Intrusive Thoughts and Little Red

A few days ago I was with my fiancé and dad, on our way to the hardware store to get materials to repair some ductwork at mine and my fiancé's new place. I was sitting in the backseat and my fiancé was driving, and it was pouring down rain. The windshield wipers were whipping furiously, and I could hear the tires slinging up water.

All of a sudden, I was back in Little Red, my Chevy Cavalier that I hydroplaned in last year on a highway similar to the one we were on now: two eastbound lanes and two westbound, separated by a deep ditch. I could feel the tires leaving the pavement as I shot across the ditch and into the westbound lanes. Miraculously, the road was completely empty--I guess everyone else had had more sense than I had and stayed off the roads. My son, who was in his carseat in the back, and I were able to walk away from my totaled car.

Even though the accident left my son and I nearly unhurt, I still have flashbacks of it and intrusive thoughts about it when I’m in a car and it’s raining heavily. I was only going 45 miles per hour that day; but I hydroplaned so quickly my car was spinning before I even had time to blink; I remember seeing the sky blurring through the windshield faster than I would have thought possible.

Intrusive Thoughts Are Just Thoughts

Intrusive thoughts are unfortunately a common part of bipolar, PTSD, and several other mental illnesses. In this case, my intrusive thoughts were a trauma response, and sounded like, “You’re going to hydroplane again and this time, you’re going to get really hurt.” Another persistent one was “Someone else is going to hydroplane and they’re going to hit us.” And yes, these things could hypothetically happen, because anything can hypothetically happen at any moment, right? But chances are, nothing is going to happen. Everything is going to continue as normal.

Intrusive thoughts can be a lot more disturbing than that, though. They can tell you to do things; one I commonly have is "just start screaming wordlessly right now". They can also come in the form of violent visions of hurting yourself or others. The important thing to remember is that they're just thoughts. You aren't powerless against them--you have the choice to act on them or acknowledge them and move on.

The thing about intrusive thoughts is that they’re not prophecies. You aren’t fortune-telling when you have intrusive thoughts. They’re just thoughts that your illness--whether that’s bipolar, PTSD, or something else--is whispering (or maybe shouting) in your head. However, you definitely shouldn’t try to ignore your intrusive thoughts--Sally Winston and Martin Seif of the Anxiety & Depression Association of America even say that intrusive thoughts are “made stronger by trying to avoid them” (2018).

So What Can I Do About Intrusive Thoughts?

1. Remember the most important thing: You have the power to keep it a thought

When one pops up, my most successful technique against intrusive thoughts is to acknowledge them instead of trying to ignore them or getting upset with myself,. Then I remind myself that I don’t have to act on the intrusive thought if it’s one that makes me feel like I have to do something specific or something catastrophic will happen (thanks, anxiety). Finally, I tell myself that in all likelihood, whatever intrusive thought or flashback I'm having will never happen (again) in real life. They'll stay exactly what they were--an intrusive thought or flashback in my head.

2. Acknowledge and distract

Another thing you can try is acknowledging the thought--yes, I do feel like screaming right now, but that would be inappropriate--and then distracting yourself. Work on a jigsaw or crossword puzzle, paint your nails (this isn’t limited to women!), sing along to some loud music, or read a book.

3. Try grounding

Grounding is another technique I learned in therapy. There are many different ways of grounding yourself, but my favorite is called 5-4-3-2-1. You name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. It helps center you in the here and now instead of in your past or in the middle of your intrusive thoughts.

4. Get Help

Of course, the most important thing to do if your intrusive thoughts are getting too hard to handle on your own is to get professional help. There are techniques therapists can teach you that can help you better handle intrusive thoughts--and getting to the bottom of your trauma can certainly help, too.