1246: Intrusive Thoughts And Anxiety: 3 Gentle Steps To Stop The Fear Spiral

Unknown Speaker (0:07): Welcome to the anxiety coaches podcast, a relaxing and informative show where we explore anxiety, panic, and PTSD, sharing how you can overcome them for life.

Gina Ryan (0:23): Aloha. Welcome back to the Anxiety Coaches Podcast. I'm your host and coach, Gina Ryan, and I am so happy to be with you again today as together we can consider the many ways to bring your mind and body back to its natural peace and calm. In today's episode, we're going to talk about something that can feel incredibly disturbing and isolating when you are experiencing it, and that's intrusive thoughts. These are the thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere, out of the blue, as we say.

Gina Ryan (1:02): The thoughts that make you stop and say, oh my gosh, where on earth did that come from? They can feel shocking, disturbing, sometimes even terrifying. I know because I've had them. You've probably had them. Most people have.

Gina Ryan (1:20): And one of the things I hear over and over from people is, Gina, I feel like I'm having crazy thoughts. Now I wanna say right from the beginning, intrusive thoughts are actually a very common human experience, especially when the nervous system is overstimulated or anxious. The content of the thoughts can vary wildly, but the mechanism underneath them is remarkably similar. And here's something important to remember. The fact that the thoughts disturb you so deeply is actually part of the clue that they are not aligned with who you are.

Gina Ryan (2:05): People often become frightened not only by the thought itself, but by the fact that the thought appeared at all. They say, what does this mean that my mind even produced this? It can scare us that we could come up with such wild thoughts. But the mind is capable of generating all kinds of material, especially when the nervous system is in a heightened survival state. Intrusive thoughts are sticky because they trigger fear, and that fear tells our brain, this must be very important.

Gina Ryan (2:47): Keep watching it. Stay alert. So the brain keeps bringing it back again and again and again. Can you see the loop that we're in? And before long, people can feel trapped in this exhausting loop of intrusive thinking, hypervigilance, self monitoring, and fear.

Gina Ryan (3:12): So today I want to walk you through three gentle steps that can help interrupt this cycle. Not by fighting your mind, not by trying to force the thoughts away, but by understanding what's actually happening in your nervous system and learning how to respond differently. Because intrusive thoughts are not usually a sign that something is wrong with you. More often, they are a sign that your nervous system is overloaded and trying desperately to protect you. The nervous system is then acting like a false alarm.

Gina Ryan (3:59): One of the most important things to understand is that the brain and the body are built for survival. Thousands of years ago, if a wild animal was chasing you, your body would flood with stress hormones. Adrenaline, cortisol, increased heart rate, rapid breathing, hyper alertness. Your entire system would mobilize to keep you alive. And once you escaped the danger, your body would settle.

Gina Ryan (4:34): Animals in nature do this all the time, and they do it beautifully. A deer escapes a predator, and in a short while, it goes back to grazing. Its nervous system recognizes, I survived. I'm safe now. But humans don't do that.

Gina Ryan (4:57): No. Of course not. We do something very different. We continue the danger in our minds. We replay the danger.

Gina Ryan (5:10): We imagine more danger. We catastrophize. We analyze, and we monitor over and over again. It would be as if the deer escaped the predator, but then climbed into a tree and spent the next six hours thinking, what if the predator comes back? What if there are two more?

Gina Ryan (5:36): What if I lose my ability to escape next time? What if I'm secretly unsafe all the time? That ongoing mental activity keeps the alarm system in your nervous system firing, and this is why intrusive thoughts can become so repetitive and exhausting. The brain thinks it's helping you survive, but it's responding to imagined danger rather than present moment danger. And the more frightened we become of the thoughts themselves, the more important the brain believes that those thoughts are.

Gina Ryan (6:25): So let's talk about three ways to begin gently stepping out of that loop. Before we begin, let's hear from the sponsors that support the show. Spring is so beautiful, isn't it? But if you deal with pollen, you know it can also mean sneezing, congestion, and it kinda heavy feeling in the air. Honestly, one thing I've been loving this spring is my air doctor.

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Gina Ryan (11:00): Right now, get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription at babbel.com/acp. Step one, I want you to contain the thought instead of becoming the thought. You know, when intrusive thoughts arise, a lot of people immediately fuse with them. They think things like, if I thought this, it must really mean something. What if this says something terrible about me?

Gina Ryan (11:37): What if I secretly want this? What if I lose control? I know that these sentences I just said or questions I said are not uncommon to you. If you've been anxious for a while, you've probably thought those things yourself. But instead, I want you to practice containing the thought.

Gina Ryan (12:01): I don't want you to suppress it. I don't want you to wrestle with it. I want you to just hold it gently and examine it more like a scientist. Maybe you can actually pause and say to yourself, okay, there's that intrusive thought again. Then you can ask, What actual evidence do I have that this thought represents reality?

Gina Ryan (12:36): Not feelings, not fear, not future imaginings, actual evidence. This is really gonna bring you back. Have you acted on this thought before? It's a question you can ask. Do you have a history of behaving this way?

Gina Ryan (13:00): Does this align with your values, character, and life? Well, for most people struggling with intrusive thoughts, the answer to those three questions is no. And here's another important thing. People who are deeply disturbed by intrusive thoughts are usually disturbed precisely because the thoughts are so opposite to who they are and how they act that fear and revulsion matter. The anxious mind will try to convince you.

Gina Ryan (13:40): Oh, but what if this time it's different? What if having the thought means something really dangerous? That's anxiety talking. That's the nervous system trying to keep scanning for danger. And modern psychology actually supports this understanding.

Gina Ryan (14:04): Research around intrusive thoughts and OCD shows that unwanted thoughts become more persistent when we assign catastrophic meaning to them. A thought is not an intention. A thought is not a prophecy. A thought is not an identity. Sometimes a thought is simply a frightened nervous system throwing sparks.

Gina Ryan (14:39): So contain that thought. I want you to bring it in to a smaller area. Contain it. Observe it. Question it gently.

Gina Ryan (14:51): Again, not with anger or fighting. Look for actual evidence rather than emotional urgency. It's that urgency that gets us in trouble. And now, step number two I want to talk about. And here, we are going to allow the physical sensations to rise and fall.

Gina Ryan (15:18): And this is the part that many people accidentally skip. People become so focused on eliminating the intrusive thought that they fight the physical sensations that come with it. You know what I'm talking about when I say physical sensations here. I am meaning a racing heart, the adrenaline that you feel, that sense of dread, the tight chest, the nausea, the rush of fear, you know, those horrible physical sensations. But remember, once the nervous system is activated, the body needs a little time to settle.

Gina Ryan (16:06): And if we keep reacting with, oh, no. This is horrible, or I need this to stop right now, or I can't handle this. We unintentionally refuel the alarm. So I want you instead to practice allowing. You are not going to like it.

Gina Ryan (16:36): You are not approving of it. You're just allowing sensations that are real and there in the present moment to move through you without adding another layer of panic. So here you might say, this is adrenaline. This is discomfort. Or my nervous system is activated.

Gina Ryan (17:10): And say, but I am safe right now. That last part is very important. I am safe right now. Because safety is not the absence of uncomfortable sensations. A lot of people get that confused.

Gina Ryan (17:29): Oh, if I'm safe, I'm not gonna have any discomfort or uncomfortable sensations. That's not true. Safety is recognizing that I can experience discomfort without being in danger. I'm going to say that again. I can experience discomfort without being in danger.

Gina Ryan (17:57): And over time, this teaches the nervous system something incredibly healing, that thoughts and sensations can come and thoughts and sensations can go without requiring emergency action. This is part of how the brain slowly stops sounding the alarm so aggressively. Let's move on now to step three. This is how we are going to return to the present moment again and again and again because the anxious mind loves future based fear. What if?

Gina Ryan (18:43): What if? What if? I know you've had that thought. I know. I've had it too.

Gina Ryan (18:52): Even now when I have it, I catch it. Right? I don't have to be afraid. Like, what if? Well, what if this or what if that?

Gina Ryan (19:02): There's lots of possibilities. Don't have to even go to the negative. But if you're having intrusive thoughts, they pull you away from what is actually happening right now into imagined catastrophe. So the practice becomes gently returning. You're not gonna do this perfectly.

Gina Ryan (19:27): You don't do it just once, but you do it over and over and over again. It's like guiding a little puppy back to the path. You don't scream at the puppy. You don't shame it. You just lovingly redirect it.

Gina Ryan (19:46): And this is where mindfulness becomes so powerful. Feel your feet on the floor. Notice your breathing. Look around the room that you are in in this very moment. Listen to the sounds that are nearby.

Gina Ryan (20:06): Remember, you can't listen in the future, and you can't listen in the past. That's gonna bring you to the present moment. Touch something textured. Maybe it's your clothing. Look out the window and watch the clouds outside.

Gina Ryan (20:26): Simple, grounding, present is what we have to come back to. And every time the mind races back to the intrusive thought, you gently bring it back again. That repetition is not failure. That repetition is practice. People often think healing means the thought never shows up again.

Gina Ryan (20:55): That's not the way that it works. But often, healing looks more like the thoughts show up and I no longer panic about them. That changes everything. Now I wanna talk about something that is absolutely essential here, and that is self compassion. Because so many of us become harsh, we become harsh with ourselves during intrusive thought spirals.

Gina Ryan (21:25): Until you learn differently, it's normal. Of course, you would feel bad, but I'm gonna see if you can't guide yourself into a different way of being with them. You don't need to judge yourself. You don't need to shame yourself. You don't need to become frightened of your own mind.

Gina Ryan (21:47): That inner struggle creates even more nervous system activation. The healing path is not I must become perfect. The healing path is I can meet myself kindly when my nervous system learns a new way. And that kindness matters more than you might realize. Your nervous system responds to the tone that you use with yourself.

Gina Ryan (22:15): And sometimes the most healing thing you can say is, this is hard right now, but I'm here with myself, and this will pass. A little softness goes a very long way. And, honestly, sometimes a little humor helps too. Not making fun of yourself, but bringing a little lightness into the moment because fear thrives in heaviness and urgency. Even a small smile can help signal safety to the body.

Gina Ryan (22:51): So today, remember these three gentle steps. First, contain the thought and examine it with curiosity rather than fear. Second, allow the sensations to rise and fall without fighting them. And third, keep returning to the present moment with patience and compassion over and over and over again. This work takes practice, I know, but intrusive thoughts are not a life sentence.

Gina Ryan (23:25): Your brain can change, your nervous system can settle, and you can build a very different relationship with your thoughts. Before I close today, I wanna remind you that healing anxiety is not about becoming fearless. It's about becoming less afraid of your internal experience. That's where freedom begins. And now for today's quote.

Gina Ryan (23:58): The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master, and that's from Robin Sharma. I'll be back in a few more days with another podcast. Until then, be well and aloha.

Unknown Speaker (24:14): Thanks so much for joining us for today's episode of the anxiety coaches podcast. Find more information at the anxietycoachespodcast.com.

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