Everyone gets those weird, disturbing thoughts that pop up out of nowhere.
They’re known as intrusive thoughts, and up to 93% of the population has experienced them at some point in life. Not only that, but pretty much everyone who does have them secretly wonders what would happen if they actually did the bizarre thing their brain just suggested. The good news is that the gap between thinking something awful and actually doing it is enormous for most of us. Whew!
1. Your brain just throws random garbage at you sometimes.
Intrusive thoughts are basically your brain’s equivalent of autocorrect fails, and they happen to literally everyone, whether they admit it or not. Your mind generates thousands of thoughts every day, and some of them are bound to be completely bonkers.
The thoughts that freak you out the most are usually the ones that go completely against who you actually are, which is exactly why they feel so shocking and wrong. If you genuinely wanted to do these things, they wouldn’t bother you nearly as much.
2. Being horrified by the thought proves you’re not going to do it.
People who actually want to hurt other people or themselves don’t usually get upset about having violent thoughts because those thoughts match what they already want to do. The fact that these thoughts make you feel terrible is proof that they don’t represent your real personality.
Your horror at having these thoughts shows that your moral compass is working perfectly fine, and you’re definitely not the type of person who would follow through on random destructive impulses that pop into your head.
3. Thinking about something is completely different from doing it.
You’ve probably imagined winning the lottery a million times, but that doesn’t make you rich, and imagining something awful doesn’t make you dangerous. Your brain explores all sorts of scenarios without any intention of making them happen in real life.
You make actual decisions based on your values and what makes sense, not on every random thought that flickers through your mind. If we all acted on our intrusive thoughts, the world would be absolute chaos and nobody would be safe anywhere.
4. Your whole system would rebel if you actually tried to do something harmful.
If you genuinely started to act on a disturbing thought, every part of your conscience would scream at you to stop because it would feel completely wrong and horrible. You’d probably feel sick and stop yourself before anything bad actually happened.
Your empathy, guilt, and basic human decency create multiple layers of protection against doing things that would hurt people, and these defences are much stronger than random mental impulses that mean absolutely nothing.
5. Most intrusive thoughts are completely ridiculous anyway.
Half the time, intrusive thoughts involve things that are physically impossible or completely absurd, like suddenly having the power to blow up buildings with your mind or causing plane crashes by thinking about them. Your brain generates these impossible scenarios because it’s just messing around.
Even when the thoughts involve things you could technically do, they usually ignore basic reality like consequences, other people’s reactions, and the fact that most harmful actions require planning and multiple steps rather than single impulsive moments.
6. Anxiety makes everything feel more real and urgent than it actually is.
When you’re already stressed or anxious, your brain treats every worry as if it’s a genuine emergency, including worrying about your own thoughts. The anxiety makes the thoughts feel more important and scary than they really are.
Once you learn to recognise when anxiety is messing with your perception, you can step back and realise that these thoughts are just mental noise rather than serious predictions about your future behaviour
7. People who actually do terrible things don’t usually describe having intrusive thoughts first.
When you read about people who commit crimes or hurt other people, they rarely describe experiencing the kind of unwanted, distressing thoughts that bother you. They usually talk about planning things out or reacting impulsively to specific situations.
The experience of being upset by your own thoughts is actually quite different from genuinely wanting to hurt people, and the two things have completely different psychological patterns and outcomes.
8. Someone would notice if you started acting weird.
If you actually began behaving like someone who might act on harmful thoughts, your friends and family would definitely notice that something was wrong and would probably say something or get help before anything serious happened.
Real behavioural changes rarely go completely unnoticed, and most harmful actions require a buildup of concerning behaviours that would create natural opportunities for intervention long before anything genuinely dangerous occurred.
9. Help exists for people who genuinely can’t control harmful impulses.
Mental health professionals know how to help people who actually struggle with urges to hurt themselves or other people, which proves that intrusive thoughts and real dangerous impulses are recognised as completely different problems requiring different approaches.
If you were genuinely dangerous, there would be treatment available to help you manage those impulses safely. The fact that most people with intrusive thoughts never need this kind of intervention shows how rarely thoughts become actions.
10. You’ve never acted on these thoughts before.
You’ve probably had disturbing thoughts countless times throughout your life and never followed through on any of them, which is pretty solid evidence that you can trust yourself to continue not acting on them in the future.
Your track record of having weird thoughts and then just getting on with your normal life shows that your internal controls are working perfectly well, and there’s no reason to think that would suddenly change.
11. The thoughts get less scary when you stop taking them seriously.
Fighting against intrusive thoughts and trying to make them go away often makes them stronger and more frequent, while just letting them exist without getting worked up about them usually makes them fade into background noise.
When you stop treating random thoughts as meaningful predictions about your character or future behaviour, they lose most of their power to upset you and become more like annoying mental spam that you can ignore.
12. Millions of people deal with this without anything bad happening.
Research shows that over 90% of people get intrusive thoughts at some point, and the vast majority never act on them or have any problems beyond feeling temporarily disturbed by their own brain’s nonsense.
You’re part of a huge group of completely normal people who occasionally get bothered by their own thoughts, and the fact that this is so common but actual harmful behaviour is rare shows that thoughts and actions are very different things.
13. Getting help for distressing thoughts doesn’t mean you’re dangerous.
If intrusive thoughts are really bothering you or interfering with your life, talking to a therapist can help you feel better about them, but this is completely different from needing help because you’re actually dangerous to yourself or other people.
Therapy for intrusive thoughts focuses on helping you worry less about having them rather than stopping you from acting on them because the real problem is usually the anxiety about the thoughts rather than any genuine risk of harmful behaviour.
