Do you ever get intrusive thoughts? The kind that just jump into your head uninvited and won’t leave?

This short video will help you to take control.

If you prefer to read, rather than to watch, you’ll find a transcription below. This is an automatically generated transcript so please excuse any errors.

Do you ever get intrusive thoughts? And if you do, would you like to know how to deal with them?

Basically, there are two kinds of intrusive thoughts, though those that you don’t want to think about, again, ever. And there are those that you do want to think about, but just not right now.

So let’s have a look at an example of each kind.

Imagine that you’re going to write a book, and that you’ve started to write a book in the past, but for some reason, you didn’t complete it. Then as you sit down to write a thought jumps into your head that says, Remember, last time he tried to write a book, you failed. And while we’re on the subject, there are lots of things that you’ve started in the past that didn’t complete. Why do you think this is going to be any different? if we’re honest, most of us have had these kinds of thoughts from time to time, and they’re not very helpful.

The second kind of intrusive thoughts are the ones that are useful, but they often happen at the wrong time. Maybe when you’re trying to go to sleep. For example, you’re just getting relaxed, and then your brain wakes up and says, Do you think now would be a good time to go through your to do list? Why don’t we go through all of these things one at a time. And you could think in detail about all of the steps, you could go make go through the steps lots of times to make sure that you don’t miss anything. Now, these can be good things to be thinking about, but not when you’re trying to go to sleep.

Or maybe you just fallen asleep when your mind says, so you want to write a great book. Good. I’ve got some ideas for you. Let’s think about it. Right now. I’m awake well, and you know, it’s great to get ideas. But it’s not very useful when you’re trying to go to sleep. So you do want to have these thoughts, but not right now.

The good news is that all of these thoughts are easy to deal with and there are two elements that you need. One is using your imagination, and the other is using metaphors. imagination, and metaphors are the language of your subconscious mind. And it’s that’s the way that you communicate with your subconscious mind. And it is your subconscious mind that’s throwing these thoughts at you.

So here’s a very simple process. As soon as you become aware of the thought, imagine that it’s written on a piece of paper. And then really imagine that piece of paper in front of you. Imagine you can see the words written on it, it’s okay, if it’s all hazy, you’re not trying to create a photographic image here, just imagine that you can see it. And just by doing this, it makes you conscious that you’re having that thought. And once you’re conscious of it, you can decide what you want to do with it.

Do you want to save it for later, or do you want to get rid of it forever. If you want to get rid of it forever. Imagine that there’s a paper shredder in front of you, then in your mind, shred the paper, it’s that simple.

The more vividly that you do this in your mind, the better it will work. So imagine seeing it go through the shredder. Imagine the sound that it’s making. Imagine what it feels like as the paper’s slowly pulled in. And what’s quite amazing is that as the words disappear in front of you, they fade out of your mind as well. And you’ll find yourself feeling mentally relaxed. And the more that you feel mentally relaxed, the more that you’ll feel physically relaxed.

If it’s a thought that you want to save for later, instead of a shredder, imagine a filing cabinet and file the thought away, or put it in a box that’s labeled thoughts for later. The more that you mentally engage in this process, the faster and easier it will work for you.

The second thing that makes this incredibly powerful is when you personalize it, shredding a piece of paper finding a way and metaphors. And remember that I said this is the way that you communicate with your mind. If you personalize the metaphor, then it takes on a whole new level of effectiveness.

Now personally, I don’t use these as my metaphors. I’m talking about these today, because these are ideas that I was talking about with a client a few days ago, and he found them really useful. So that means they’re fresh in my mind at the moment.

I use a computer a lot. So when I get invasive thoughts, I imagine my desktop being cluttered up with lots of Word documents. Each of the documents has got a different thought on it. And then I go through them one at a time and decided what what to do with it. If I don’t want that thought anymore, I just close it down and I put the document in the recycle bin. If it is something that I want for later, I save it somewhere. And that means I can find it again.

You could think about closing tabs on a browser. Or if you want to be dramatic, you could put the thought in a box and drop a bomb on it and watch it explode. The key to making this work incredibly well is to find a metaphor that makes a lot of sense to you. So I hope that’s useful. Let me know how you get on with it or if you have any questions