Anxious Intrusive Thoughts – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket
One of the most characteristic features of anxiety is intrusive thoughts. These are the thoughts that just come into your head and that can take over your thinking. They are filled with words, images and ideas that can be distressing and fear provoking.
Sometimes, especially when you are busy and preoccupied during the day, you may be able to distract yourself and sideline these unwanted thoughts. Yet often, because they are associated with so much emotion and anxiety, in your quieter moments they come back with seemingly renewed force and distress. It’s quite common to struggle with these anxious intrusive thoughts when driving or last thing at night (or during the night when you wake). And these distressing and anxiety filled thoughts lead to anxious feelings, which in turn then accelerates and strengthens those catastrophic, unpleasant patterns of thinking.
Now, the key thing to keep in mind here is that everyone experiences these unwanted intrusive type thoughts. Sometimes the things that just arrive in our awareness are pleasant, and sometimes they are less so. Our minds are funny things and you can find yourself thinking about all sorts of things which may or may not be based upon the present reality and how things actually are.
Anxious intrusive thoughts become problematic when they provoke anxious and fearful feelings. You think something, or it just comes to mind, and because it is unpleasant or distressing it scares you. That fear then adds to how intensely and persistently you think similar types of things. You start to become afraid of your own thoughts and what they mean. You start to worry that you might act upon the things you are imagining and so cause harm to yourself or others.
Someone without anxiety could contemplate the same thing as you and could then decide to move onto thinking about something else and forget all about what they were just imagining. With anxiety, you find yourself absorbed and engaged in whatever intrusive thought has taken over your thinking. You start to feel worried and anxious about thinking it and you then start to feel tense and hypervigilant to your own negative thinking patterns.
Anxious Thinking
We all have thousands of thoughts each day. You might think about something going on right now, something you need to do or a memory from long ago. Our minds can create things, imagine things and draw upon seeming long forgotten reminders about things. We have mental biases, distortions and generalisations. There is a constant mix up of activity going on in our minds all the while.
Most of the time our thoughts just come and go and move on from one thing to another. Especially if thoughts have no emotion attached or you just notice them without engaging or responding, they move on and are temporary and harmless to you no matter what the content or subject matter.
Yet with anxious intrusive thoughts, the emotion and fear attached to the thought brings it back again and again. It becomes a psychological threat that needs attention. And so you may be driving along, for example, and suddenly imagine swerving your car into oncoming traffic. You would never do this yet the shock and anxiety of just thinking it leads to you feeling on edge when you drive. You start to worry and dread that the thought may happen again and, being already tense and on edge, the chances of it happening are increased. The thought that you could think such a thing as causing a crash fills you with fear.
Or perhaps you imagine harming someone, even a loved one, and this thought shocks you and you find yourself thinking it even more frequently. Or you could have an anxious intrusive thought about embarrassing yourself in front of others and the prospect that this could happen means you may try and avoid social situations as best as you can. You worry that you may somehow act upon your distressing thoughts in a way that would lead to unpleasant, or harmful, results.
You become anxious and fear your own thoughts. You find them distressing to think about and worry that what you are thinking will happen due to something you might do. You get caught in a web of anxiety that tightens its hold the more you try and wriggle free. You feel out of control over your own mind.
Dealing With Anxious Intrusive Thoughts
There are a couple of main ingredients when it comes to dealing with anxious intrusive thoughts. You need to be able to calm yourself down quickly so that the unwanted thought loses its emotional power. And, being calmer not only diffuses the thought but also allows you to think more clearly and rationally about what is going in inside your own head. You take control over your own thinking and can quickly and calmly handle any potentially distressing or uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that could arise.
In addition, you need to have ways to take control and challenge your own thoughts. Rather than getting sucked into what you are thinking, you want to be able to challenge it, change it, move it on, dispute it and have a whole range of strategies at your quick disposal. Instead of going down the rabbit hole of what could happen and what it means, you can see it for what it is, a random, imagined thought that has entered your mind (and that can soon leave again).
And, if you are seeking to tackle anxiety, I’ve covered many strategies and concepts around how you can challenge anxious thoughts in these previous articles
Two Stage Thinking Process – Anxiety Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket
Break Down Anxiety and Worry – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket
Suppressing Negative Thoughts To Improve Mental Health
Putting Anxious Thoughts on Trial – Hypnotherapy Ely and Newmarket
Disputing Your Irrational Anxious Thoughts
Boost Your Well-being and Reduce Negative Thoughts and Feelings
Developing a Positive Mindset: Turning Negative Thoughts To Positive
Anxious Thoughts – From What-If To If-Then
Anxiety – How To Deal With Anxious Thoughts
Challenging Anxious Thoughts – Anxiety Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket
Your anxiety and worry about what you are thinking drives how distressing and uncomfortable these types of thoughts can be for you. Whether it’s just thinking in certain situations or something more prevalent, all that anxious emotion leads to feeling tense and fearful as well as driving your focus.
And so you need to be able to calm any unwanted feelings, which you can do with your breathing or you can get better at this using the free hypnosis download available here on this website (Free Hypnosis Download). And the articles above provide a wealth of resource for way to tackle the thoughts themselves (and so calm your feelings that way).
There is a big difference between an anxious thought and a genuine thought. By learning how to orchestrate, manage and direct your own thoughts and feelings, you can relax about whatever thoughts come to mind and calmly let them move on in another direction. You can be calm, confident and in control over your own thoughts and feelings.
To your health and happiness,
Dan Regan
Award Winning Anxiety Hypnotherapist in Ely & Newmarket
Struggling with anxiety, stress, worry and fear and need some help? Find out how I can help with a Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session. Learn more here: Appointments
Find out what dozens of other people have said after their hypnotherapy sessions with Dan: Hypnotherapy Testimonials
And check out these powerful hypnosis downloads that can start helping you right away to tackle anxiety, boost confidence and more: Hypnosis Downloads
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