the self.
10:39 Jemma Sbeg? A desire, you just have to remember this, has, has pull. There's like a little part of you that wants to pursue it or is excited by it. Most intrusive thoughts have repulsion and they have fear. People feel horrified because they don't want the thought and because the content really hits at something precious that they don't want to injure. That's why they're called uh ego dystonic. That's something you'll hear a lot when people talk about intrusive thoughts. They are also not predictions. Let's make that super clear here. Just because you think your house is going to burn down, doesn't mean it will. Just because you have intrusive
11:18 Jemma Sbeg? thoughts about death, doesn't mean that that is what death is going to look like or feel like. We, we buy into these, these thoughts, not realising that a thought is not a prophecy. Your brain can generate a scenario without it being likely, meaningful or true. In fact, your brain generates hundreds of thousands of scenarios a day and yet it cannot magic something into happening. Otherwise, the whole world's reality would be controlled by you. Do you get what I mean? Like, realising how absurd it sounds and how absurd the world
12:00 Jemma Sbeg? would be if all our intrusive thoughts, or thoughts in general, could come true just by us thinking about them, I think makes us realise that they don't and that they won't. Another thing you may have noticed is that intrusive thoughts often have some very common themes that are just scary. Aggression, harm, sexual content contamination, things about disease. These things are by nature, to our humanity, to the core parts of us as humans, very scary, very shocking. That is why it puts us, puts them, puts them at odds with what we're typically thinking about and that is why they really stand out. Harm intrusions, I think, are especially common. Thoughts like that one I gave before,
12:45 Jemma Sbeg? what if I ran over my dog? What if I just swerved the car and I kill a bunch of people? What if I pushed somebody? What if I have secretly really hurt somebody? Stabbed them? Done something absolutely like just horrendous. Sometimes as well intrusive thoughts show up.
13:05 Jemma Sbeg? Like as almost like a persistent mental replay of something that we have seen or felt. There's this, it's, it really blows a lot of lines because sometimes they can just be imaginary. Sometimes it can be a past experience and PTSD, for example, intrusive experiences are often trauma related images and memories that just like intrude involuntarily and they feel intensely emotional. Sometimes as if the experience is is literally happening again and you are going through it once more. These days, I actually think we need to be more aware of intrusive memories or intrusive recollections,
13:48 Jemma Sbeg? especially of this like violent nature because of the violent stuff we see online. Like people getting killed, people getting shot, people getting bombed, harmed, violence, like the visual of that can linger, even if you weren't there, even if you only experienced it through a screen, you can still have an intrusive memory of it. You don't have to have been there. Vicarious trauma through online content is a legit thing that does actually and has been known to lead to intrusive thoughts. So the final one that we need to talk about is taboo intrusion. So things that are sexual, blasphemous, socially unacceptable,
14:30 Jemma Sbeg? specifically where the main emotional experience is often just shame and disgust or I guess fear of what it means. In these situations, you know, a thought pops into your head that is so abhorrent and so gross that you think to have thought that you must secretly desire doing it. That's, that's why it appeared. That's why it caused you to question your morals, whether.
15:02 Jemma Sbeg? You're a good person. How could a good person be thinking this? Can people trust you? Do they know what's secretly going on inside your head? It's a really difficult experience. But again, that is why intrusive thoughts are so cruel. They come from your brain. And your brain knows everything about you. Including the things that disgust you or terrify you. It knows exactly how to shock you. By taking everything you care about and pulling it all the way to the other direction. Why your brain then decides to play with those thoughts and throw them at you? We're gonna get to that in a second.
15:45 Jemma Sbeg? But again, the reason they all cause such intense fear is because by nature they are in direct contradiction to what you value. That's what I really, that's what was important for me to know when I was first experiencing this. And that's what I think is really important for us just to remember, even if you've heard it before. You know, if you deeply value safety, that is why your mind produces harm scenarios. If you deeply value morality, that is why your mind produces taboo moral thoughts. If you deeply value your new baby, for example, like that is why your mind produces horrifying baby harm thoughts or nightmare thoughts about what's gonna happen to your child.
16:30 Jemma Sbeg? If you deeply value your relationship, that is why your mind produces those thoughts of, what if I don't actually love them? What if I cheated on them? Those kinds of just rapid intrusions. A thought that didn't carry so much emotional weight wouldn't stick the way intrusive thoughts do because your brain wouldn't be so alarmed. And because it is so alarmed and because it feels such an intense way, that is why it is so hard to move on from. Because we think that it must mean something if it could have arisen in the first place. This is where we get to a crucial element of this. The problem isn't the intrusion itself.
17:14 Jemma Sbeg? If we were to simply be able to say, yeah, that's not true. I know that's not true and move on, we'd likely be fine. It's this reaction and this interpretation and our sense of personal responsibility that we have towards this intrusive thought that often then goes on to trigger distress and trigger, I guess, a need for a neutralizing response. A related concept that you need to know, you need to know here if you are experiencing this is something called thought-action fusion, which is basically the feeling that having a thought is the moral equivalent to doing it, or that thinking it increases like the
17:57 Jemma Sbeg? likelihood of it happening, like we were talking about before. We think that there is some predictive value here. This is very similar to the concept of magical thinking, believing that our thoughts have the power to change reality, which is hard because that can be both a good thing to believe in and a horrifying thing to believe in. That belief that our thoughts can change our reality, that is, that belief is like a cornerstone to manifestation and positive thinking and even like some elements of cognitive behavioural therapy to some extent. How you think about something changes how you behave towards it, which changes the
18:42 Jemma Sbeg? reality of it. Um, I also feel like this can be a real spiritual concept for some of us, believing that we have the power to change things through thought, but also that we can sense things that are meant for us before they happen, that we have a destiny, that our thoughts are, I guess, leading us someplace. That's a very spiritually profound thought that a lot of people have. But when you have an intrusive thought, or when you have OCD or anything of the sort, that magical thinking becomes pretty unmagical because now you imbue every thought with this added meaning. What if it is a sign? What if it is a message from the universe?
19:26 Jemma Sbeg? What if this is my intuition? You know, what if this is some greater power speaking to me on a deeper level, trying to tell me something? Rationally, like, you know this isn't true, you know that. But when you're also in this state of fear, in this state of panic about a specific thought, the logic required to recognize magical thinking, the logic required to interrupt that thinking often disappears. And that itself is a part of this whole process. Not, not having the rationality, because you are so afraid, to realize that the thought is really what's causing the fear. So you can kind of see the loop we end up in here. You think something and it's scary.
20:11 Jemma Sbeg? And because it's scary, it feels important. So your mind concentrates on it more, which makes it feel more realistic and therefore scarier. It drives me nuts, honestly. You know, at the broadest level, intrusive thoughts, these kinds of intrusive thoughts, they happen because your brain is a meaning-making, threat-detecting, prediction machine. All day, again, your mind generates random associations automatically to try and figure out what is going on around it, to try and make sense out of your daily interactions and daily experiences. It brings up fragments of a memory, mental images, impulses, absolute nonsense, just
20:53 Jemma Sbeg? trying to find a good interpretation or a way of ordering things. So it's going to have thousands of good thoughts, bad thoughts, neutral thoughts, scary thoughts. But of course, certain categories get tagged as important. The threats, the taboo things, the things to do with responsibility, identity. Again, these tags, those tags, don't mean that the thought is true. It just means that the thought becomes salient. It just means that your brain pays more attention to it. And because our human threat systems are biased towards better safe than sorry, the mind lingers and will continue to produce catastrophic scenarios to do with this thing
21:35 Jemma Sbeg? that you fear the most, even when nothing is wrong, especially under stress, especially when it feels like if it could overthink this, if it could linger on this, it could anticipate how to respond and how to, I guess, survive if this were to actually occur.
21:54 Jemma Sbeg? So let's talk about why our mind would think we need testing and thinks we need intrusive thoughts and when they are likely to increase after this short break.
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26:14 Jemma Sbeg? I feel like the moment my intrusive thoughts start increasing, it is like the canary in the coal mine telling me it is time to start taking better care of my mental health and to start taking better care of myself. Intrusive thoughts do become more common during certain life events. Again, whether you have OCD, whether you have anxiety, PTSD or not, there are times in your life that you are probably going to see an increase in prevalence. The postpartum period is an example that researchers explicitly discuss when it comes to an increase in intrusive thoughts. One of my friends, she actually recently did have a baby and her intrusive thoughts like had a major uptick, they increased rapidly.
26:59 Jemma Sbeg? She constantly worried, um, what was the one she was telling me about? That she, that a cat had broken into her baby's room and was sleeping on her baby's face, which is really weird because she doesn't have a cat. Another one was that she'd accidentally taken another person's baby at the park. That was a big one. Any significant period of hormone fluctuations, like right before you get your period or during perimenopause. Also, if you have uh significant thyroid issues, research shows intrusive thoughts may be more common for you. Actually, in 2013, in Australia, they did conduct a study into this
27:44 Jemma Sbeg? and they actually looked into the role of hormones and the formation of intrusive memories. And what they found was that elevated estrogen levels as well as elevated cortisol levels really predicted negative intrusive memories and how many negative intrusive memories people have or had of an event. And it makes sense. It makes sense that that that that would be the case. Yes, during hormonal fluctuations and that, but also during stress because it's all tied up together. All these systems are interconnected, right? And the cognitive effort required to dismiss these thoughts and to use our coping strategies and to apply
28:27 Jemma Sbeg? logic and to move forward is greatly fatigued by everything else that is going on. Your brain is magnificent. It also does not have unlimited cognitive and mental resources. If it is being taxed by work, by stress, by relationships, by a recent move, by a recent loss, by a breakup, your defenses aren't as well supported. So those intrusive thoughts get through the first line of defense. Another interesting thing to note. Intrusive thoughts are also likely to be more common in those who already have a mind that is primed for threat focused repetition. What I mean by that is people who worry a lot,
29:10 Jemma Sbeg? people who ruminate a lot, and people who feel a strong need to resolve uncertainty. This is pretty obvious, but people, for example, with a personality trait called the need for closure are more susceptible susceptible to intrusive thoughts than people who don't have that need. And this personality trait, need for closure, is what it sounds like. There are some people out there, and we all know them, who can just like adapt to new situations, who don't need closure from the past, who don't need a plan, who are okay with not having all the answers. Um, and those people are tend to have less intrusive thoughts. I'm not one of those people, that's for sure. My need for closure is very high. I want to know. I want
29:55 Jemma Sbeg? to know the answer. So when an intrusive thought pops up that doesn't have an immediate answer, of course, I'm going to obsess over it because my brain thinks that that's a way of of learning more. You can actually take this test. You can measure yourself on the need for closure scale online. I think it's either on the Princeton or Stanford website. If you're interested, it takes like five minutes. I think from memory, it is free.
30:21 Jemma Sbeg? It's really revealing. It's very validating to know this is just my brain. When I did that test and I got the score that I got, can't remember, but it was pretty high. I remember being like, oh God, this makes so much more sense. And it brought me a lot of calm to know that these thoughts were just a symptom of my operating manual. And again, it put this barrier between me and and having to think that every single one of them was real. This was just how my brain worked. I often find it um so funny.
30:52 Jemma Sbeg? Funny is the only way to feel about it, but the scariest thing in the world to me is a thought my own brain concocted. That has like a zero point zero zero zero percent chance of coming true. Like again, sometimes you just have to laugh at how absurd and funny it is. That my brain is like getting scared of itself. It's also funny, but equally unfunny, not funny. Like this whole thing is that the worst thing you can do for an intrusive thought is to actually not think about them. Which is the thing that you most want to do. Like, the worst thing you can do is suppress an intrusive thought.
31:31 Jemma Sbeg? It sucks, but ignoring them or aggressively trying to suppress them or avoid them. Which often feels like the only natural thing to do in that situation. That will probably result in them growing and in them spawning two heads and terrorizing you even further. Like this whole, everything to do with intrusive thoughts honestly feels like a big joke. This was something actually demonstrated by an incredibly famous series of studies or series of experiments from the nineteen eighties. By Daniel Wagner and David Schneider in a paper titled paradoxical effects of thought suppression.
32:12 Jemma Sbeg? Now, you're actually, like you have likely heard about this study, even if you don't know the name, even if you don't realize it. It's one of the most famous ones out there. They recruited a number of undergraduate participants at Trinity University. And they instructed them to whatever they do. Not to think about certain items or certain animals or certain thoughts. The one we all know about is of course, don't think about a white bear, don't think about a pink elephant. What are you suddenly going to start thinking about those exact, those exact things? And basically, that's what they reported on. A lot of these participants experienced a noticeable rebound effect where when they were told not to think about something,
32:54 Jemma Sbeg? they actually ended up obsessing over it, far more than the people who were allowed to think freely about whatever they wanted. They clung onto it. They became obsessive about it. Some of them really were like, oh my God, I can't stop thinking about it. This happens because of something called ironic process theory. Once you have been given the instruction not to think about something, a part of you now has to check that you're not thinking about it and now has to make sure you're still avoiding the thought. But how can you know you're not thinking about it if you're not checking
33:34 Jemma Sbeg? and therefore thinking about it, which ironically keeps the thought active and front of mind? Ironic. That's why it's called ironic thought process theory. It's very exhausting, right? The only real way to win this kind of mental tug of war game is to give your brain specific permission to think about it for a while or to talk about it. Any method that gets it out of your brain where it's constantly going to be reinforced is massively helpful. Partially because that's when we can examine how irrational it actually is. That's hard, right? Because acknowledging an intrusive thought or acknowledging a taboo thought
34:18 Jemma Sbeg? or one that really scares you, or a thought that you don't want to have or that you want to harm your pet, whatever that is, acknowledging that to somebody um kind of feels like an endorsement. It kind of feels like we're saying we want to do that. We worry people will misunderstand us. It is the only way through. Is it going to make it more likely to happen now that you've spoken about it? Absolutely not. It's actually going to make it a lot easier for you to manage this thought because it's not as powerful. The other reason this is so effective, speaking about a thought, acknowledging it, talking about it, is because it stops avoidance. And every time you avoid a thought, you essentially strengthen the
35:01 Jemma Sbeg? belief that there must be some truth to it, and you also strengthen the belief that you can't handle it. When you deliberately allow the thought instead and not allow the action, just allow the thought instead of just like pushing it away really aggressively, you're essentially doing a form of exposure therapy. It's the same principle that's used in cognitive behavioural therapy or to get rid of phobias. Anxiety and distress in response to a thought works because of avoidance learning. When a thought appears, you panic. Because you panic, you try to neutralise the thought by suppressing it. There's a temporary relief, so your brain learns that avoiding the thought altogether will keep me safe.
35:47 Jemma Sbeg? But of course, it also learns how to overcome that suppression and therefore reinforces the fear loop that the thought alone is in itself innately scary. When you allow a thought, and again, allow the thought, not the action, the anxiety does still rise. But when you don't neutralise it and nothing catastrophic happens, it will naturally fall. And your nervous system essentially learns, yes, this thought is uncomfortable, but it is not dangerous because it is just a thought. It cannot reach out of my mind and hurt me. That is called habituation or in newer models, inhibitory learning. You build a new memory that competes with the fear association.
36:31 Jemma Sbeg? The new memory being, this isn't going to hurt me. Traditionally, exposure therapy has been viewed through the lens of fear extinction. You know, the goal is to reduce our fear response over repeated exposure to zero, to never feel fear towards a thought ever again. The inhibitory model says, maybe we can never fully eradicate fear. And maybe that's okay, but we can build and reinforce new competing memories that are, if not positive, at the very least, just neutral and less anxiety inducing. And we're able to look at a thought and just see it for what it is.
37:13 Jemma Sbeg? Similar to this, and I actually found this tip in a book called The Happiness Trap, which I think I've mentioned on the podcast before. I feel like we have this theory, like a couple of books that we mention all the time that are so good, this is one of them. And in this book, there is this method called diffusion that has really helped with my intrusive thoughts. And it has a few elements, but the one I liked the most that the author Russ Harris mentions is to take the thought, to take any intrusive thought and find a way to transform it in some way, whether that's mentally, creatively, physically, to a point where it's not scary anymore. Basically, take the thought, take it out of your brain, write it down, paint about it, tell somebody about it.
37:56 Jemma Sbeg? But like, say for example, write it down in like big block letters and then color the letters in. Or like, imagine the thought or the situation you're scared of, but in the situation, everybody has like a red clown nose on. Or sing the thought to yourself in like a silly voice or be like, oh, like pretend you and the, you and this thought are on a talk show and you're, and they're a comedian and you're like laughing at this thought. You're like, God, that's a funny one. I'm always reminded when I, when I talk to people about diffusion of that, um, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where they have, I don't know, like a bogart or something, I don't know what it's called, but, um, they have like that big trunk and
38:39 Jemma Sbeg? like the thing jumps out and it turns into the thing they fear the most. And they have to find a way to turn it into a funny thing. So like the spider turns into a spider on roller skates or like the full moon turns into a deflating balloon. It, it's interesting because that is this technique, like that's a real technique that is diffusion because it makes this, this thought feel less scary and real and serious and important because you make a joke out of it, because you look at it through another angle. Another step of this process, and actually it's the first step, I jumped the gun, I jumped ahead, it's, but it's basically just to actually label a thought as, as it is, which is an intrusive one.
39:21 Jemma Sbeg? It's just to say like this is an intrusive thought, nothing more, nothing less. Because the meaning we assign to these to these thoughts, including our interpretations around responsibility or danger or that they could come true, um, that is what causes anxiety or distress. But when you can just clearly be like, oh, well, this is just an intrusive thought. I know what this is. I know the anatomy of this thought. I know it's not real. You get your distance. It's like providing the diagnosis for the thing that didn't used to have a label. I found that that in itself, just being able to label that gives me space. Okay, we are going to take one more short break before I have a few rapid fire tips for you
40:03 Jemma Sbeg? that I personally do to keep my intrusive thoughts nice and friendly. So if you want even more solicited or unsolicited advice from me on this topic, stay with us.
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44:59 Jemma Sbeg? The goal here isn't to argue with the thought, but to just introduce a new truth. Like, all of these methods so far have been asking us to do. Some mantras that I find really powerful, yes, one just being like, this is just an intrusive thought. I know how to deal with intrusive thoughts, that's a great one. Some others are, I can feel anxious and still choose my actions. My anxiety does not predict my reaction. I don't actually have to solve this, I can just let the thought exist. Um, another mantra that I love is just uncertainty isn't dangerous. The unknown isn't dangerous. And this thought cannot harm me because it's just a thought. Having something like a...
45:41 Jemma Sbeg? A verbal anchor that you can hold on to, like, this isn't dangerous, or that I'm, it's just the fear of the unknown, nothing more, like, it provides you with cognitive distance. So you don't develop this inherent belief that anytime you think something, it's representative of your values. No, it's just another way of thinking. It's just a uniquely fearful way of thinking that you don't have to read into. Similar to a mantra too, is to literally pull yourself out of your mind and into your body and just say, stop out loud to the thought. And then grab the nearest object and describe it and like, experience the object.
46:26 Jemma Sbeg? And give it as much detail as possible. That is basically a, a grounding technique for when you feel yourself getting, getting stuck on the thought, pull yourself back into reality. Pull yourself back into the present. That tactile, physical nature interrupts the mental spiral. Name the thing's color, name its texture, name its weight, its temperature, its shape, the small details you would normally ignore. This moves the brain from this abstract sense of internal threat and internal fear and trying to process the environment into processing the environment in the present form that it's actually in. It just provides you with a
47:12 Jemma Sbeg? distraction that is vivid enough and real enough that it stops your brain from amplifying the intrusion. You can literally do that with as many objects, as many times as you need, even if it just brings you a couple moments of peace, I, I think it's worth it. Another thing I do is I just mentally ride the wave. And like visually, I think of my thought, I think of my intrusive thought as a wave that I'm riding. I'm in the sun, I'm in the ocean, it's vibrant, I'm feeling the movement of the wave and
47:47 Jemma Sbeg? You know, it's this surge, this surge of the wave, this surge of anxiety, surge of dread, of shame, and that can feel like proof that the thought is dangerous, but riding the wave, literally pretending that these thoughts are a wave that's trying to knock me down, and I'm very competent, and I am just coasting along and the day is still beautiful, lets me feel that surge and feel that peak, and then ride with it until it kind of, I guess disappears. Your job is not to flatten the water in this scenario, that would be impossible. Your job is just to stay upright on the board, and it's just to keep moving forward, to keep allowing the flow, keep allowing the wave to pass,
48:32 Jemma Sbeg? so that you can go on to the next thought, go on to the next wave, maybe even, dare I say, enjoy the wave. Any kind of visual activity like this, again, keep focusing in on this, but any kind of visual, visual activity, imagining the thought as a balloon that gets bigger and bigger and then pops, imagining like the thought as like, a string that you like slowly pull from your forehead, and are pretending to pull until like, it, it like pops out, like all of that is so good. It works slightly different from the diffusion practice, because when you have a physical thing that also is operating here, when you're recruiting your body, not just your mind,
49:16 Jemma Sbeg? when you're adding this physical feature, it recruits your sensory motor areas of the brain that can kind of interrupt this intrusive part, and it basically just gives your nervous system, I think, a completion signal, like the wave is finished, the balloon has popped, the string is removed. It's like giving your mind a visual, physical, almost motor-based full stop to a thought that is often so intangible. And finally, I have to say this, if you feel like you have had more intrusive thoughts recently, zoom out a little bit and think about what is going on for you in your life.
50:01 Jemma Sbeg? Because the thoughts usually become more intense under periods of stress. It might be worth actually just thinking about.
50:13 Jemma Sbeg? Where in your life are you moving too fast? And is anxiety really bubbling up right now? Use the intrusive thoughts as an indicator of where you should put your attention, where you should try and make your life a little bit less stressful or overwhelming. Often, experiencing intrusive thoughts causes us to wanna avoid the very thing we're having intrusive thoughts about, or the very thing that we're obviously overwhelmed about, whether it's our family, whether it's our friends, whether it's travelling, whether it's the future, literally anything.
50:56 Jemma Sbeg? And that can mean, again, that we are pursuing avoidance. But intrusive thoughts are also knowledge, and they also are information about, about what's going on in your life. Not what could go on, not what you actually do intend to do, but just like about stress and about stress levels. So just keep engaging in those things that bring you back to the present and are engaging you in what is actually going on around you and what your life circumstances are actually kind of throwing at you so that you can, I don't know, so that you can essentially just deal with the root cause first and deal with the thing that's like flowing beneath
51:38 Jemma Sbeg? all these little like stress bubbles of thoughts that just like cling on to the part of your brain that is gonna fear everything the most. And also, I will say, go and see a psychologist or a counselor or a therapist. I know for me, to be completely candid, I used to think that seeing a professional would maybe trigger my intrusive thoughts even more. I was always worried that they were gonna give me another intrusive thought that I hadn't thought of, that was going to scare me and that was going to make things worse for me. Absolutely not, like absolutely not. These people are incredible. There is a reason that therapy gets its flowers and gets its applause because it really does work.
52:21 Jemma Sbeg? And it was this weird thing where I did avoid therapy for so long when I was really struggling with intrusive thoughts because I was just so terrified of having to talk about them more. That is avoidance. The moment that I was forced to talk about them more, all those things that I've been saying to you for this episode did come true.
52:39 Jemma Sbeg? I was able to get the distance that I needed. I was able to see that this wasn't reality. I was able to just like laugh at it and be like, wow, that is really absurd. So I hope this episode has helped you. I know it was a long one. I know we went into a lot of stuff, but if you have made it this far, um, I'd love to know. Leave a comment down below if you're listening on Spotify. What's the weirdest intrusive thought you've ever had? I'll go first. Um, my, I had one recently, uh, where I became convinced that in the middle of the night I'd gotten up and I'd eaten, like eaten a whole packet of gum and I'd swallowed it. And I was like convinced, I was like, I was convinced that I was gonna die from like a blocked intestine. So there you go. How fun is that? Drop your funniest intrusive thought and we can not laugh at them together, obviously, but just like, yeah, hopefully it can make you
53:24 Jemma Sbeg? acknowledge how, how silly they can sometimes be. I know you guys will have some good ones. Thank you as always again for listening and thank you to our researcher Libby Colbert for her help with this episode. Make sure that you are following us on Instagram. If you are not watching the podcast on Netflix, what are you doing if you're in the US and Canada and you are not watching the podcast on Netflix? Well, that's where you need to be. Go and check it out. And until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.
54:00 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
54:37 Jemma Sbeg? I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know I'm such a data and information driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable personalized insights
55:20 Jemma Sbeg? that have made me more intentional and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop. Hi, this is Jemma Sbeg. Taking care of yourself doesn't have to mean completely changing your routine. Naturewise Vitamin D3 is an easy way to support immune, bone and muscle health every single day. And because quality matters, Naturewise has one of the first NSF certified Vitamin D3 currently on the market.
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