5 Cognitive-behavioral Techniques For Intrusive Thoughts

Cognitive-behavioral techniques are very useful to combat intrusive thoughts. Those that invade our minds until they surround us with their toxic, negative and almost always invalidating mist. Thus, and before intensifying our anxiety even more, leading to an unhelpful cognitive decline, it will always be helpful to apply these simple strategies on a day-to-day basis.

For those who have never heard of cognitive behavioral therapy, you will like to know that 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 undoubtedly Aaron Beck, who after making use of psychoanalysis for many years realized that he needed another approach.

Most of the people who suffered from depression, anxiety crisis, stress or what they did in the face of any type of trauma, had within them an obsessive, negative and pounding second “I” that plunged them into a continuous negative dialogue where it was very difficult to promote advances. Such was Dr. Beck’s interest in understanding and resolving these types of dynamics that he changed his therapeutic line for another that he considered much more useful.

Cognitive-behavioral techniques turned out to be incredibly effective in clinical practice. In this way, if we manage to gradually change our thinking patterns, we will in turn reduce that negative emotional charge that often grips us in order to ultimately 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 is a way to further intensify the cycle of anxiety, to feed that well that traps us while we surround ourselves with images, impulses and unhelpful reasoning that completely cloud our sense of control.

In these cases, it is not enough for them to tell us that “ calm down and don’t think about things that have not yet happened” . Whether we 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 achieve goals or feel better.

However, and this must also be said, we all have quite absurd and unhelpful ideas at the end of the day. However, in normal conditions we do not give too much power to these reasonings because we prefer to prioritize those that give us encouragement, those that are useful to us.

Now, when we go through periods of stress or anxiety, it is common for intrusive thoughts to appear more frequently and that we also grant them a power they do not deserve. Let’s see now what cognitive-behavioral techniques can help us in these cases.

1. Thought records

Thought registers allow us to apply logic to many of our mental processes. For example, consider an employee who is afraid of losing his job. Overnight, you become obsessed with how your supervisors, bosses, or management team think that everything you do is wrong, wrong, or lacking in quality.

Entering this thought cycle can end up triggering a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, by dint of thinking that everything he does is wrong, sooner or later he will end up doing it (for example, by falling into a very negative state of mind). Thus, and to have a greater sense of control, balance and coherence, nothing better than recording the thoughts that grip us.

To do this, it is enough to register each negative idea that appears in our mind and try to reason its veracity.

• “I’m sure everything I’ve done at work has been of no use” ⇔ Is there anything to show that this is true? Have they caught my attention? Is what I have done today different than what I have done on other days so that I think it is 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 us quality time” achieves very positive results, and what it will achieve above all is to break the ruminant cycle of negative thoughts.

These activities can be very simple and short-lived: go out for coffee with a friend, give me a break, buy a book, make myself a good meal, listen to music, etc.

These positive activities are aimed at interrupting our negative discursive thinking. Therefore, it is important to focus our attention on the activities we choose. It is preferable that they are short and we are focused than they are long and we do not stop rambling. For example, ten minutes of mindful breathing is much more fruitful than half an hour breathing with scattered attention.

If we have little time, one of the most recommended techniques is mindfulness or mindfulness. As mentioned before, mindful attention to the breath has the potential to stop those thoughts that keep invading us. However, we must bear in mind that it is a practice that needs constancy. If we practice conscious breathing continuously, we will notice a greater control of our thoughts.

3. Hierarchy of my concerns

Intrusive thoughts are like smoke from a fireplace, the heat of something burning inside us. That internal bonfire is our problems, the same ones that we cannot solve and that day after day cause more discomfort.

• A first step to control that focus of thoughts, feelings and anxieties is to clarify. And how do we clarify? Making a hierarchy of problems, a scale of concerns that will go from lowest to highest.
• We will begin by writing down everything that worries us on a sheet of paper, that is, we will “visualize” all the chaos that is inside us as a brainstorm.
• Next, we will make a hierarchy starting with what we consider small problems, until we reach the most crippling. The one that in appearance 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 step.

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, life is simply little more than a dead end tunnel. Another common idea is to think that if someone disappoints me, disappoints me or abandons me, it is that I do not deserve to be loved.

This is another of the most useful cognitive-behavioral techniques that we must learn to develop on a day-to-day basis. We cannot forget that  our specific 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 cause us to fall back into the abyss of intrusive thoughts. One way to be aware of these circumstances is to keep a personal journal to make records.

Something as simple as writing our feelings every day, what goes through our mind and when these states and internal dynamics occur, will allow us to become aware of certain things. Perhaps there are people, customs or scenarios that make us lose control, that makes us feel helpless, worried or angry.

As we make more records we will realize all this and we can prevent (and even manage).

To conclude, it should be said that there are many more cognitive-behavioral techniques that can be useful for these and many other cases where we can better manage anxiety, stress and even depressive processes. For this, we have such interesting books 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 the day to day and to better understand that factory of ideas that is our mind.