Examples: fear of contamination or dirt; needing things orderly and symmetrical; aggressive or horrific thoughts about harming yourself or others; unwanted thoughts, including aggression, or sexual or religious subjects.
Concerns about contamination — or germs — are common intrusive thoughts. This could mean worrying about getting sick or spreading illness even when the risk is low. These intrusive thoughts can lead to obsessive concerns about your health and result in behaviors like excessive handwashing or avoiding other people.
Intrusive thoughts are often triggered by stress or anxiety. They may also be a short-term problem brought on by biological factors, such as hormone shifts. For example, a woman might experience an uptick in intrusive thoughts after the birth of a child.
Unwanted intrusive thoughts are stuck thoughts that cause great distress. They seem to come from out of nowhere, arrive with a whoosh, and cause a great deal of anxiety. The content of unwanted intrusive thoughts often focuses on sexual or violent or socially unacceptable images.
This is normal. In fact several well-conducted studies have discovered that close to 100% of the general population has intrusive and disturbing thoughts, images or ideas. These can range from the mild and odd, to the graphic and horrifying*.
While both mental health conditions involve repetitive worrying, people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often engage in unwanted and repetitive behavior in response to their worry. People with anxiety, however, tend to overthink their worry, but don't act in specific responsive manners.
Symptoms of OCD
Obsessive-compulsive disorder also involves persistent thoughts that cause excessive fear, doubt, and anxiety. Unlike anxiety disorders, OCD is characterized by obsessions and compulsions: Obsessions are unwelcome thoughts, worries, doubts, urges, or images that occur repeatedly.
A key distinction in determining whether or not a thought is intrusive is whether or not the thought aligns with a person's beliefs or intentions. Do they try to get rid of or push those thoughts out of their mind? Do they feel upset by the thoughts?
And if your intrusive thoughts are related to a mental health condition, they will likely last as long as you have symptoms. In some cases, fear- or trauma-related intrusive thoughts may never go away completely. But with treatment, you can learn to manage them so they cause much less distress.
Wearing a snow suit and skis to your neighbor's pool party, or bringing steak tartare to a vegan potluck — these are examples of obtrusive behavior, which draws attention to you and makes you stick out, but not in a good way.
When you begin to obsess about these intrusive thoughts and you have feelings of guilt, anxiety, and self-hatred for feeling them, this is when they become problematic. In fact, this is often a sign of a serious mental health disorder such as OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder).
People with OCD describe the condition as feeling like they are not in control of their brains. Their intrusive thoughts involve distressing and horrendous images that they can't shake. They include things like someone breaking into their home, family members dying, or something bad happening to them.
OCD obsessions are repeated, persistent and unwanted thoughts, urges or images that are intrusive and cause distress or anxiety. You might try to ignore them or get rid of them by performing a compulsive behavior or ritual. These obsessions typically intrude when you're trying to think of or do other things.
There are several types of anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, specific phobias, agoraphobia, social anxiety disorder and separation anxiety disorder.
Intrusive thoughts can occur due to various factors, including anxiety, stress, depression, trauma, or other underlying mental health conditions. They may be due to imbalances in brain chemistry, environmental stressors, or learned thought patterns.
Your mind is sending you signals that you need to do something, even though there is no real risk. It is yelling at you that you need to take action. This is why OCD feels so real. There is a very real process taking place in your brain.
Intrusive thoughts can frighten or disturb you, but on their own are not red flags for a bigger issue. People who have intrusive thoughts often feel ashamed or guilty. They worry that having these thoughts means they are a bad person. They may also worry that they'll act out the thoughts and images in real life.
Anxiety can be so overwhelming to the brain it alters a person's sense of reality. People experience distorted reality in several ways. Distorted reality is most common during panic attacks, though may occur with other types of anxiety. It is also often referred to as “derealization.”
For example, that you have knocked someone over in your car. Worrying you're going to harm someone because you will lose control. For example, that you will push someone in front of a train or stab them. Violent intrusive thoughts or images of yourself doing something violent or abusive.
01 Intrusive thoughts are caused by misfired signals in the amygdala. 02 According to Dr. Phillipson, intrusive thoughts are a mental disorder, not a mental illness.