What It Really Means to Have Intrusive Thoughts

On average, people have about 6,200 thoughts each day. Inevitably, some will be unwanted, alarming, or just plain strange. You know the kind: You’re driving down the freeway and suddenly visualize yanking the steering wheel to the left and careening into a ravine. Or you’re admiring the crashing waves beneath you—and, out of the blue, imagine pushing your partner off the cliff. Both are examples of intrusive thoughts, and while they might feel upsetting when they strike, most of the time, they’re perfectly normal. “We all have these thoughts, and for the most part, we don’t really do anything with them,” says Jon Abramowitz, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We just kind of say, ‘Oh, that’s a doozy. I don’t want to do that, and I’m probably not going to do it,’ and the thought ends up being like a brain fart—like mental noise.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] For some people, though, these thoughts linger and become debilitating. That’s largely omitted from conversations on social-media platforms like TikTok, where the “ha-ha” versions of intrusive thoughts are trending: In one video labeled “my intrusive thoughts won,” a woman slowly tastes a piece of confetti that rained down on her during a concert. In another, a man impulsively presses the SOS button in his car, triggering an emergency call. While...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Mental Health TIME 2030 Wellbeing Source Type: news