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

by Sally M. Winston PsyD

In other words, your amygdala will set off a whoosh of fear in response to triggers that constitute no real danger. Psychologists call this conditioned learning. In this manner, fear responses can become habits of the brain. People with unwanted intrusive thoughts have an amygdala that has learned to become afraid (i.e., clang the danger-warning bell) of certain thoughts. You were not born with a fear of these thoughts, and there is no objective reason to be afraid of them, but your amygdala has been conditioned to react when they appear in your mind. And, in our complicated world, there are a host of situations that aren’t objectively dangerous, but can seem or feel dangerous. If your amygdala sets off the alarm in response to a harmless thought, you get a false alarm of danger: the bell clangs, you get an instant whoosh of fear, and it is very easy to think that there is real danger. The result is that thoughts feel dangerous, you try to fight them, and—of course!—they become stuck. First Fear: The Amygdala’s Automatic Alarm The whoosh of fear triggered by your amygdala is sometimes called first fear, a term introduced by Claire Weekes (1969) in the 1950s.