This is a YouTube video by Danielle Jhiani, an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, explaining what intrusive thoughts are, why they feel distressing (linked to the amygdala), and how attention/reactive behaviors teach the brain to keep producing them. She uses a driving-over-a-bridge example and her personal recovery experience to argue that intrusive thoughts can fade when not engaged, and promotes Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) as an effective method if learned and applied correctly.
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Welcome back. My name is Danielle. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach who has fully recovered from several OCD subsets and helping you do the same. Today I want to talk about intrusive thoughts and actually how to get rid of them, which is possible. And let me explain. First, let's talk about what is an intrusive thought really? An intrusive thought is just a thought that feels intrusive because it's really uncomfortable for a lot of people. It feels very unwanted. Sometimes it feels out of the blue sometimes not especially when we've been engaging with them for a while.
Again, I didn't used to believe this either myself that they're actually quite normal, but now I do because I've been in the recovery stage and I see that they are very normal and just that we usually just don't give them any attention. So when we don't give a thought attention, it will fade away. The way that we react to a thought teaches our brain whether this is something it needs to continue to pay attention to or not. So intrusive thoughts often come from the amygdala. The amygdala is the part of the brain that is designed to keep us safe. It was one of the first parts the brains developed to keep us alive. Okay. And I use the example often of that most people have had, not everybody, but most of us have been driving over a bridge, either driving or not driving. And we've had the thought of, what if I drive over the bridge right now and we kind of. We get this picture of going over the bridge and we go, that was a really weird, kind of creepy thought. And then we let it go. Right? So that is a great example of a thought random, weird, a little scary that a lot of us have gotten. And most of us, unless you maybe have some harm ocd, most of us have just gone, huh, that's weird. And then we let it go, and then it fades away and it rarely comes back. Now, when you're driving over a bridge, again, it may come back, but it may not. We don't really know. Now, if we were to have gone, well, that was a really weird thought. Do I really want to drive over that bridge? Am I suicidal? What if my car just goes that way and we start to give it attention, let it scare us, panic, engage with it, analyze it, all the compulsions, right? If we were to start doing that, we're going to be telling our brain that this is something that we need to pay attention to. This is something scary that we need to make sure doesn't happen. And so the way that we react, our brain, if we do that, if we allow it to scare us, if we give it attention, if we engage with it, it's going to tell our brain that this is something it needs to pay attention to because it's scary and it's dangerous. And then we're going to get more of it. When we don't give it attention, it teaches our brain that it's just a thought and it fades away. So I don't get intrusive thoughts anymore. They don't feel intrusive, but it's not like I don't ever get negative thoughts or uncertain thoughts. Right? We all get them. They're very, very normal. But they just don't bother me anymore because I've taught my brain that there's no reason that it needs to continue to bring it up and that I'm not going to engage with it. And it just kind of fades away if it even does come up. All right? So intrusive thoughts can go away. I've had all kinds of intrusive thoughts in my past about all kinds of topics, from harm to relationships, to health to physical pain to physical issues, all kinds of stuff. And they just don't bother me anymore because I've taught my brain that they don't need to bring them up, that I'm not going to engage. And it's very rare that they come up anymore. So this is why ERP is so extremely effective. And I want you to know, if you've tried ERP before and it didn't work, I want you to know that in my experience, it works every single time. It's just that a lot of people either don't learn it effectively or don't use it consistently or don't stick with it long enough to learn. Maybe the ups and downs of it, really, there's no downs of it. It's ups, but we have to learn.
A couple of little tricks with it, and then we just have to be really, really consistent with it. I stay in the recovery stage by using ERP all the time. It's automatic, it's easy. I don't have to do the exercises anymore that I used to do, but I don't get intrusive thoughts anymore. Now does that mean I'll never get a thought that causes discomfort? Something in life might happen? I don't know. We don't. Right? But none of my OCD subsets bothering me anymore. The intrusive thoughts are no longer intrusive and we have control over that. Full control. You just may need some support and learning and understanding of how to do that. And for a lot of you, if you're trying to do it alone, I highly suggest not doing that. Because let me take that back. You can do it alone. It's not impossible to do it alone. You're just going to get a lot more benefit from working with somebody, having the support and learning the things that you haven't learned yet because you only have so much knowledge up until this point. So if you want help, please check out the link below in the description. I have programs currently for you. There's a lot coming out this year, so please stay tuned. But you can get to the recovery stage and stay in the recovery stage for ocd. It takes time. It takes practice. Our brain just doesn't change like this. And most of us have had these negative patterns going on since we were kids, really. And we have to take the time to retrain our brain more and more and more and we feel better and better and better. And you can do this too. So if you like this video, make sure you let me know by clicking like subscribe to this channel to support me so I can provide more videos for you. I am rooting for you guys. I am here for you. I hope you have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you next time.
