As I was thinking of how to write this post, I thought it best to talk about the psychological first and then give you the Christian/Biblical perspective that could add to the explanation of the distress that can come when we have intrusive thoughts.
First of all it’s important to understand what we mean by intrusive thoughts.
The American Psychological Association’s definition states that intrusive thoughts “interrupt the flow of task-related thoughts in spite of efforts to avoid them.”
According to Dr Alexandrer via the Cleveland Clinic, “Intrusive thoughts are thoughts, images or urges that are unwanted but pop into your mind anyway. They’re often violent, disturbing or unnerving in nature.”
Now that we’ve defined them, here’s some caveats I take when working with intrusive thoughts, or anything else that might come attached with a diagnosis – either self assessed or diagnosed by a qualified professional.
I am very careful when someone asks about an OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) diagnosis when they have intrusive thoughts.
Could they be related? Of course. Are they always related? I don’t think so, but I always keep that in mind, I just “put it on the shelf and look at it if I feel I need to”.
But I work with the whole person, that’s the important bit.
If anything I’d say they’re more linked to anxiety or particular life situations – present and past, and even thinking about the future and catastrophising might cause them.
When people come to my practice with intrusive thoughts, they usually just want to get rid of the thoughts.
I tend to be very disappointing at this point as the reality is that therapy doesn’t give you amnesia and the purpose of coming to work through this right now is to help you understand where they come from and be able to find strategies, tools and ways to manage them when they do show up.
I’ll provide some of the initial steps of those strategies and tools further down this post. It is very delicate work and it involved the client’s particular circumstances, life story and how they process and think about themselves and their world.
Let’s look at some examples that you might nod to as you read them:
Did I lock the front door?
Was it OK to say that to my friend?
They must all be laughing at me now after I tripped down the stairs!
I’m such an idiot.
What if I go really fast on this corner and can’t break on time?
I’m not going to be able to look after my baby to the point of hurting them…
There’s a flu scare going on, did I touch that surface and am now going to be really ill for the next two weeks?
Inappropriate sexual thoughts
Flashbacks/intrusive memories to a traumatic event
I was abused as a child and therefore have sinned and cannot be loved by God ever again.
Now that we have some examples, we could start thinking about the reason why some of these appear in our minds.
Sometimes, to disappoint my readers, there is no logical reason. The unconscious doesn’t work rationally like our conscious mind does and it does some weird and wacky things (see my series on dreams).
During covid, I’d hear people say “why am I so anxious now, I didn’t have this before lockdown”.
And my first thought was “and that’s why!”.
Before lockdown, people were going to work in the office, going to the gym after work, socialising at the pub or going to dinner with friends.
Suddenly, all of that was taken away from everyone and some people were stuck in their four walls with only themselves, more silence than usual…
… their thoughts going “oh look here’s our chance! Things are quiet, maybe he/she will pay attention to me now, he/she has to, there’s not much more going on!”
My clients would be stressed, anxious, develop other issues like insomnia which would make it worse (when we’re tired we’re less resilient and less able to cope with what we could if we had a good night sleep and replenished our resources and energy reserves).
In summary: When the external noise changes, sometimes the internal noise becomes much louder.
The good thing is that these things don’t make you abnormal. In fact most of us have experienced intrusive thoughts when we’re mentally well – hence my reluctance to go straight into “this is OCD”.
They are normal, though unwanted.
We don’t want to have thoughts like the list above, they’re distressing and disturbing, and annoying at the very least.
They’re disruptive, distressing and often completely at odds with what we actually believe, want or intend to do.
Something else I’ve told clients in the past “just because you thought it doesn’t mean you did it, let’s explore the guilt that this thought is making you feel”.
There are so many more things I could say about how I’ve tackled this issue with clients in the past and currently, but it would take too long, so if you’d like to find out more, get in touch with me.
Now let’s explore the biblical perspective on intrusive thoughts…
Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
As the Psalm points out, and it’s important to point this out: not everything in the Bible is about sin – yes we are sinners in need of a saviour, but not everything we do is a sin.
This includes intrusive thoughts.
How can we be held responsible for something that we didn’t plan or even want?
The problem stems from what we do with the thoughts – if we put them into action – like harming self and others – then we might fall into the realm of sin.
But enough of that, this is not a sermon, let’s focus on what we can do to manage the thoughts. (Here’s an article to explore this further).
When I’m working with clients, I generally don’t speak in spiritual terms, but I will mention this to my supervisees and keep this in mind with my own clients that come with different situations. I even say “I’m not sure how this will work in practice, but I think it’s important to be aware of the spiritual side of things – from a Biblical perspective”.
It is only in the cases that the client wants the spiritual, biblical perspective, that the conversation opens up further, like we’re doing here.
My internal thoughts during a session sometimes remember what I’ve learned in the past – that the battlefield between good and evil is in the mind.
In the biblical sense, they can be classed as spiritual warfare from the enemy that is trying to wear believers down so we can be ineffective for God’s purposes – whether our jobs, our relationships or something else.
Here are some psychological and biblical approaches to dealing with intrusive thoughts:
practice this when you’re calm, on a regular basis, so that when something that causes worry, anxiety, stress, your body will be ready to remind you:
“hey you’re anxious, let’s practice that block breathing to help you calm your mind and body down and be able to think better to work through this”.
- Notice the thoughts
That’s it, do nothing else with them for a bit and see what happens to your mind, your body
(I’ve seen so much change in clients without them doing much else to start with, just from noticing – it seems like such a small thing but it has great benefits).
- Try to understand why they’re coming up for you now.
(For example, when I dream that I lose my bag in a shop, I now know that I am probably worried or anxious about something) – a few therapy sessions might be good for this.
- Challenge the thoughts – this is an odd suggestion, but talk back to the thoughts:
“I don’t want to do that, and I’ve not acted on this, so you can be there and be annoying and try to distress me, but I know myself and that’s not something I’d do, so take your time and leave when you’re ready, we’re not giving you much more attention than you actually deserve…”
- Take your thoughts captive – rather than letting them take you captive.
2 Corinthians 10:5 talks about taking our thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ. From the biblical perspective, we can see Intrusive thoughts are spiritual warfare and therefore we must treat them like an attack. But the battle is the Lord’s (1 Samuel 17:47) and He is stronger than us against the spiritual realm, so giving it to him to help us with it is a great thing to do.
In a psychological sense, we can take our thoughts captive by not letting them spiral out of control. We can notice them and stop the “loop” by challenging them and understanding that it’s just a thought, we’ve not done anything, and we can notice it, give it a few moments of air time and then let it go. (easier said than done!)
- Distract yourself.
Sometimes distraction is necessary, there will be time to deal with it when we’ve strengthened ourselves.
Redirecting your thoughts or distracting yourself to nicer, kinder things might also be a helpful strategy based on Biblical teachings:
Philippians 4:8 tells us, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
I hope this blog post has helped you understand some of the psychological and the spiritual aspects of intrusive thoughts.
