Intrusive Thoughts

Intrusive thoughts are one of the most misunderstood and frightening experiences women deal with, especially women who are high-functioning, responsible, and used to being in control of their minds and their lives.

These are not the “everyday worries” people casually refer to as anxiety.

Intrusive thoughts are loud.
They’re vivid.
They feel urgent and extreme, and sometimes completely out of character.

They might sound like:

“my life is over”
“something is seriously wrong with me”
“I’m dying”
“something terrible is about to happen”

And what makes them so unsettling is that they often feel like they come out of nowhere.

Sometimes they’re dramatic in a very obvious way.

Other times, they are just straight-up ridiculous.

Like your brain telling you not to take the garbage out because a kidnapper has apparently been waiting behind the dumpster for days, patiently timing your trash schedule.
(Hi, that’s my brain.)

Or your thoughts insisting you should absolutely not walk between parked cars because one of them might magically turn on, despite the fact that there is no one inside.
(Hi, that’s also my brain.)

Why would I think that? Who knows.
Does it make sense? Absolutely not.
Does it feel real in my body anyway? 100%.

Most women panic when these thoughts start happening.

Not just because the thoughts themselves are intense, but because they start questioning what it means about them.

They wonder if they’re dangerous, unstable, broken, or losing control of their mind.

They start monitoring their thoughts, trying to push them away, or spiraling about why they would even think something like that in the first place.

What almost no one explains is that intrusive thoughts are not random and they are not a sign that something is wrong with your character or your brain.

They are directly connected to the state of your nervous system.

Your thoughts at any given moment are shaped by your nervous system.

Your autonomic nervous system is your body’s threat detector. It lives in your brain stem and acts as the control center for your entire experience.

Your thoughts, emotions, hormones, immune system, digestion, heart rate, breathing, and sense of safety are all influenced by it.

Its job is not to make you happy or calm.
Its job is to keep you alive.

So at all times, it is asking one simple question:

“Am I safe or am I in danger?”

When your nervous system feels safe, you are in a state where you feel present, connected, and relatively at ease.

This is the state where your thoughts make sense.

You can think clearly.
Problem solve.
Stay grounded.
Feel like yourself.

Even if you feel stressed or worried, it does not hijack your entire system. You can zoom out. You can breathe. Your body is not bracing for impact, so neither is your mind.

When your nervous system detects potential danger, it shifts into survival mode.

This is where anxiety ramps up.

Your thoughts become faster, louder, and more urgent.

You start replaying conversations.
Imagining worst case scenarios.
Scanning for problems.
Trying to fix things that may not even exist.

This is where your brain starts acting like an unpaid intern who has had way too much coffee and zero supervision.

Everything feels important.
Everything feels like it needs to be solved immediately.

Intrusive thoughts tend to show up when the nervous system feels overwhelmed or trapped.

This is a deeper survival state where the system decides that fighting or running is not enough.

When that happens, everything slows down and gets heavy.

Thoughts become darker, more absolute, and more final.

This is where thoughts like:

“nothing will ever get better”
“I am never going to heal”
“what is the point of anything”

show up.

These thoughts can feel terrifying because they do not come with nuance.
They come with certainty.

Sometimes they are paired with images.

Suddenly seeing your relationship ending.
Your health declining.
Yourself stuck on the couch forever staring at the wall.

Your brain presents this as a completely reasonable and inevitable future.

There is also a state many women live in without realizing it, where anxiety and shutdown overlap.

This is what overwhelm feels like.

In this state, you can be obsessing and avoiding at the same time.

You think constantly about what you need to do, while feeling unable to actually do it.

You fantasize about rest, but your brain insists that if you slow down for even five minutes, everything will fall apart and you will lose your job, your house, and your entire personality.

You might obsess over your health, your body, or your symptoms.

Googling.
Checking.
Rechecking.

All while feeling exhausted and hopeless.

Panic attacks often happen here.
So does health anxiety.
So does that frozen feeling where you are technically moving through your day, but nothing actually shifts.

This is where intrusive thoughts can get especially strange.

Thoughts like needing to walk on the “right” side of someone for no logical reason.

Or feeling like you cannot step into the street because a parked car might suddenly decide today is the day it comes alive.

Or worrying you gave your cat the wrong medication and now this is how you accidentally become the villain in your own life story.

The content is bizarre.
The intensity is real.

And the common thread is not logic.

It is threat.

All intrusive thoughts have one thing in common.

They carry a sense of danger.
Loss.
Collapse.
Injury.

The nervous system’s version of death.

Not always literal death, but the end of safety, stability, or control.

Intrusive thoughts are not a sign that you are broken.

They are a sign that your nervous system does not feel safe.

Every nervous system works the same way, but every nervous system is shaped by different experiences.

For some women, intrusive thoughts are tied to trauma that never fully resolved.

For others, they are driven by chronic burnout, years of pushing through, or living in an energy deficit for too long.

For others, ongoing relationship stress or emotional unpredictability keeps the system on edge.

The mechanism is the same.
The triggers are personal.

This is why trying to challenge intrusive thoughts in the moment usually does not work.

When survival mode is active, the rational part of your brain is offline.

You cannot logic yourself out of a state your body believes is dangerous.

Asking yourself for evidence or reassurance when you are dysregulated often results in your brain responding with something like:

absolutely not
we are dying
please stop asking questions

Your nervous system is not interested in debate.
It is interested in survival.

Thoughts can change, but not until safety returns to the body.

Regulation comes first.

Once the nervous system settles, the brain becomes flexible again.

Perspective returns.
The thoughts lose their grip.

This is why a nervous-system-first approach matters so much.

Intrusive thoughts do not mean you are secretly unsafe, unstable, or incapable.

They mean your system is overwhelmed and doing the best it can with the information it has.

Healing does not come from fighting your mind harder or judging yourself for what shows up.

It comes from teaching your body that it is safe again.

And when your body learns that, the thoughts finally calm down.

Including the ones about trash kidnappers and haunted parking lots.

If you are dealing with intrusive thoughts, I want you to know this.

You are not broken.
You are not alone.
And this does not have to be your forever.

There is a reason this is happening, and there is a way through it that does not involve forcing yourself to “just stop thinking like that.”

Thank you for being here and for taking the time to read this.

If any part of this made you laugh, nod, or feel a little less alone, that matters.

Sometimes relief starts with realizing your nervous system is dramatic, not doomed.

Love you babe,
Kerry