This post contains some of the best intrusive thoughts quotes.
Intrusive Thoughts Quotes
1. “…ask yourself, What is happening around me that’s so upsetting? Often our intrusive thoughts are triggered by the events, people, and situations we encounter. Whatever you are doing at any moment will influence what you think.” – David A. Clarck
2. “…people who believe that all vulnerable people and living things should be protected are people who fight common intrusive thoughts that sometimes involve actions like abusing children, throwing cats out windows, and dropping babies. These are the thoughts you fight—and because you fight them, they stick.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
3. “An unwanted intrusive thought sometimes feels like an impulse to perform an unwanted action. Other times, it feels impossibly stuck in your head. Your efforts to deal with it become all-encompassing and take up so much time, mental energy, and focus that your quality of life is degraded.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
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4. “An unwanted intrusive thought starts as just an ordinary intrusive thought, weird, funny, or repugnant as it may be. But not wanting the thought, worrying about it, or fighting with it stops it from passing quickly. Chances are, you don’t want it because you are upset or turned off by the content. But that is just the beginning. Because you worry about it, reject it, and try to push it out of your mind, it pushes back and becomes a recurring thought or image.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
5. “Attention can be directed internally or externally, and it can have a single focus or an open-field focus. When we focus attention on a single object again and again, such as the breath, we become calmer. That’s because we’re abandoning disturbing thoughts and stopping the mind from jumping around like a monkey” – Christopher K. Germer
6. “Becoming more aware of intrusive thinking is challenging because these thoughts often pop into the mind unexpectedly and then disappear before we know it.” – David A. Clarck
7. “But not all mental intrusions are meaningless head noise. Sometimes an intrusive thought, image, or memory involves something that we find intensely negative or threatening. These upsetting intrusions grab our attention, interrupt our train of thought, and can be incredibly difficult to ignore.” – David A. Clarck
8. “Contrary to common sense, reducing your effort to avoid intrusive thoughts will often lead to less distress.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
9. “Everyone is different. The intrusive thoughts that bother you most and how you respond to them will be unique to you.” – David A. Clarck
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10. “Good help for unwanted intrusive thoughts is hard to find and access. Talking with sympathetic friends or family who do not understand is usually not helpful and can often make things worse.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
Negative Thoughts Worksheets
11. “If you are worried that you can catch someone else’s intrusive thought, it may help to know that people tend to stay in their own categories, although they may wander a bit from one specific content of intrusive thought to another.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
12. “Intrusive thoughts are common, but for most people they are quickly forgotten and create minimal or no discomfort. For someone who isn’t struggling with or worrying about intrusive thoughts, they provide weird, uncomfortable, or even funny moments…and then they are over. Sometimes they startle.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
13. “Intrusive thoughts, however weird or scary, are universal and unimportant. Unwanted intrusive thoughts get stuck because you inadvertently fuel them by trying to banish them. They fluctuate in intensity and frequency based on the fuel they receive—triggering events in the real world or the stickiness of your mind due to fatigue, mood, or anxiety—and, ironically, by the amount of effort you expend to try to counteract, avoid, or suppress them.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
14. “Just about everyone has intrusive thoughts. They are uninvited thoughts that jump into the mind and do not seem to be part of the ongoing flow of intentional thinking.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
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15. “Most intrusive thoughts—no matter how bizarre or repugnant—occupy only a few moments. People rarely mention them or think about them again.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
16. “Not entirely unwanted intrusive thoughts are only a problem if you start struggling with them, if you worry about them and what they mean, or if you judge them as sick or bad. They pass when the emotion that is driving them (anger, grief, early romance, resentment) subsides over time. They are not indications of character or impulses to be resisted: they are your rich imagination at work. No one is free of not entirely unwanted intrusive thoughts. It is only the struggle against them that is problematic” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
17. “Of course, there are other times when our free-floating, or intrusive, thoughts take on a darker, more negative tone because they’re triggered by a stressful or problematic situation. Our memory for this type of thinking is sharper because these thoughts focus on issues more important to our general well-being.” – David A. Clarck
18. “People who are impulsive act first and think later. People with unwanted intrusive thoughts are over-thinkers.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
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19. “So the content of unwanted intrusive thoughts is the opposite of what you want to be thinking about. It is the opposite of your values, the opposite of your wishes, and the opposite of your character. It is the opposite of you.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
20. “Suffering about unwanted intrusive thoughts is a disorder of overcontrol, not undercontrol. (Undercontrol disorders are sometimes known as impulsivity.) Disorders of overcontrol are usually accompanied by a problem with doubt or uncertainty.” – Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif
21. “When bored, we are especially prone to intrusive thinking. Our mind switches into an automatic mode which generates free-floating thoughts that are entirely disconnected from each other and may have little relevance to our current situation. It’s like our mind is always in an active, unsettled state, even when we feel understimulated.” – David A. Clarck
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References
- Portions of this article were adapted from the book The Anxious Thoughts Workbook, © 2018 by David A. Clarck. All rights reserved.
- Portions of this article were adapted from the book Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts, © 2017 by Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif. All rights reserved.
