How to Manage Intrusive Thoughts

Intrusive thoughts can feel overwhelming. They can cause a lot of obsessing, a lot of distress, and a lot of trying to control things around you. These thoughts can be about anything and pop up at any time. Goals, relationships, chores, appearances — it’s not ideal to always feed into them, but fighting them can lead to more stress.

In my climbing career, I have learned the importance of disconnecting from a climb when I am not currently there climbing it. I think this is a crucial part of every goal that is not always talked about. Visualization can help, but too much focus on the goal means I am not allowing my mind and body to relax, recharge, and be excited for the next opportunity and day out climbing. Overanalyzing can lead to burnout. After a mental and physical break, I can come back to the climb more energized, present, and focused.

Focus and presence in climbing is important for success.

Source: Chris Hagen, used with permission

Practicing self-awareness when demanding thoughts arise is the first step in learning to manage them. Once you are aware of a thought pattern, you can more easily redirect it. Here are some tips that I’ve learned to help redirect my thoughts:

• Engage in a physical activity. Looking at my to-do list and trying to attack something from that only leads to more stress for me when I have multiple intrusive thoughts. But also doing too little in that moment (like sitting and watching TV) allows for more room for the thoughts to grow. So I take a step back and do something simple enough to distract my mind, but that also keeps my body moving. I like to run sometimes because even when the thoughts arise, I just have to do one thing: keep running. One step at a time and then when I am done, I have proved to myself that even with all the thoughts popping up, I still kept going. It empowers me and gets my mind to calm down. It's moving meditation. Swimming, walking, or even just doing some jumping jacks at home — any form of movement to push through the thoughts is helpful.
• Engage in a sensory activity. I like to think of very basic activities here. These can seem child-like, but personally I can’t think of a time in my life when I was more present than when I was a child. I like playing with slime. Feeling the texture, stretching it, making shapes — it grabs my attention just enough to satisfy reaching a present moment. Other options could be drawing, coloring, playing with kinetic sand, or squeezing stress balls. You can even make your own slime or stress balls!
• Write it down. The thoughts that are most demanding of my attention often feel so urgent to do something about, even when I know there is nothing I can do in that moment. So I write it down as a reminder, so that my mind can rest easy that I will address it if need be in the future. It’s not trying to ignore it, but rather telling myself that it’s there, so my mind is assured that I will address it at some point. More often than not, the thought loses power after some time.
• Set specific times to spend on those thoughts. A previous psychiatrist of mine used to call this “worry time.” He suggested making a deal with myself that I could worry about whatever my mind wanted to after sending an email, finishing a homework assignment, etc. I would then be able to worry for a period of time without having to think about anything else but that worry. More often than not, I can't even fill up 10 full minutes worrying about a single thing.
• Set specific times to disengage. I set time limits now for social media, and I set evening hours only for relaxing and engaging in what I want to, like reading, taking a bath, playing with my cats, etc. When the thoughts come up, I tell myself that that is tomorrow’s problem. And this is my time to let myself be.