Taking a walk or jog in a green space can help you to break a cycle of rumination, by engaging your body and your senses in a way that gets your mind off your thoughts. Grounding techniques that can help you center your focus may include:Īccording to the American Psychological Association, there’s a lot of evidence that spending time in nature can boost mental health and sharpen cognitive abilities. Without even realizing it, you may be spending a lot of your time living in the past, or obsessing about the future.įocusing on the present moment can be a powerful way to manage this. Intrusive thoughts can often lead you to focus on the negative and create stories that aren’t based on reality. So, an intrusive thought can take on outsized power when it only exists in your mind.Ĭonsider externalizing the thought, by journaling or even just speaking it out loud, and see whether the impact of it changes. Our brains can be incredibly good at telling us stories that feel like reality. In addition, animal-assisted therapy for trauma is becoming more common.Ī small 2018 study with animals, which consisted of 60 female university students in Germany, found that therapy dog intervention can help to reduce stress and anxiety following a traumatic event. They have no understanding of our complex, troubled thoughts, so they can provide distraction and uncomplicated emotional support.Ī large 2019 study involving animals showed that interacting with them can lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which plays a role in many mental health conditions. Spend time with a petĪnimals can be incredibly calming to an anxious mind. This is a mindfulness technique known as thought clouds, but it can be used outside of meditation practice. Some of the clouds are light, and some dark, but none of them are permanent. Visualizing your thoughts can allow you to feel more in control of them.įor example, you could picture your mind as a blue sky, and your thoughts as passing clouds. Identifying a mantra like “This too shall pass,” or “My thoughts are temporary” could be helpful in reducing their power. But thoughts are always temporary, and there is no such thing as a permanent state of mind. When an intrusive thought occupies your brain, it can sometimes feel like it will never go away. This is a simple but powerful mantra that may help you to regain perspective. A CBT therapist can work with you to identify your intrusive thoughts, process them, and reframe them so that they aren’t as powerful. It can be especially helpful for intrusive thoughts that become obsessive because it helps to create distance between a person and their thoughts.ĬBT is based on the idea that our thought patterns can be unlearned or changed. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)ĬBT is a type of psychotherapy that can be effective for all kinds of thought disorders.
There are also lots of meditation apps available, with courses specifically geared toward beginners and people living with intrusive thoughts, that may help you. You don’t need any special equipment to start meditating, just a few spare moments, and somewhere quiet to practice, if possible. This can make it a great way to cope with intrusive thoughts because you’re not denying that the thoughts are present - just changing your relationship with them.
#SEXUALLY INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS TREATMENT HOW TO#
One of the core principles of mindfulness is learning how to calmly observe your thoughts, without judging or becoming emotionally tangled up in them. The goal is to feel that you’re in control of your thoughts, not the other way around. Instead, you might consider focusing on ways to make them less overwhelming and create some distance between you and the thought. It may not always be possible to stop intrusive thoughts, and that’s not necessarily the goal.
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