Intrusive thoughts are the specific thoughts on a topic or theme.
Common intrusive thoughts involve missing the morning alarm and finding an intruder in the home.
Intrusive thoughts are unwanted thoughts, images, impulses, or urges that can occur spontaneously or that can be cued by external/internal stimuli. Typically, these thoughts are distressing (hence "intrusive") and tend to reoccur.
The OCD and Anxiety Center describes these thoughts as unwanted and distressing.
In my account, being tied down and unable to break free is the unwanted thought, bringing on distress and anxiety that still resonates today.
Intrusive thoughts can be seen as individual sparks creating (or emerging from) the metaphorical fire. The fire being the obsession.
The thought didn’t leave as the turbines disappeared on the horizon. They remained just as vivid as I dipped my feet in the sea an hour or so later.
And even today when I see a turbine, as crazy as it sounds, I have the memory of the thought hitting me for the first time.
The obsessions
Intrusive thoughts can repeat. And repeat…
Frequent intrusive thoughts on a certain theme are the obsessions.
An obsession is an unwanted and unpleasant thought, image or urge that repeatedly enters your mind, causing feelings of anxiety, disgust or unease.
nhs.uk describes obsessions as repeated unwanted thoughts. The frequency of these thoughts becomes obsessional and problematic.
Intrusive thoughts vs obsessions
Intrusive thoughts are the individual thoughts that contribute to an obsession.
An obsession can be thought of as a storm cloud. A storm consists of individual raindrops, similar to how an obsession consists of many individual intrusive-thoughts.
Ruminations vs intrusive thoughts
The process of continuously thinking about the same thoughts, which tend to be sad or dark, is called rumination.
Healthline defines rumination as continuous thinking.
Rumination is carried out as an attempt to reverse, solve or end the problems arising in the intrusive thoughts, often with negative implications.
- Intrusive thoughts are the sudden, dark and unpleasant thoughts we experience.
- Rumination is processing these thoughts after having one, in an attempt to end the arising anxiety.
Ruminating is our attempt to escape the mental suffering.
Is ruminating a compulsion?
According to this Dr. Michael J. Greenberg article, ruminating is a compulsion.
"when people say they are having intrusive thoughts, upon closer inspection it turns out they are ruminating. The distressing thought that occurs to the person is the obsession, but this event takes almost no time at all. Everything that follows, all mental engagement with that thought, is compulsive rumination."
It seems difficult to differentiate between the terms, making it difficult to heal without professional help.
Obsessing can be considered the whole cycle of intrusive thinking and ruminating.
An obsession with being tied to a wind turbine against my will consists of individual intrusive thoughts, resulting in rumination.
Rumination is an attempt to figure out a way to prevent this thought or scenario occurring. This may change our behaviours, such as actively avoiding routes that pass wind turbines.
These behaviours are known as compulsions, and will be looked at in a dedicated article.
3 responses
Your words are exactly what I go through. I am trying to stop the cycle, the fear of eternity, never ending time and death. Scares me. I try to label my thoughts, but then I ruminate on them. I want to stop ruminating, and let them happen without engaging with them. I see a therapist next week – I hope he can help me. It’s so hard to live like this; they put me on an antidepressant but it doesn’t work. I just want to be happy and free and feel no doubt that these are just figments of my imagination- because for years it felt like I knew some secret and could comprehend time and space and it was terrifying. I don’t want these scary thoughts in my mind to be based on reality- but I keep saying “what if” what if I’m right and I can envision the reality of eternity ? I hate it so much-
Thank you Edna, apologies, I created a long response that didn’t process!
I am sorry you are suffering anxiety, however I hope you find comfort knowing that all anxiety is really doing is trying to keep us safe. And anxiety comes when we don’t know everything. The mystery is the scary part, but will no doubt go away when it becomes less of a mystery.
I have suffered the same fears as you have, in July I had it worse than it has been in a long time, probably as bad as it was in my mid twenties when it was at its peak. But I was going through a detox in July and the withdrawals were crippling.
But this gives me comfort, knowing that there is science behind what causes anxiety, fear and when it comes about. It is possible to change things. The fears such as life, death and eternity that I was experiencing in July are hardly there anymore, which shows it isn’t an absolute. It can be treated!
One quote that I love is that ‘nothing in life should be feared, only understood.’ I love it because it reminds me that nature doesn’t scare me, only the unknown. And this is only to keep us safe. Similar to a fear of the dark, the dark in itself isn’t scary, only our lack of knowledge about what is in the dark. These are two completely different things 🙂
I remember speaking to a therapist about eternity, and she calmly replied ‘how do you know that’s what eternity is?’. It instantly made me feel better. I realised that all I was doing was thinking the worst- or scariest- scenario about what it could be and seeing it as fact. I do this with a lot of things, such as worrying about illness or failing a job interview.
Rarely our fears are what reality actually is. And even if it was the same, we only worry because we don’t know everything. Like our ancestors feared earthquakes and hurricanes, we don’t fear them now because we understand what they are. Even if they strike we know why and can even prepare for them.
I honestly feel that we aren’t scared of things like eternity or death so much, we just fear the anxiety that is caused by us trying to wrap our heads around them. OCD and anxiety are the things we should fear, but the best thing is they can be treated 🙂
I do hope this helps, and I wish you all the best with your therapy.