Knowra Intrusive thought Intrusive thought An intrusive thought is an unwanted thought, image, or urge that enters awareness involuntarily. It can be distressing, but its occurrence alone does not show that someone will act on it.
Thought suppression : The deliberate effort to prevent a particular thought from entering awareness. Attempts to block intrusive thoughts can increase their recurrence through monitoring for the very thought being avoided.
Unwanted thought : A thought a person does not wish to have or endorse. Intrusive thoughts are a specific kind of unwanted thought that arrives involuntarily.
Exposure and response prevention : A therapy that gradually confronts feared cues while preventing compulsive responses. It helps people with obsessive-compulsive disorder tolerate intrusive thoughts without performing rituals.
Rumination : Repetitive, prolonged thinking about distress, its causes, or its consequences. Rumination is sustained and repetitive, whereas an intrusive thought may arrive as a brief mental event.
Rebound effect : The return or increase of a response after efforts to inhibit it. It describes why an unwanted thought may become more noticeable after suppression.
Mind-wandering : The shifting of attention from a current task toward internally generated thoughts. Mind-wandering can be involuntary, but it is not necessarily unwanted or distressing.
Cognitive behavioral therapy : A psychotherapy that examines links among thoughts, emotions, and behavior and uses structured strategies to change distressing patterns. It can address catastrophic interpretations and avoidance associated with intrusive thoughts.
Flashback : A vivid sense of reliving a traumatic event, often involving sensory or emotional details. A flashback is tied to traumatic memory and reliving, unlike intrusive thoughts more broadly.
Thought-action fusion : The belief that having a thought is morally equivalent to acting on it or makes the act more likely. This appraisal can make an intrusive thought feel threatening despite no intention to act.
Intention : A commitment or plan to perform an action. An intrusive urge or image is not, by itself, an intention to act.
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