How to Manage Intrusive Thoughts
This post was contributed by Maggie Yuce, LCSW-C. Maggie joined Parker Place in December 2024 as a mental health therapist, offering counseling for kids, teens and young adults!
Parents: have you ever been driving and had the thought cross your mind that you could veer off the road?Not that you actually would, but just that you could. Intrusive thought alert! Sometimes our minds stop on these types of thoughts, and they can become an intrusive thought spiral.
Regardless of where the thoughts go when they pop into our brains, they are just thoughts and cannot be trusted as facts 99% of the time. (No, we don't actually want to injure ourselves or anyone else that might be in the car.) That's what makes these types of thoughts intrusive: they're unwelcome and unwanted and we can tell this is the case because they leave us feeling uncomfortable and often surprised.
Kids experience intrusive thoughts too! Has your child ever done anything completely confusing and that left you feeling bewildered? Maybe they punched their little sibling or threw a full glass of milk on the floor after just having asked for it. Kids are more likely to act on their intrusive thoughts because they haven't yet learned that they can question and rate the validity of the things that they think before taking action.
We all have intrusive thoughts. The key is that we give ourselves time to question our thoughts, evaluate how they make us feel, and then decide how to take action... or not. My intrusive thoughts can get stuck rattling around in my brain, but when I use the strategy described above, it's a reminder that I'm a human with a mind that is often not completely in my control. I will then tell my intrusive thoughts that they need to calm down and take a back seat for the day.
Personally, I'm a big fan of the "Name it to Tame it" technique, first identified by Dr. Daniel Siegel (https://drdansiegel.com/biography/). It can be applied to virtually any mental health situation. Here I'm talking about giving the intrusive thoughts 'creator' that lives rent-free in your brain an actual name. Mine is named Delores and she can be a real pain, but when addressed directly with a "Hey Delores, I'm not interested in hearing from you right now!" my mind gets some clarity and a little intrusive thought break.
I highly encourage people of all ages to use this simple tool to manage pesky intrusive thoughts as well as other mental health challenges. You are not your thoughts, so feel free to give them names of their own.
Here are some other things you or your child might want to name:
Social Anxiety - "Not now, Simone!"
Low self-worth - "Quiet down Marge!"
Perfectionism - "Take a seat Penelope!"
To schedule a counseling session with Maggie, please contact our office!