Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts: A CBT-Based Guide to Getting Over Frightening, Obsessive, or Disturbing Thoughts

by Sally M. Winston PsyD

There are plenty of good reasons to eat right and get good exercise. In fact, it is clear that healthy eating and healthy exercise improve your mood and lower anxiety. But unfortunately, these activities alone won’t stop your unwanted intrusive thoughts. There is a relationship between stress and fatigue, on the one hand and unwanted intrusive thoughts on the other. Eating, exercising, and sleeping well, as well as avoiding drugs and reducing stress, may reduce the intensity and frequency of intrusions. Conversely, poor eating and sleeping, lack of exercise, drinking alcohol, and a highly stressful lifestyle tends to increase the intensity and frequency of unwanted intrusive thoughts. But—and here is the point we would like you to take away—healthy living will not cure unwanted intrusive thoughts, and unhealthy living will not cause them. While healthy living may temporarily reduce your sticky mind, it has no effect at all on the two other factors—paradoxical effort and entanglement—that function