5 Cognitive-behavioral Techniques For Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts

Cognitive-behavioral techniques are very useful for taking the power out of intrusive thoughts.  They are the ones who invade our minds to cover us with their toxic and negative fog. So, before intensifying our anxiety even more, causing a less useful cognitive decline, it will always be helpful to apply these simple strategies in everyday life.

For those who have never heard of cognitive-behavioral therapy, it is  one of the most used “toolboxes” in the usual practice of any psychologist. One of the pioneers in this type of strategy was, without a doubt, Aaron Beck, who after using psychoanalysis for several years, realized that he needed another approach.

Most people who suffered from depression, anxiety attacks, stress or who had any other type of trauma, had inside them a second obsessive, negative and overwhelming “I”, which plunged them into a negative and continuous dialogue, where it was very difficult to move forward. Such was Dr. Beck’s interest in understanding and solving these types of dynamics that he changed his therapeutic line to one he considered much more useful.

Cognitive-behavioral techniques turned out to be incredibly effective in clinical practice.  In this way, if we manage to change our thought patterns little by little, we will reduce this negative emotional charge that sometimes bothers us, in order, ultimately, to generate changes and make our behaviors more integrative and healthy…

Cognitive-behavioral techniques for intrusive thoughts

Having obsessive and negative ideas is one of our greatest sources of suffering.  It’s a way to further intensify the cycle of anxiety, to feed that hole that captures us and surrounds us with unhelpful images, impulses, and reasoning that completely erase our sense of control.

In these cases, it is useless to be told phrases like “calm down and don’t think about things that haven’t even happened yet”. Like it or not,  the mind is an incessant factory of ideas and, unfortunately, what it produces does not always have quality,  nor does it help us in the least to reach our goals or feel better.

However, and this must also be said,  we all have quite absurd and unhelpful ideas ; however, under normal conditions we don’t give more importance to these thoughts because we prefer to prioritize those that give us encouragement, or those that are relevant.

Now, when we go through periods of stress or anxiety, it’s normal for intrusive thoughts to show up more often and, in addition, we’ve given them a value they don’t deserve. Now let’s see what cognitive-behavioral techniques can help us in these cases.

1. Thought Records

Thought records allow us to apply logic to many of our mental processes. For example, consider an employee who is afraid of losing his job. So he begins to obsessively think that his boss and supervisors believe that everything he does is wrong or lacking in quality.

Entering this cycle of thought can end up triggering a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, the power to think that everything you do is wrong will sooner or later come to fruition (for example, by falling into a very negative state of discouragement). So,  to have a greater sense of control, balance and coherence, there is nothing better than keeping records of the thoughts that bother us.

For this, it is enough to register every negative idea that appears in our mind and try to verify its veracity.

• “I’m sure everything I’ve done at work was for nothing.” Is there any basis for this statement to be true ? Have I been called to attention? Is what I’ve done today so different from what I’ve done on other days for you to judge it to be of such poor quality?

2. Programming positive activities

Another of the most useful cognitive-behavioral techniques in these cases is to schedule rewarding activities throughout the day. Something as simple as “giving ourselves quality time” will achieve very positive results  and break the obsessive cycle of negative thoughts.

These activities can be very simple and of short duration: going out for coffee with a friend, taking a break, buying a book, cooking a good dinner, listening to music, etc.

3. Hierarchy of concerns

Intrusive thoughts are like smoke from a chimney, the heat of something burning inside us. This internal fire is our problems, the same ones that we don’t give a solution to and that, day after day, generate even more discomfort.

• The first step in controlling this focus of thoughts, sensations and anxieties is to clarify. And how do I clarify? Making a hierarchy of problems, a scale of concerns that goes from smallest to largest.

• Let’s start by writing on a sheet everything that concerns us, that is, we will “visualize” all the chaos that exists in our interior as a storm of ideas.
• Continuing,  we will make a hierarchy starting with what we consider small problems, until we reach the most paralyzing one, the one that apparently surpasses us.

Once we have a visual order, we will proceed to reflect on each point, we will try to rationalize and give solutions to each one of them.

4. Emotional reasoning

Emotional reasoning is a very common type of distortion . For example, if I had a bad day today and I feel frustrated with my life, I say I’m in a dead end tunnel. Another common idea is to think that if someone disappoints me, deceives me or abandons me, it’s because I don’t deserve to be loved.

This is another of the most useful cognitive-behavioral techniques that we must learn to develop on a daily basis. We cannot forget that  our punctual emotions are not always indicative of an objective truth, they are only momentary moods to understand and manage.

5. Prevention of intrusive thoughts

Whether we like it or not, there are always situations that lead us to fall back into the abyss of intrusive thoughts. One way to be aware of these circumstances is to keep a  personal diary to keep records .

Something as simple as writing down our feelings each day, what goes through our mind and at what time these internal states and dynamics happen, will allow us to become aware of certain things. Maybe there are people, habits or scenarios that make us lose control, that make us feel helpless, worried or upset.

As we make more records, we will realize all of this and we will be able to prevent (or even manage) these situations.

In conclusion, it should be said that  there are many other cognitive-behavioral techniques that can be useful for these and many other cases,  to better manage anxiety, stress and even depressive processes. For that, we have books as interesting as “ Manual of Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques”  or Aaron Beck’s book  “Therapies for Anxiety Disorders”.

It is within our reach to  acquire and develop more resources to face the complexity of everyday life  and to better understand this factory of ideas that is our mind.