Danielle Thornton explains why intrusive thoughts feel real: not the thought itself, but the meaning you assign to it. She walks through examples like worrying your partner ignores you, then offers a slowdown exercise where you write the thought, what you believe it means, and evidence for and against it.
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Welcome. My name is Danielle Thornton. I am a life coach and course creator. And today in this video, I want to talk about intrusive thoughts and sometimes why you feel like they feel so real. So when it comes to thoughts, it's not the thought that actually is making you feel like it's so real. It's the amount of attention and the meaning that you are assigning to that thought. Okay, so let's talk about example. You're walking down the street and you see a dog, and you think, oh, my gosh, that dog is so cute, right? And you keep going because there's no meaning that you're trying to give. There's no danger with dogs in that particular dog that you're seeing. So you keep going. No big deal. Okay, now let's say you keep going and you see a puppet pit bull, and your mind thinks, oh, my gosh, danger. I need to walk further away from this dog. Well, the reason why that thought is triggering something different than the other thought did is your experiences and your perceptions based on what you're seeing. So the size of the dog, the kind of dog is triggering in you something that your mind thinks of as danger because of past experiences or things that you've heard or learned. And so what it's doing is it's releasing chemicals into your body, right? It's releasing adrenaline. And all kinds of physical things start to happen inside our bodies. And so it's the meaning about what the thought or what we're thinking that's creating the physical reactions, which we call anxiety. And that's really where the snowball starts. But let's think about this for a second, right? Because the small dog could actually be more dangerous. That small dog that maybe looks really cute, maybe it bites, or the pit bull that you've seen could be the biggest sweetheart in the whole wide world. This is an example of why our thoughts are not necessarily true or not true. It's the meaning that we assign to them, and it's the examples that we've lived that creates that meaning. And then the thought creates feelings based on that meaning as well. So when we have relationship ocd, what we're is we're basing the reality or truth of that thought on how we actually feel. And that's really backwards because it's our thoughts and the meanings that we associate to those thoughts that create the feelings, right? It's not the thought itself. So let's say you have a thought in your relationship that we're not connecting right now. My partner is Ignoring me. They're watching tv. And what we will often do is create all kinds of meanings based on this one little experience. So your partner may be really tired, they're watching tv, they're not really paying attention to you right now. And so you create all kinds of meaning based on this one little experience. So that might be that my partner doesn't care, my partner doesn't love me, my relationship isn't going to last. You know, this is doomed. I need to break up with them, right? So we create all these things based on one tiny little experience. When these things happen and you're triggered and you have big emotional reactions, what you need to do is slow it down. Even if you have to remove yourself from the situation. Go get a pen and paper and write down what the thought was and what meaning that you're creating to that thought. You can even look at the feeling too. What is the feeling that you're having? What is the meaning that you're assigning to these feelings and these thoughts that are going on? When you can do that, you can really start to dig into, are these really true? Okay, so your partner's not connecting with you right now. You write down the meaning being, my partner doesn't love me, my partner never connects with me. And you can start to dig into these. So ask yourself, what is the evidence that my partner does love me? What is the evidence that we do connect? When does he or she connect with me? How often? And you'll start to get a lot more balanced perspective of what's really going on in your relationship. Instead of letting the anxiety in your mind and all this stuff going on spiral you down, you can take a really good look of the reality of the situation. Now sometimes there is some reality in that situation and that's okay. If you do find that there is something that maybe needs to be addressed, then you can come up with a strategy to address that thing that's actually going on and work from a very realistic and solution based place. But when you don't slow this down and you just attach to these thoughts, assign a lot of meaning to them and give them a ton of tension by ruminating what's going to happen is you're just going to spiral downwards and you start believing all these things that are going on in your head instead of actually questioning them and looking for the truth. This is a way that you can start to reprogram your subconscious mind and keep yourself from spiraling down into anxiety. So if you're looking for more support with your relationship, ocd. If you're looking for more tips and tools just like this to start to heal, I have a wonderful group coaching membership called Heal youl Rocd and you'd Relationship. It is a really cost effective way to learn some really good strategies and tips and tools to work with either relationship anxiety or or relationship ocd and I'll post a link below. I also do one on one coaching. If you're looking for something more personalized and individualized, that is an option too. You can join my Facebook group below as well. Just know that you are not alone in this struggle. There are solutions to this. There are ways to start feeling better. It's just a matter of learning about these things and learning new tools and actually using those tools to start to heal. So just know you're not alone. I am here with you every step of the way and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Bye.
