Anxiety coach Danielle Gianni explains that 90% of people have intrusive thoughts, but trying to suppress them or seek reassurance makes them worse. Her three-step approach: label the thought, let it sit without pushing it away, and resist the urge to research or get reassurance. Recovery means observing thoughts without attachment, not eliminating them.
Welcome back. Danielle Gianni, anxiety and OCD recovery coach. Here. What is the scariest thought you've had today? Was it a violent image? A doubt about your sexuality? A fear that you're going to hurt someone you love? Or that you've secretly committed a crime you can't remember? If you're watching this, chances are you've had a thought that made you gasp, made your heart race, and made you wonder, what kind of person am I for even thinking this? I want to tell you something right now that your brain won't believe. Thought isn't the problem. Your reaction to the thought is. Today we're going to deconstruct the sticky nature of intrusive thoughts and I'm going to show you why. Fighting them is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Here's the science. Research shows that 90% of people have intrusive thoughts. Thoughts that feel very real, scary or fear inducing. Every human brain produces negative or catastrophic thoughts. Most people see a thought about jumping off a cliff or shouting something rude in a meeting and think, huh, that was weird. And they move on. Their brain has an automatic trash filter. For those of us with OCD or high anxiety, that filter is broken. We see these thoughts and we give it a VIP seat. We think, because I thought this, it must mean I want to do it, or because I thought it, it must be true. I must be a bad person. Intrusive thoughts are typically ego dystonic. That's a fancy way of saying that they are opposite of our thoughts values. If you are a kind person, your brain will expect perfect kindness and you may have violent or perfectionistic intrusive thoughts. If you value your relationship, you can develop intrusive thoughts about your partner feelings or longevity of your relationship. Common with relationship OC thought attacks. What you value most. I tell you right now, do not think about a white bear. What's the first thing you see in your head? A white bear. When you try to push an intrusive thought away, you are actually shining a spotlight on it, at least for just a second. You're telling your brain this thought is dangerous, there's something wrong with it. So your brain, trying to protect you, monitors for the thought constantly. Besides pushing it away, there are other things you're doing that make it more likely to get intrusive thoughts. Things like checking your environment or your memory, seeking reassurance or safety from the Internet or the ones you love, or any behavior you do to relieve your discomfort and stop that uncomfortable thing from happening again. It feels like A good idea in the moment, right? But it's teaching your brain to focus on it and protect you more. So it's more likely to be a problem or a trigger in the future. I rarely get intrusive thoughts anymore, but I did get one a few months ago, which reminded me of how nasty they can be. I was sitting at a rooftop restaurant with my husband and my one and a half year old son. He didn't want to sit still, so he was walking around on the ground, exploring. We were on the corner of the balcony, three floors up, and as he got close to the railing, I had the image of him falling off, hitting the ground. Sound effects and all. It wasn't a comfortable thought at all, but I now know how to handle these. So. So let's talk about it. STEP 1. Label and acknowledge it. Don't engage with the content. Don't do anything about the thought. Just say, oh, there's an intrusive thought. About that topic. I let my son stay close to the railing, which was very safe by the way, even as I felt that surge of discomfort. Step 2. Imagine the thought as a toddler who wants you to hold them. If you try to push them away, they're just going to scream louder. If you let them sit on the couch while you keep washing the dishes, they eventually get bored and find something to play with. We want to allow the thought to be there without giving it our attention, either mentally or physically. Step three. And this is the hardest part, you will feel an urgent need to figure it out or do something about it. You want to ask Google, am I a psychopath? Or ask your partner for reassurance. Recovery requires you to sit in that. Maybe. Maybe I am a bad person. Maybe he will fall, but I'm going to re engage in the present moment anyway. Recovery isn't about never having a weird thought again. It's about not caring when you do. Success isn't a quiet or perfectly positive mind. Success is a mind where the noise doesn't matter anymore, which allows it to fade a bit more again. Don't try to get rid of intrusive thoughts. We all get negative thoughts. And as you've learned, most of us get intrusive thoughts from time to time. How you respond to these is key. When you learn to respond in healthy ways versus compulsions, you will get less and less of them over time. Try these techniques we talked about. Give it a good consistent go and then see if anything starts to shift. We can't fully stop negative thoughts. We all have them, but you can learn to react to them in the way that others do, which will train your brain to stop worrying, hyper focusing and catastrophizing. You are not your thoughts. You are the one observing the thoughts. And that observer is safe. I'll see you in the next video.
