#6 Intrusive Thoughts- Am I Going Crazy?

In this episode of the 5-2 Minsitries Podcast, host Luke opens up about his own personal struggle with intrusive thoughts, both spiritually and practically, during an intense season of anxiety and depression. Drawing on his master's degree in pastoral counseling and lived experience, Luke unpacks what intrusive thoughts actually are, why our brains produce them, and how chronic stress, trauma, and spiritual wrestling can amplify them. He walks through the neuroscience behind the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, explains why intrusive thoughts don't define your identity or beliefs, and offers a toolkit of practical and spiritual strategies for healing, from structured prayer and scripture memorization to accountability, counseling, baptism, and the Lord's Supper. Whether you're in spiritual deconstruction, dealing with anxiety or OCD, or simply want to understand your own mind better, this episode offers compassionate, grounded hope.

Transcript

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Everybody, welcome back to the Five Two Ministries Podcast. This is Luke, and I'm excited to jump into our topic today. We've been talking about spiritual anxiety, interviewing people on their stories, and just talking about how do we process denominations and maybe church hurt or doctrinal confusion and how can we do this in a healthy way and what are important questions for us to answer as believers, especially as believers who may be teaching or leading other people. But today we're going to talk about something that's under the surface that I get asked a lot about actually quite a bit and specifically lately, which is intrusive thoughts and what are they? Now, these can happen outside the context of religious circles or spirituality. These can just happen in our daily life for sure, but they can also really plague people who are in the midst of deconstruction or just uncomfortable spiritually or having questions about their relationship with God. So we're going to tackle this topic of intrusive thoughts that can really impact us both with our mental health on a day-to-day basis, but also can impact us with our relationship with God. And one thing I'm passionate about, or one reason I'm passionate about this specific topic, is because I struggled with intrusive thoughts both spiritually and practically when I went through a very intense season of anxiety and depression. And initially I didn't know what they were or why I was having these thoughts, which can make them a lot worse, which we'll get to here in just a bit. And so this is an issue I've specifically have struggled with. And from time to time, especially if I'm experiencing higher stress, these thoughts will come back. And so it's really important for me to be aware of how to deal with these personally. And I think has helped as I was able to get my master's degree in pastoral counseling, as well as having this experience of being able to provide some steps for people who may be struggling as well. And so the first step of this conversation is what is an intrusive thought? And so an intrusive thought is thoughts that we have that are feel involuntary. They are uninvited thoughts or urges or mental images that pop into our head. Now, this can have a wide range of experience. This could be just thoughts that pop in your head that don't feel like yours, uncomfortable thoughts of guilt, thoughts of accusation, thoughts of doing something that you feel like you would never do, or a thought about someone or yourself that you feel like I would never have that. Or these could be even more severe in people that may be experiencing schizophrenia or even psychosis where there's specific images that pop into our head, or very extreme thoughts of a danger, or even of hurting others. It's man, where in the world did this come from? So there's a sliding scale of maybe how intense these thoughts may be for an individual who's experiencing them. And just some examples of intrusive thoughts could be violent thoughts or even sexual thoughts. And those are like two of the most common that I would say make people the most uncomfortable is why am I having these violent thoughts or why am I having sexual thoughts? They could just be frightening thoughts. And I know for me, this came sometimes in the way of dreams of in higher stress, of having dreams that caused very frightening images or frightening, just bizarre dreams. And then throughout the day, those images or those thoughts or those concepts may pop back into someone's brain. And I know that would happen to me from time to time. These intrusive thoughts could be related to a phobia or deep-seated fear that we have that may seem under the surface, but really comes back within the form of intrusive thoughts. A lot of people describe their intrusive thoughts as disgusting, of something they feel like, again, they would never think about, don't enjoy thinking about, but yet consistently do pop back into their mind. These also cause a feeling of embarrassment or shame. And in regard to spirituality, sometimes these thoughts can feel blasphemous and sinful. And so people who are having intrusive thoughts may just feel like they're extra sinful, that just by having the thought they've sinned against God, or by having the thought they believe the thought they've had. And so if they have a thought pop into their brain that doesn't feel like their own, they may blame or that says maybe that they don't believe in God, or that an accusation of God that they feel like God is unjust, or this that all of a sudden they believe that. If they've had the thought, that also means they believe it. And so this is a big problem, I think, with intrusive thoughts spiritually is people embrace those as their identity or their belief system. And intrusive thoughts do not define our character, they don't define what we are going to do in the future, they don't define what we believe. And I think that's the biggest, simplest encouragement I would give to anybody who's struggling with intrusive thoughts is those intrusive thoughts do not define who you are, they do not define what you believe, and they definitely don't define what you will do. And we'll get into why that is true here throughout this podcast. So these intrusive thoughts, again, can be very common in the spiritual realm if someone's really wrestling over theology, really wrestling on maybe the security of their salvation, maybe wrestling over conflict with other believers, maybe discovering things they've been taught in the past about God are not true, then the stress and anxiety of those situations can really induce spiritual intrusive thoughts. Now, for somebody who's not in a spiritual dilemma, just chronic stress can produce a spiritual, or sorry, chronic stress can produce intrusive thoughts, as well as things like OCD could induce intrusive thoughts. Things like a brain injury can induce intrusive thoughts. Things like just chronic stress and like being stuck in a flight, fight or flight cycle can induce intrusive thoughts. Sleep deprivation, an anxiety disorder, or depression disorder can induce intrusive thoughts. So there's a lot of things besides just the spiritual nature that could lead us into having these intrusive thoughts, which again are going to be even more common with people who have a specific mental health disorder or may struggle with addiction or maybe have addiction in their past. A lot of people who I found have had addiction in their past also will struggle with some intrusive thoughts at some point in their life. So when our body is stuck in chronic stress, again, whether that's spiritually, whether that's practically, whether that's clinically for something in our body, we have to start to realize that our intrusive thoughts are both a body behavior, meaning there's something maybe that's not working right physiologically that is causing these things, but also that there is a behavioral nature of this, of maybe habits that we have and habits we form that's contributing to this, as well as spiritual elements that are contributing to this. So I think it's really important to tackle each one of these, of what's happening in our physical body that we maybe can or can't control for the time being, what's happening in our behavior, what are habits that I have, and then what are the things I'm believing spiritually? And all those things will impact us. So that's a little intro into what intrusive thoughts are and just some basics. Now, the very first thing I want to look at is the prefrontal cortex of our brain is really important to kind of understand when we talk about intrusive thoughts. So the prefrontal cortex of our brain helps with rationalizing and things like so the first part of this study of intrusive thoughts when it comes to our brain that's important to understand is the prefrontal cortex of our brain. And typically the prefrontal cortex of our brain is seen to help us with reasoning, help us with decision making, help us with emotional regulation, and being able to evaluate if something is realistic or not. So you could kind of summarize some of that, those categories into being rational. The prefrontal cortex of our brain can help us be rational. And again, that's an overarching term to define that, but I think it grabs the meat or the heart of what's going on in the prefrontal cortex of our brain. Now, when we are stuck in chronic stress, when we've experienced trauma emotionally, spiritually, and or if you've had a brain injury, like something like a concussion, the prefrontal cortex of our brain becomes less effective. It doesn't totally shut down, but it becomes less effective. And a lot of times, if you've ever seen somebody who's had a pretty severe just brain injury, you can see that they can be more irrational. They have less control over anger, they have a harder time being realistic, maybe about making decisions, at least at the beginning part of having a brain injury and just again that emotional regulation. And so that same type of impact can happen to us without having a physical brain injury. Now, usually it has to be somewhat extreme. And so maybe it's somebody who would literally have PTSD, or maybe it's somebody, and this is the most, I think, tricky one, someone who's been in chronic stress over a long period of time can begin to have the same effect. And so when you look at the prefrontal cortex of your brain, if it is not helping do those things, it's not helping you reason as effectively, it's not helping you make decisions or emotionally regulate or evaluating if something's realistically or realistic as effectively as it normally would, you could see that with someone who is predisposed to irrational thoughts, why all of a sudden those would start to pick up again. Now, here's the problem is when those intrusive thoughts start to come into your brain and you aren't rationalizing them well and you're giving them more credit than they deserve, what does that do? But makes them worse, right? It gives them more power in your life than they really have. And so all of a sudden we start to build our identity around those things, even though it's not rational, right? And again, I can say that because I've experienced it. So that's not uh jab anybody who's experiencing this because I experienced that. And so one thing I did is specifically with my wife, is I would share maybe thoughts or concerns that I had and ask, does this seem rational to you? And a lot of times they weren't. And it was just getting the affirmation, like, no, that's not rational. No, that's not a good thing to worry about. Even though I kind of knew that when you're struggling with anxiety and intrusive thoughts, it's really hard to convince yourself of that. And so having somebody who can speak to your life into your life in that can be extremely helpful. And so that's one thing that can be happening during intense anxiety and intrusive thoughts is the more we ruminate on these intrusive thoughts, the more we give them credence, the more they begin to happen, the more we begin to believe them, and the less effective our prefrontal cortex is becoming. And so that can, as you can see, it can become a pretty vicious cycle. Now, the great news about all this is it can be healed, it can be fixed, it can be reversed. And so don't take these statements as, oh man, I've got a condition that I can never break out of. But I think what can be helpful is if you're struggling with these things, is you're not crazy, you're not going crazy, you're not just making it up in your mind, you're not just weird, but there can be just physical things that are going on in your brain that are causing these. And so it's not just that you're broken, but you are maybe at a disadvantage for the time being. I think that can, at least for me, was relieving. Like, oh, okay, that this is fixable, this is definable, and it can make you feel a little bit more in control. But the step to figure out which counseling can be really helpful for, is what's really underneath this. Is this a psychological disorder? Do I have an anxiety disorder? Do I have, am I more presupposed to something like OCD? Or if you have been using drugs, could this be something that's more psychosis related or something like that, depending on the extremity of it? So counseling can really help us identify, okay, I don't need to lose my mind over this, even though it feels like I might be losing my mind, but what is causing this so that I can begin to go about the road of healing? And I think within that, one thing that I'd like to add that's important is when I say figure out what's causing it, I don't mean you figure out and ruminate on what's causing it, because that's a big mistake. When you are trying to ruminate and figure it out on your own with the person struggling with it, that's a recipe for disaster. And that will actually make your intrusive thoughts a lot worse, which is why you shouldn't do this on your own. If you have a spouse or you have a really close friend who can help you, that's great. But ultimately, that's where counseling can become very effective from a trained counselor, trained therapist who can really help diagnose what's going on before it becomes or gets out of hand. All right, so one other thing physically that I think can be pretty important is our amygdala, which is a part of our brain that helps detect danger and ultimately is help is designed to help us avoid danger. But when the prefrontal cortex, which is helping us rationalize and make decisions and know if something's realistic, isn't working as well, and the amygdala, which helps us detect threats, actually becomes overactive when we are in stress. And when you add an overactive amygdala who thinks you're in danger all the time, I've heard counselors call this your chatter guy, who's always chattering to you about worry, about fear, about trouble, about worst-case scenario. When that gets louder and your prefrontal frontal cortex gets a little quieter, you could see how this can be pretty dangerous. This can start to make you feel pretty wonky, can start to really escalate intrusive thoughts. And so when this begins to happen, one thing that I've found has been helpful that I would say was, hey, this is just my anxiety talking. And that was just naming it. This is just my anxiety talking right now, and I don't need to listen to that. I don't need that to control my behavior or control my thoughts or control my identity or what is true. And so I would be able to set that aside and then revert my mind to the truth of scripture, to the truth of the reality of the situation, or the truth of my accountability partner. Okay, I know that's true. I need someone to help ground me in what is true. And so that can be really helpful. Again, in extreme situations, I've seen people say, and I had a friend of mine who struggled with this, that this was really helpful for him, is he had schizophrenia. And he would say, Hey, that's just my schizophrenia talking. I don't need to give into that, right? And so for him, working along his counselor was very helpful for him. But no matter what, no matter what process of healing you're in, whether that's you're primarily focusing on your spiritual health, whether that's your focus on spiritual health and counseling or medication, whatever the case may be, it's an up and down journey. There's days, there's weeks, there's months where we're doing really well. And there's part there's seasons where we aren't going to be doing as well. And it's important not to panic in those seasons where we aren't doing as well. Doesn't mean we're broken, doesn't mean we haven't healed at all. And we can have those tools with accountability partners, with even naming, hey, this thought was an intrusive thought. This thought was my anxiety talk talking, this thought was OCD talking, this thought was my amygdala of being overreactive and not speaking truth in my mind. And just naming those things. And when you name that, that can really help you. And I know to this day, if I start to feel anxiety, because I really feel like my body, I'll get body anxiety of just feeling a little shaky, feeling lightheaded. And sometimes I can't pin a reason on why. And it's helpful for me to just be like, that's anxiety, that's adrenaline my body. And I don't need to know why specifically it's happening, but I know that's what it is. And when I can name that, I know I'm not like I'm not sick, I'm not having a heart attack, I'm not going into a panic attack. I can, oh, that's just for whatever reason my anxiety is increasing, and I just need to, whatever I need to do, whether that's I need to remove myself from the situation, whether that's I need to rest, whether that means I need to pray, I can take a next step of something to do. But I can't always control that feeling going away. But if I can name the feelings just a feeling, the feeling of anxiety is just a feeling. Intrusive thoughts are just a thought. They don't have as much power as we give them, even though they're uncomfortable. And that's part of what we have to learn to do is not let uncomfortable situations, uncomfortable thoughts control us, but to be able to relinquish those to God, relinquish those to the reality. They're not true, they're not dominating us, and that can begin to really prove, I think, effective over time. And so again, what's important about realizing some of these things is just being able to get on top of it before, I don't want to say it's too late, but just get on top of it before it is such a multi-layered problem. Because if you're someone who's just experiencing bad sleep, you have slight depression, slight anxiety, and it's increasing your intrusive thoughts and you're getting uncomfortable, that's great to recognize because then you can say, okay, what can I, what's causing me stress in my life that I can get rid of? And that can be an uncomfortable question because a lot of times we're doer-doers and we want to be really busy. But getting rid of one or two things that are overloading your schedule can be really helpful to get ahead of the game before it's um a little bit out of control. Because again, when you catch it early, it probably just more behavioral. It's not something that has really impacted your body in some of the ways that we've talked about yet. But if you don't jump on it early, and it's moved a little bit more to your body, and then it's moved a little bit more just to your general mental health because you're getting worn down and you're getting stressed, and then it's moved into just worry and concern about God and your spirituality and being sinful and these other things. Now it's such a multi-layered problem that again, it's still fixable, that God can still bring healing, that accountability and counselors and different things can help strengthen us, encourage us, and help us on our route to healing. But it's just harder, right? It's if you fall into a five-pit or five-foot pit, you can kind of climb your way out of there. You fall into a 30-foot pit, you still can. You just need a longer rope, right? And it's gonna be a little bit harder to get out. And so it's important to try to catch some of these things early. And when you know the basics of intrusive thoughts, it can help us not panic and it can also help us be proactive and healing. And so, especially if you're struggling with intrusive thoughts in relationship with God, I just wanted to finish with a couple practical tools along with what we've shared so far. And if it isn't primarily spiritual anxiety you're talking or you're dealing with, I still think these things would really help. So the very first thing is prayer. And sometimes that can seem cliche, but what I really want to encourage is structured prayer. When I was dealing with anxiety and you I'd go to prayer, pray, I would feel anxious. And honestly, prayer would make me feel more anxious a lot of times than I felt otherwise. So I didn't want to pray because I felt like it was turning into a place of anxiety. So two things that really helped me within prayer is praying scripture and so memorizing scripture, and that would help me focus my prayer on what the truths of God, and even pray things I didn't want to pray. So, like praying through the Psalms would be very helpful because some psalms are all about thanksgiving and joy. And when you're dealing with intrusive thoughts and anxiety, you don't want to pray prayers like that, but it brings you into that heart posture and brings you into submission to God's word and to pray those things, even when our mind and our heart is telling us we don't want to pray those things. Another thing that you could use is the Book of Common Prayer, it is an Anglican book that was put together during the Reformation, and this has ancient prayers in it from the earliest Christians on through the Reformation, and even some that have been written more recently. And it has a daily, it's called the Daily Office. There's an app for it as well. And a daily office just has a little cross, it's a red app with a gold cross on it. But it gives you prayers in the morning, it gives you prayers for the noon hour, it gives prayers for the eve or afternoon and then for the evening. And as you look at these prayers, if you do the whole liturgy, there's things like the Apostles' Creed in there, the Lord's Prayer or scripture you can read. And you don't have to do all of it, right? There's elements of confessing sin. And I think this is really helpful is to be able to confess that sin. And part of confession of sin is not just feeling guilty and bad about yourself, but it's about putting your eyes back on the forgiveness of your sins through Christ. It puts your my mind back on it's only by the grace of God that I can be strengthened. And so it is something that actually strengthens us through the promises of God, not just confess my sin, look how sinful I am, and let me think of all my intrusive thoughts, right? But it's actually just acknowledging I'm a sinner and putting my eyes on Christ. And it has a lot of prayers for confession and the Book of Common Prayer or in the Daily Office app. And so that's something you can do. And as you look at the app again, you can pick the places you want to start or how much of it you want to do. If you do the whole morning prayer with the scripture reading, it takes you maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes, so it's not that long. And if you never prayed structured prayers before, it can feel a little bit worr weird at first. But I would just encourage you that as you're consistent with it, the more repetition there are within those prayers, a lot of times the more meaningful they become because the more you've meditated on their words just in scripture. And for those of you who maybe have been warned against things like that from scriptures like Jesus says, do not use vain repetitions like the heathens do. One of the key points of that scripture is vain repetitions. Don't say things in vain. Don't say things over and over and think just because you say them over and over, God hears you. But that's not the point of liturgy or structured prayer. The point of liturgy and structured prayer is that it's not vain words, but it's valuable words. It's scriptural words, it's words of truth that you're meditating on and you're praying with your heart and with the intent to glorify God. Depending on what tradition or Christian background you've been brought up with, I just want to throw that in there that I think having structured prayer doesn't have to be the book of common prayer, it doesn't have to be the daily office app. But I think those things could really help you. I've never used a hollow app. I've heard that's one that people will use as well, but that there's probably different ones. But I would recommend the daily office just because I'm familiar with it. I know it's scriptural, I know it's solid and would lead you in the right direction. But again, you could just use the Psalms, you could use the Apostle Paul's prayer throughout the epistles, you could use some of Jesus' prayers in John 17 or the Lord's Prayer, right? You could focus on those things as well. And so that's one thing is. Structured prayer, scripture memory is something I would really encourage you with, and something that's structured, something that's not just aimless where you're having to think really hard or having giving your anxiety the opportunity to take over. Accountability partners, really important. I've already already mentioned that. Counseling, really helpful. So structured prayer, scripture memorization, accountability partners, counseling. And the last thing, this is something that can be in the daily rhythm of your church. And this is these are two things that I think really proclaim the reality of the Christian life in a very unique way, in a very tangible way. And the first is baptism. And we are baptized, Romans 6 says you're baptized into Christ's life and into his death and into his resurrection, right? And when we step into baptism, it can be really helpful to view baptism not as our work towards God, not something that I'm doing, but that I'm receiving by faith what God promises. That God promises new life in Christ. He promises the forgiveness of sins. He promises us the Holy Spirit. He promises us to be a part of the body of Christ. He promises us to never leave us or forsake us. He promises us that he is able to raise us from the dead and to glorify us with Christ. He promises us that we have power over the devil, over death, over sin. And so as we look at baptism, if you did a word search in the New Testament on baptism, you would find a lot of these promises connected to baptism. And it's not because baptism has magic water, it's because God's promised the new covenant in baptism. Jesus says, go make disciples of all nations, right? Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself was baptized. It's something that Jesus did, and this is something that Jesus commanded because it's this place of covenant. It's a better circumcision, you could say, in a lot of ways. So without getting in in depth of the doctrine of baptism, the reason why this can be encouraging with intrusive thoughts is we are called as Christians to live the baptized life. Maybe you've heard the Apostle Paul say, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. You could argue that he's talking about the baptized life. That's where every Christian should begin, is being baptized into Jesus as we receive the gospel or into the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Not, we won't get into all that. And so as we live the baptized life, we're reminded of our identity. We're reminded the promises of God, and we're reminded of our victory. So we're reminded that Christ has overcome, sin, the devil, the flesh, death. We're reminded that we are sons and daughters of the Father. We've been given the Holy Spirit that cries out, Abba Father, that we're reminded of the forgiveness of sins. It's just gonna be a really powerful thing. And so when someone else is baptized, we're reminded of this. But as you are baptized into Christ, you can look back and you can be reminded of these promises. And so Romans 6 is a great scripture to look at for that. And so that's just a very practical, tangible thing that as believers, we should all be immersed in and reminded of as we've been baptized into Christ. The second thing is the Lord's Supper. And when we take the Lord's Supper, and not to get too Bible nerdy here, but in the Old Testament, that the blood spilt for sacrifices was to purify the altar. And so when we receive Christ, when we take the wine, which is the blood of Christ, we are taking, we are receiving, we are confessing that the blood of Christ covers us, forgives us of all sins. Jesus Christ says this is his blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. And so when we take the Lord's Supper, it's really important that we are confessing our sins to the Lord because we're receiving this tangible evidence of the forgiveness of our sins. And so when you're struggling with anxiety and you're struggling with obsessive thinking and you're struggling with intrusive thoughts, it can be really refreshing to say, hey, regardless of what I think, I can trust that the blood of Christ forgives me and covers me from all sin. I can trust that Jesus Christ is faithful and just to forgive me my sins if I will confess my sins and turn to him. So praise God, right? That's something that depending on what church you go to, you could experience weekly as a tangible physical reminder of the blood of Christ poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins. The second part is the body of Christ, right? And the body of Christ, as Jesus rose from the dead, it says that he who knew no sin became sin, that we could become the righteousness of God. And so we can trust that as we continue in faith, the body of Christ, the resurrected power of Christ, is renewing and restoring my soul and my mind. So as I take the body of Christ and the Lord's Supper, I can be encouraged that he's strengthening me, that he's promising to meet me, that he's promising to restore and heal my soul and my body and my mind. And so it's this twofold gospel proclamation. That's why Paul says when we take the Lord's Supper, we proclaim his life or we proclaim his death until he returns. We're proclaiming the forgiveness of sins. We're proclaiming the resurrection power that lives in us. Paul says, Do you not know that he who raised Christ from the dead or the spirit that rose Christ from the dead lives in you? So those are some practical things. Again, we went through just some maybe mental health practice practices and practical ideas as we went through this. But just in closing, I do think these spiritual tools are what's most essential. Following Christ, being connected. It's John 1 says that Jesus is the life of men. We want to be connected to life, right? We don't want to be connected to death. And so being connected to the life, being connected to Christ is ultimately what we're after. And we can do that through, again, being aware of our body and not giving our body too much credit. Being aware of when my anxiety is talking to me, when my amygdalas are talking to me, my pre prefrontal cortex is talking to me. Those things can help lower the alarm in our life. We can have accountability partners that we ask that will encourage us and help us know when we're being rational and we're not. We can have structured, ordered prayer. We can have scripture memorized memorization. We can go to a counselor and a professional that can really help us. And we can be reminded of the promises of Christ that He's given us in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper to be strengthened in the power of the gospel to transform our heart and our mind. So if you're struggling with intrusive thoughts and you're not alone, God can and will strengthen you as you put your eyes on him. So don't give up, keep pushing through. You have any questions or would like to talk with me personal, personally, check us out at www.fivetuministries.org. God bless you guys.