The Truth About Intrusive Thoughts and OCD

What do you do when a thought enters your mind that feels disturbing,

foreign, or completely out of alignment with who you think you are?

Do you ask yourself, why would I think that?

Does this mean something about me? Am I secretly capable of something horrible?

Most people immediately assume that if that thought entered their mind,

it must somehow be coming from some deeper layer of themselves.

But this assumption is one of the most destructive misunderstandings about how the mind actually works.

Your brain is wired for deception, but here's the truth.

Patterns can be broken. The code can be written.

Once you hear the truth, you can't go back.

So the only question is, are you ready to listen?

Let's start with a question that many of you are afraid to say out loud.

What do you do when a thought enters your mind that feels disturbing,

foreign, or completely out of alignment with who you think you are?

A thought flashes across your mind, and immediately your body reacts.

Your heart rate starts to increase, your stomach tightens,

and suddenly you are questioning everything you once knew about yourself.

You ask yourself, why would I think that?

Does this mean something about me?

Am I secretly capable of something horrible?

Most people immediately assume that if that thought entered their mind,

it must somehow be coming from some deeper layer of themselves.

Don't even get me started on shadow work or parts work.

Believe me, we will get into that in future episodes.

But this assumption is one of the most destructive misunderstandings about how the mind actually works.

Intrusive thoughts are unwanted, unrequested, often really disturbing thoughts that appear suddenly

and repeat themselves in cycles that can be discerned through pattern work.

They can involve fear, taboo images, catastrophic scenarios, relationship doubts,

sexual thoughts, fears about harming others, fears about your faith, or going to hell.

Many people experience them, but don't ever talk about them because they feel ashamed.

And I get it.

But intrusive thoughts are far more common than most of you realize.

In fact, many people live with them for years and have never even heard the term.

I see this time and time again in break method.

People get to the end of module one where we have a lecture about intrusive thoughts in OCD,

and people show up on their next session and say, Busy, you just explained 30 to 40 years of

my life and my pain and I finally feel understood.

So I want you to remember, you are not your thoughts just because something populates inside of

your mind doesn't mean that it originated from you, and it doesn't mean that it's originating

from some deeper shadowy side of you.

Okay?

I will break this down extensively today, but this is going to be a thread we'll have to keep pulling

because it is extremely complex.

We'll try to highlight the different areas from the physical structures involved to the emotional

structures involved, but this even has tentacles out into multi-dimensionality and spiritual

conversations.

So I will try to help highlight or illuminate the entire system, but this is going to take

a couple, a couple piggybacking sessions to fully expose it.

To understand intrusive thoughts, we have to first understand anxiety itself.

Anxiety is really not the villain that many people think that it is, especially in today's

world where people talk about anxiety and panic attacks is this thing that can hold you back,

and here's the reality.

You guys know from watching these episodes, if anyone knows about anxiety and panic attacks,

it's your girl.

I've been there for many, many years of my life, so I understand how destructive

and debilitating panic attacks and severe anxiety can be.

Certainly not trying to diminish that, but I think what ends up happening is we talk so much

about very debilitating anxiety, you're generalizing anxiety disorder and panic attacks,

and then we shy away from claiming the emotion of anxiety, right?

We try to kind of bulk them all together, so it's very frequent that I would have a client

break and they're like, oh, no, no, I don't experience anxiety.

And I'm like, really?

Okay, let's go down the list.

And it's like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I'm like, so you do actually experience anxiety.

You're just not having panic attacks.

You are using it as a way to stay busy, stay functional, stay on top of things,

make sure that nobody gets in trouble.

That is still anxiety, my friends.

So we have to keep in mind that anxiety has gotten bulked up into, I think, a lot of the labels

that are really more specific toward generalizing anxiety disorder and panic attacks.

Those are separate.

You can still experience anxiety as one of your primary emotions without having panic attacks.

And it's important to consider that when we're thinking about anxiety,

one of the easiest ways to draw correlation would be because it's language that many of you

understand the language of fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop.

And one of the things that I think is important for us to consider here is

in break method, and if you need to go back to early episodes in season one,

I explain to you what the different emotional addiction cycles are and which ones are the

most common, so you can go back to that.

I believe the episode is on like the overwhelm trap or something like that.

You can go on the deep dive, you can go on a little scavenger hunt.

First case scenario, you find another epic episode and you're welcome.

So going back there just to kind of drop a little bit of foundational knowledge is in break

method, we have found that people experience a cycle of three emotional states.

You start with your origin emotion, which is how everybody responds to fear, fear is the most

primary emotion that every human being experiences. It is what often is wrapped up into our instinct,

right? Our instinct is to run away from the bear, divert any sort of unnecessary blood flow to

areas that aren't required so that we can put it all into our large muscles and we can save ourselves

by arguably running away. This would be the origin emotion. We then move into a protective

emotion. So instead of what happens when we initially realize we're in a bad situation,

the protective emotion is what am I going to do with what I assume is going to happen to me?

Do I run toward the danger and try to fight my way out of it? Do I run away from the danger and try

to avoid it entirely? Do I go toward the danger and try to reason with it, manipulate it,

fawn to try to make it like me? Right? These are all the different things the brain is running through

and we each have specific patterns that we repeat over and over again. Example would be

you don't fight and fawn. Someone, because we know there's a three-part cycle, you may

fawn in your protective response, which, you know, that's me, I fawn in my protective response,

but eventually that doesn't work. You try to control or manipulate our coerce or whatever other

people. Sometimes it's effective for saving yourself. Sometimes it's not and for the reality is

often it's not because we can't actually control other people's reactions, but I digress. If your

protective emotion is that fawn response, you're probably stepping in, you're trying to smooth over,

people please play Kate, be helpful to other people to try to keep them stable. Eventually,

you're still going to get pissed, okay? You're still going to build a resentment, you're going to

overload your plate, you're going to feel like the whole world is on your shoulders, eventually

you're going to get overstimulated and guess what? When you get to your escalating emotion,

which is that third emotional position, you're probably going to snap into anger, and then you

may fight. Example for me, I fawn and then I fight. I don't ever run away, maybe I should,

that might be some pattern of emotion that I should consider, but I don't run away and avoid.

So typically, if you were to look at that spectrum of the fight fright, fight fright, fight,

flight freeze fawn and flop, typically you have one that matches with your protective emotion,

and then you have an alternate that matches with your escalating emotion.

When people go to anxiety as their protective emotion, they almost always go to anger as

their escalating emotion. In break method, we have found that you can also go to an alternate

of apathy, so example would be that would look like in the the flight fright language,

flight fright, I keep wanting to say fright, maybe we want to make it a thing, fight, flight.

In that language, anger could be fight, anger could also be flight, and then if you're adding

in the apathy element, that could be the flop mechanism, which is where you essentially

stop trying to do anything and you either dissociate or you detach or you go into some sort of

catatonic state. In either case, you stop trying to help yourself at all.

So it's important for those of you listening to try to wrap your head around what your cycle is,

because if you do the opposite and you go to anger as your protective emotion, which for those

of you that are in a relationship with one of these, I am, it's not hard to tell. People know

when they're quick to anger. So a person like this is quick to anger, and then they typically will

go to anxiety as their escalating emotion, and they could have one of those piggy backing patterns

where they have an anxiety shame pattern or they could have an anxiety apathy pattern.

And in the case of anxiety shame, sometimes you have either a like a freeze fawn or you could

have a fawn freeze that corresponds to that. If you have anxiety apathy, you could have a freeze

flop, you could have a fawn flop, either one of those would correspond. So when we're thinking about

these anxiety now for our working definition is your brain trying to figure out what it needs to

change about its external environment as a way to stay safe. I have to double check this,

I have to placate this person, I have to withhold this information, they can't quite handle this.

So your brain is giving you an effective checklist of what you have to do to survive. That is anxiety.

So if you do that, do you experience anxiety? So anxiety is your brain's attempt to protect you

through thinking your way through it. So instead of fighting your way through it, how can I use my

brain to strategize my way into survival? So in this way, the brain is becoming both superhero

and psychic simultaneously. Because it's superhero, it's like we can save you, we can get through

anything. But also it's psychic because it's trying to anticipate, albeit through assumption,

what is likely to happen to you in the future. And guess what? It's probably going to skew a negative,

it's probably going to skew a catastrophic. And this is where we find ourselves in this conversation.

It convinces you that if you think hard enough, worry hard enough, analyze, anticipate every possible

scenario, somehow you can prevent bad things from happening. It actually tricks you into feeling

productive. But the reality is that most of the things the anxiety tries to control are actually

completely outside of your control because last time I checked, you're not God.

At the same time, anxiety is convincing you that it has some sort of special insight into the

future. It's also telling you possibly that this is intuition. If you want more information on

this particular issue of the instinct versus intuition, go back to season one episode four,

that episode is awesome and it digs really deeply into how to discern instinct from intuition.

But right here where we're in the anxiety loop, this is telling you that the danger is real.

It's telling you that something terrible is about to happen and that you have to pay attention.

And this is the psychic illusion of anxiety. And this is why it's so important to learn how to discern

the difference between instinct and intuition. Because intuition, quite honestly, is usually

inviting you toward the scary thing, not to justify pulling away from the scary thing. While instinct,

of course, going back to that initial example of running away from the bear, instinct is usually

causing you to manage your distance from whatever that perceived, dangerous thing or person is.

And what happens in anxiety is that your brain starts to believe these assumptions,

which again, are really just predictions about what it thinks is going to happen. But many of

these predictions are rooted in assumption and these assumptions are built through your early childhood

emotional pain. So they're not necessarily taking into consideration real objective reality today.

If you are a consistent listener of the show, you probably listened last time about probably

three, two to three weeks ago, based on the timing of our production schedule and episode about

somatic healing. And I shared a story about how, as a younger child, I was really anxious. But

that anxiety would kick in when I was subject to my parents decision making. And then suddenly,

as soon as I was by myself on the main streets of New York City in the middle of the night,

I was suddenly not afraid. Why is that? Was one situation objectively more safe than the other?

Yeah, for sure. I was most likely objectively much more safe in the situations where I was

infallible and panic with my parents because I didn't trust them than I was on New York City

streets by myself at three o'clock in the morning. But my brain interpreted one as safe, although

objectively, it was not. And the other has unsafe, even though objectively, it was probably not

unsafe. So it's important for us to remember that what our brain deems as safe is not based on

the rules of objective reality. It has everything to do with all of our previous emotional

experience, what we perceive about ourselves, what we perceive about other people involved.

So we have to remember that all of these patterns that we're talking about today are jumping off

of this launch pad of our early childhood experiences. And the brain is going to adapt to those

experiences by producing protective responses like what we're responding with today. So example,

I used that I go to fun and then I go to fight. No flight, but I am seriously considering that as

we're talking about this right now. So those protective responses are likely to show up now in your

adult age in very deep ruts. It's very hard for us to change behavior as an adult. We can often

become more aware of it. And unfortunately, what I have seen more often than not in the mental

health Instagram therapy, conscious community, spiritual community places is people become more

aware of their patterns. And they become better at talking about them, but they don't actually

change the pattern from the root. And as you may know from listening to this podcast,

that is the only work I'm genuinely concerned with. Anything that just causes you to talk more

elegantly or intelligently about your problems, but doesn't ultimately solve the underlying problem

feels frankly like a total waste of time to me. I would never want to do that for one moment of my life.

If you've been anywhere near the health longevity space lately, you've probably heard the word

peptides thrown around everywhere. Some people are calling them the future of medicine. Others

are warning you that the space is going to get messy fast. The reality is that both things are

probably accurate to some extent. Peptides are rapidly moving into mainstream health care.

Clinics are prescribing them. Biohackers are experimenting with them. And regulatory

conversations are evolving quickly, which means one thing is becoming very clear. Your education

on peptides matters. That's why I wanted to tell you about a program created by Ashley Madsen.

Ashley is a double-board certified physician assistant in a longevity clinician who's been

prescribing peptides in clinical practice for over a decade. She's also one of the few educators

in the space who approaches the topic from a clinical physiology perspective not strictly hype.

Her course is called Peptides for High Performance. It's a self-paced online program designed to

help people understand how compounds actually work inside of the body. In the course, she

breaks down things like metabolic peptides, mitochondrial optimization, growth and hormone

support, regenerative repair, and sexual vitality. But through the lens of a real clinical strategy

and safety. This isn't a peptide stacking course. It's about truly understanding the mechanisms,

the physiology, and how to use these peptides responsible in an industry that is evolving quickly.

So whether you're a clinician, a serious health professional, or a biohacker who just wants to

understand what you're really experimenting with, or maybe you just want to understand where the

healthcare system is about to transition. This is one of the most grounded educational courses I've

seen yet. Enrollment is open now, and if you use the code Busy300, you're going to get $300

off the program. Just head to the show notes and enroll.

So I tend to focus all my work on not just teaching you to be aware and talk about it in an

intellectual way, but how to actually get to the root and uproot the entire pattern so that you

don't have to be held hostage by this pattern for the rest of your life. Because these responses

will persist, and they will dig deeper roots, and they will cause you to consider the

roots that they've created as this sort of safety familiarity. But those roots cause you to

not do the things in your life that you ultimately really want to do. Maybe you really do want to

have a connected relationship where you experience peace and vulnerability, and that feels

not just attainable but safe, right? That involves you learning to get out of your rut, to step

out of the pattern in which your brain is currently stuck. And this is where intrusive thoughts

often enter the picture, because the intrusive thoughts act like triggers to put you in

dear protective emotion. So I'll give you an example. Let's say that you're having a totally

normal relaxing day, you're like, oh, the kids are at school, the house is clean, I'm baking,

and then without any sort of request, your brain's like, maybe your mom's gonna die and you're like,

wait, what? I was just trying to enjoy the fresh smell of bread, and now you're trying to get me

to think about what would happen if my mom died. Okay, so this is an example of an intrusive thought.

Why would I go from peaceful, relaxing situation? My senses are engaged now. My brain almost daring

me to think about something horrifying. Well, I'm glad you asked. Sometimes, and there are different

types of intrusive thoughts, as I mentioned, because we are gonna talk about some of the spiritual

etiologies of intrusive thoughts as well. But let's use the example of the one I just gave you,

like maybe your mom's gonna die. My brain was not used to as a child experiencing peace,

because something was always about to change, something was always about to go wrong. So as a child,

it became a setup for me to feel at ease and peace, because then I would get blindsided.

So my brain decided if I remain in a hyper-vigilant state, and I'm always ready for something bad to

happen, then at least I'm not caught off guard, and I can step into that strategically. This is the

example of the anxiety showing up like a superhero. It's cool. I'll just remain hyper-vigilant all

the time. I'll always be ready for some sort of strategy, and then I won't get blindsided. It's

gonna be great. What does that do to your nervous system over the long haul? Well, it's not good.

I got diagnosed with lupus when I was 23. I had three different forms of cancer and cancer

adjacent when I was 15, it was a wild time. So let's just say my body didn't manage being in

constant hyper-vigilance well, as nobody's does. But nonetheless, my brain decided that was a more

viable long-term strategy to keep me safe. So now, fast forward into my adulthood. Thankfully,

for break and a wonderful husband and amazing kids and financial access and success, all these

things, right? I can have days where I am at home doing nothing, now baking bread, because I'm a

sourdough mom, and the kids are at school. And maybe I do have these moments of just complete

relaxing peace. Uh-huh, but my brain is addicted to the chaos from my childhood, right? And I'm

giving you this as a hypothetical scenario. Thankfully, this doesn't happen to me anymore, but certainly

like 2016, 17, 18, you betcha. This is what happened for sure. So I'm relaxed.

My brain actually gets the cue that relaxation and peace. That's actually dangerous, because now

you've let your guard down. What if, right? That's where the what if message starts to come in and

it wants to pull me into hyper-vigilance. You can't relax if you're relaxed, then what if?

So what ends up happening is sometimes for some people, the brain will think of an intrusive

thought. You didn't try to call it in, but now your brain body somatic connection is trying to get

you to a place that feels familiar, which to me would be hyper-vigilance if I were going off my old

pattern. So what's happening is that my brain is triggering me to think about maybe a deep-rooted

fear or something that I've maybe been considering in the back of my subconscious, to try to ruin my

moment of peace, because to my brain peace actually feels dangerous. I hope that painted a picture.

I hope that you can take a moment to think about what that would be for you, because each one of

us has has a different scenario. Maybe peace isn't your trigger. Maybe it's feeling like someone's

trying to tell you what to do. Maybe it is feeling like somebody's not listening to you. We all have

whatever our primary trigger pattern is. So I urge you to consider that right now. If you have no

idea what that is, a great place to start is always to go to breakmetha.com and start with brain

pattern mapping. We'll be able to tell you what your biggest areas of trigger are, your self-deception,

patterns, how your blind spots are currently holding you back, etc. So you can go to breakmetha.com

and do that if you're really completely unsure. So now let's get back into this anxiety. We now

understand that our brain is trying to protect us to keep us in this sort of rut where life probably

sucks to some extent, but it's a suck that our brain is used to so it feels safe. So now our brain

starts to come up with these different ways to make us think of something to get us back into

the state that feels like the familiar. And the brain can start to scan for threats without

you even thinking about it. So sometimes you're doing something and you think that you're focused

on this other thing, but your brain is actually scanning for threats around you. Sometimes your

brain is actually trying to jump to some sort of wild future scenario that has nothing to do with

what you're currently focused on. And I think it's important to remind you that when anxiety does pop

up, it's typically coming to you packaged in a specific. Okay. So very rarely is it going to be like,

I wonder what it would be like to, that doesn't sound like intrusive thought. Intrusive thought

anxiety sounds more like your sunscreen today. What if because there's been avalanches, he goes on

this one specific cliff, and he does it without testing the snow quality, right? That's a more

intrusive thought form of anxiety, where it's trying to be pitched to you as highly specific,

which makes your mind latch on to it more. When it kind of goes through generals, that's usually

not a sign of intrusive thought, because your brain is actually trying to pitch to you that this

particular moment that it's giving you is actually urgent. Like this is the thing to pay attention to.

And the other thing that's important to remember that I've talked about in previous episodes

regarding my panic attacks is even if you had had 2000 panic attacks, wherever you single time,

you realize at the end, oh, that was just panic attack. In the moment, your brain is going to trick

you into thinking, but this time it's a hard attack. It doesn't matter that the last 1,999 times,

it was actually just a panic attack. This one time, this is actually really dangerous this time,

I have to go to the hospital. And this is how it uses that specificity against you. So if as you're

trying to talk yourself out of it, you're getting pushed back, but this time it's real or this time

it's specific, we know this is a time to step back and observe very carefully. So now we want to

zoom out for a moment and try to look at the mind from an entirely different perspective. I want you

to imagine the mind like a map of territory. So think about an ancient times when different

clans would plant their flags and they've got their coat of arms and you can see who ruled which

territory. Your mind functions much the same way. Thoughts are constantly trying to plant flags

in a territory of your mind. And some of those flags represent truth, clarity, faith, and wisdom,

okay, great. Some of those flags you're actually trying to claim your territory in a sound way,

example, when you're going through break method and you learn Eli every time you execute Eli

properly, you are firmly planting a flag of sovereignty on the territory map of your mind.

But other thoughts are going to be more representative of fear, shame, despair, bitterness,

self-disruption, regret, remorse. And the moment you allow one of those thoughts to remain

unchallenged, it starts to establish territory on your map. And I want to remind you that territory

is never lost all at once. So don't feel so overwhelmed right now that you're like,

what's the use I'm too broken? Territory is always lost incrementally. One foothold becomes

an outpost. One outpost is going to eventually become a fortress. Intrusive thoughts will follow

the same expansion pattern. And I'm not going to lie to you. They do escalate exponentially,

but you can also collapse those exponentially as well because they're all starting from a very

clear origin point. And if you know how to collapse them from the origin point, even if you let it

go, I'm giving an arbitrary number, 1,000 layers deep into intrusive thought, if we capture the

right pattern origin, you can just as easily collapse out all of those same layers.

But when we're thinking about the stages of this, I want you to remember that the first stage

is a suggestion. It's a thought that appears suddenly and it might feel shocking or disturbing,

but at this stage, it's trying to see if you will take the bait, right? It's dangling the

thought to see what you're going to do with it. And if you immediately challenge or dismiss it,

it often fades away. The second stage, you start to engage with it. You start to have a conversation

with it. Maybe you start to bargain with it, start to justify it. And instead of dismissing the

thought entirely, you are starting to analyze it. Maybe you're questioning it. Maybe you're searching

for evidence. And I think this is one of the biggest traps of shadow work or parts work.

Asking the question, is this coming from something deeper? Is this something that I don't really

know about that's just compartmentalized? I encourage you right now, hear me when I say this,

do not do that with intrusive thoughts. Create separation, create distance, do not allow these

thoughts to engage with you. I will tell you some stories if we have a time at the end of this

episode about clients that have mistakenly followed the advice of certain therapeutic modalities

and done this and have made the issues so much more profound. So please tread lightly, be careful

here because if you engage with them at all and you potentially try to allow room for those to

be coming from some deeper place in you, you risk actually identifying with it and allowing it

even deeper access to you. The third stage is narrative-based. The thought starts to become part

of a story about your life or a story that weaves into maybe deep insecurities about what you think

of yourself. So instead of separating, that was a weird thought or ew, I wonder where that came

from. You actually start to say maybe this is something that's tied to something about who I really

am, maybe this is something that's a hidden shadowy compartmentalized part of myself. The fourth

stage is the stronghold. The narrative starts to solidify into a belief that starts to shape your

behavior and perception for the long haul. This process can also be understood through something I

present in break method called the emotional domino effect. Domino one is where the initial thought or

memory appears without awareness of the underlying pattern driving it. So this is where it comes

forward but you didn't request it, it came to you. Domino two occurs when additional thoughts about

the past or even imagined futures start to stack on top of the original thought. So they start to

become a sandwich so to speak. Domino number three is when those thoughts begin spreading into other

areas of your life creating exaggerated or catastrophic assumptions about the future. So the initial

thought becomes, well, I'm going to now type to this person or this story, what if this problem

augments and oh my god, what if now I'm going to get divorced? Right? Once you allow that initial

intrusive thought, you can slip off the edge very quickly. I had a client who struggled with

intrusive thoughts and this person was adorably sweet, so kind from the south. If you heard her voice,

it would sound exactly like you're imagining right now in this moment. And this is by the way

not uncommon. I've had many clients like this, but this one in particular stands out. Any thought she

would think she would latch onto it and think, well, maybe, so this person, for example, would

watch a documentary about a murder and she would actually think to herself, is it possible that I'm

a murderer and I wouldn't know it? So such a deep-seated self-trust wound that anything that popped up,

she tried to immediately make it mean something more deeply about herself or assume that maybe it

was coming from some deeper layer of herself. So this is an example of how an underlying issue

can start to compound by tying it to other parts of your life. Oh, well, if that was true,

maybe this is true, maybe I am, et cetera. So it starts to compound. Then when we're looking at

domino number four, this is happening when your assumptions turn into beliefs and they're actually

anchoring themselves into your brain. So it starts to come back into that sort of more self-fulfilling

prophecy. And then domino five is where those beliefs start to influence your behavior.

So going back to the example of the what if like, if I'm watching this documentary, they were

murder and they didn't know it, what if I'm a murderer and I don't know it? I can't trust myself.

Maybe is that domino for assumption? Domino five is if I can't trust myself, maybe X, Y, Z could

happen. We're now magnifying it out to some sort of future scenario. But what's important to remember,

let's think about this client for a second, what if that paranoia got so elevated that they

chose to, I don't know, go to the police and confess to a crime that they never actually committed.

Okay, this actually shockingly happens a lot. So let's say the domino five example with this person

is they watch the, they are fearful watching the documentary. Well, they didn't realize their

murder. Maybe I'm murder and I don't know it. And then that turns into a story about maybe I'm

a murderer and maybe in that state of paranoia, they actually go confess to a crime that they

didn't commit at all. They're just in a paranoid state based on an initial intrusive thought.

And at this point, they're now confessing to a crime. And what if they want to jail for the rest

of their life for a crime that they didn't commit because this intrusive thought wasn't corrected.

And now it's influenced their behavior into a consequence that can't be undone. You think that

this is unreasonable until you work in the line of work that I work in. And it's not unreasonable,

you guys, if you don't get really good at discerning where you are in the domino effect,

you can slip off the edge far too quickly. I always tell people the line between sanity and

insanity is razor thin if at all. And many people in particular, those who have the brain pattern

types that tend to correlate over to personality disorders, they're often very unaware of objective

reality versus their skewed version. I know we've gone through this extensively on podcast

episodes. It's hard for people like that to know where they are in the dominoes because they are

not able to pull back and perceive with any sort of metacognition in the first place, right?

There's so much emotion driving the train that they can't stop and see things differently.

So for a person like that, being able to understand where they are and their emotional response

dominoes can be really challenging. So I want to emphasize here, stopping this domino effect

as early as possible is extremely critical. Once a thought progresses far enough down the chain,

it becomes hard to reverse. I'm not saying it's impossible. It's totally possible. But we have to

catch it as quickly as we possibly can. And this is why to me, awareness is an important stage. You

do have to become aware of something in order to stop it. But far too many people get stuck at

awareness and they don't learn how to intervene and rewire to make the thoughts stop in the first

place. And by the way, you can get rid of intrusive thoughts. I've said it before. I used to struggle

with this a ton. And now if I'm not actively thinking, my mind is completely quiet. I could never

have conceived of that in the earlier years of my even like early adulthood and childhood. My

mind was constantly full of back and forth chatter. Now if I'm not thinking, it is completely quiet.

And that is attainable for many of you. It's not easy. But it is a process that we do in

break method that can restore your ability to actually be at peace and presence without constantly

having that tug of war happening in your mind. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever noticed

how you can know something is unhealthy and still do it? Anyways, you know you shouldn't react

that way in an argument. You know that habit isn't good for you. You know that that thought

pattern is rational. And yet somehow your brain runs the same loop again. This is where a lot of

personal development goes wrong. Awareness alone doesn't change the brain. Repeated behavioral

input does. Your brain changes through neuroplasticity. Through the pathways you strengthen with action,

not just awareness. And that is exactly why I created Renew your mind. This program sits at the

intersection of neuroscience, behavioral rewiring, and biblical teaching around the command to renew

your mind. Inside this program I walk through what's actually happening in the brain when patterns

form, by your prefrontal cortex shuts down under emotional pressure, and how specific behaviors

activate areas like the anterior mid-singulate cortex, which is responsible for resilience,

discipline, and the ability to push through discomfort. But the most important thing we talk about

is pattern opposition. Because if you want a new life, you can't keep feeding the same neural

pathways that created the old one. Scripture says be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

But most people were never taught how to actually do that. Renew your mind gives you the framework

to begin interrupting destructive patterns, strengthen your ability to regularly emotion,

and build the emotional resilience that is required to become a new creation. If you've ever felt

like your reactions, habits, or emotional patterns are running your life instead of the other way

around, this program was built for you. Renew your mind can be accessed at stan.store slash

busy gold. So I emphasize that thoughts do not exist in a vacuum. Thoughts can have

the desire to trigger you back to that emotional homeostasis state that your brain and body

are used to, right? We talked about that example. Your brain produces thoughts through memory,

prediction, emotional pattern recognition, we know all of this. But these aren't the only forms

of influence. And I dropped a pen earlier in the episode that we were going to talk a little

bit about things that are more multi-dimensional and here it comes, so brace yourself. And this

is a much more in-depth conversation. In my renew your mind course, we go deeply into this. So if you are

excited about learning more about the spiritual multi-dimensional side of mental health issues,

definitely go on to stan.store slash busy gold. And you can go to my renew your mind program.

We go deeply into that. I'm going to, I'm going to skirt around the edges here because this is

a topic that is not for everybody. And I totally recognize that. But I would be remiss in my duties

as a teacher here to not acknowledge that there are other places that interests of thoughts can come

from. So if we're going biblical here for a second, scripture does describe that the mind is a

place where influence absolutely occurs. Ideas can be planted, distorted, amplified, and stolen.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus describes how seeds are planted in the heart and immediately

stolen away by the enemy. This suggests that thoughts can be interfered with and manipulated.

A few years ago, I taught a three-day long series on deliverance and mental health.

I do have this going up on my website for purchase. Again, I haven't, I've been moving things

to my new website in in waves. And this will be ready pretty soon. But I am going to talk a little

bit here about a piece from that called Dimensional Pathways. And if you go to the show notes for

this episode, I am putting the PDF there so that you can download that PDF to get the visual of

what I'm explaining right now. So in this visual framework, I help illustrate how thoughts and

thought forms can be influenced by the spiritual realm. Emotional wounds can become entry points

for influence from other realms. When someone carries rejection wounds or thoughts about abandonment,

it can become really easy to trigger you from these higher realms. When someone carries shame,

thoughts of condemnation, these intrusive thoughts can gain traction really easily. When someone

carries fear, catastrophic thinking, it becomes really easy to get deceived into aligning with

your intrusive thoughts. Words also play a really powerful role in this process because they act

like agreements or contracts in the spirit. When someone repeatedly declares things like,

I will never change or nothing good ever happens to me or I'm just broken. Those statements reinforce

both neurologically and spiritually. Words shape your perception, they influence your choices,

and they reinforce your identity narratives. They can either reinforce the truth or they can

reinforce yourself deception if you are not careful. This is by scripture emphasizes the importance

of guarding your mind and taking every thought captive. Sovereignty of the mind requires that

you place active resistance that you be constantly planting the flag on your territory. Intrusive

thoughts cannot simply be tolerated or ignored, they must be challenged. So how do you do that

in a practical way? The first step is to stop identifying with thought. A thought appearing in your

mind does not mean that it belongs to you or that it defines you or that it's coming from some

deep shadowy place inside of yourself. The second step is to intentionally create distance from

the thought. Observe it instead of becoming it. The third step is to use logical questioning to

dismantle the thought. This is something that we specialize in. Break method and if you've ever

heard me refer to Eli questions, I am going to place a PDF of Eli questions specifically for intrusive

thoughts on the show notes. So that will be available on the show notes along with the framework

from dimensional pathways. So do make sure to go to the show notes and do the opt-in to download

the form. The Eli questions are things that you can use to highlight the logical error in what

your mind is currently coming up with so that you have the ability to see new possibilities and

get your way out of it. You want to be asking yourself whether the thought aligns with objective

reality or whether it's attempting to push you back into a pattern that you've experienced before.

So I explained that this pattern operates like a rut and our brain has become very good at

using what seem like justifiable excuses and rationalizations to get us afraid to move out of

the rut or in some cases to go back into the rut. Going back to that example of if I was just

home relaxing in my house, my brain is going to use that intrusive thought to try to justify

going back into hypervigilance because it's actually afraid of peace. So that is that example of

me coming into a room being like, oh you're right and now I'm not in peace anymore. So from a

scriptural perspective, I've allowed the enemy to actually take that piece away from me and go

back into hypervigilance, arguably where going back to that domino example, I start to make worse

decisions about my life and get myself further off track the longer I let that thought multiply

into other thoughts. And with that in mind, the fourth step here is to reconnect with some very

clear measurable goals. Get clear on what what you want from your life. What are you trying to

accomplish? When we are clear on what we want and how we want to define those things, it becomes

easier to measure if what we're currently doing is ever going to get us there. And this is one of

the things that I think is most helpful for overcoming anxiety. When we're thinking about how

anxiety functions, it often functions like someone trying to keep you stuck in a cave. And if you've

taken break method, you've heard me talk about Mr. Crude from the movie The Crudes. If you haven't

seen it, it's an adorable movie. But in the beginning of the movie, it's about this kind of cave

family from arguably Neanderthal times. I don't know if it was a lot of preferred term anymore. I

don't know. I don't know what language is off limits. I think that's still the term. I'm not

gonna figure that one out. But in this movie, Mr. Crude is the only one that goes outside of the cave

and he keeps his whole family inside of the cave so that he can keep them safe. So he tells them

about what's happening out there. He draws them pictures. But to keep his family safe,

they're not allowed to go outside because it's too dangerous. He goes outside, he brings back food,

he brings back water, etc. And I think his motto is something like never not be scared, fear keeps

us alive. So now I want you to think about when anxiety is behind the wheel. And it's telling you

all these things that have to have to get done so that you can air quotes stay safe. What it's

really doing is it's acting as Mr. Crude telling you you can't go outside of this cave.

Well, if you want love, peace, vulnerability, connection, excitement, pleasure, most likely none of

those things are inside of the cave. So you have to get good at arguing with Mr. Crude so you can

get out of the cave. Most people don't know how to do this. And to be honest with you, most people

can't even in this analogy highlight, I want to get out of the cave, right? Their brain has gotten

them so twisted and actually justifying their own repetitive demise that they've become

they've become like Stockholm syndrome, right? They like being stuck in a prisoner of their own mind.

So we also need to get you clear on what it is that you want that is outside of that cave because

we can then use those end goals to entice you out of the cave and to get better at arguing with

Mr. Crude so that you can get your way out. When intrusive thoughts appear, one of the most

powerful questions you can ask is whether reacting to that thought will move you closer to that

end goal or further away from it? Does this response mean be closer to the relationship that I want?

Or does this reaction move me closer to the life that I want to build for myself? Is this pushing

me further into the cave my brain keeps trying to trap me in? These sort of simple questions can

tell you a whole lot about whether this intrusive thought is something to consider or something to

immediately separate yourself from. And this is where the concept of renewing your mind becomes

incredibly important. Renewing the mind does not mean pretending that intrusive thoughts don't

exist, right? I'm not asking you to sit there and go la la la la, right? There are certain cases

where I will have clients that have really intense loud intrusive thoughts put on a really loud

song for a set period of time, but for the most part I'm simply not telling you to go la la la la

we actually have to go to battle with it. We have to learn how to challenge the thought, we have

to learn how to dismantle it. And of course, rewire the underlying system that's causing it to

rise up in the first place. That process does require awareness. It requires intentional questioning.

It requires behavioral opposition and ultimately alignment with the truth. In the downloadable

that I'm giving you on the show notes, I'm going to have a whole little scavenger hunt exercise

for you. So for those of you that experience any of this, please report back. Do join the rewire

room, which is our free community. Let me know how it's going with your work on that scavenger hunt.

I have seen it help thousands of people before you and I'm excited to share that tool with you

for free in the show notes. Intrusive thoughts do not define you. They are attempts at influence.

They are invitations to get you to believe a story that's probably not true and probably has

intent to do harm. And the moment you learn to challenge these thoughts rather than submit to them,

your power dynamic in your mind shifts. Your mind was never meant to have open borders where any

single thought can start to take territory. It's meant to be your sovereign territory. And guarding

it requires awareness, discipline, and pattern opposition. But the good news is that the brain is

wildly capable of change. Patterns can be rewired. Thought loops can be dismantled and strongholds

can be broken. Break method is a great way to learn how to oppose patterns and rewire from a

very secular scientific based program. And if you're interested in how that piggybacks with

the spirit realm and what happens with familiar spirits and demons and other things in the spirit realm,

renew your mind as a great option for you. I definitely recommend choosing carefully. Obviously

break method is a really in-depth long four to six month long intensive program. It is very much

mental health focused. Renew your mind is a lecture series and many of the people in

renew your mind have done my other work before. So renew your mind is we still give a lot of tools,

there's a lot of worksheets, but renew your mind is more of a top level overview to understand

what's happening at the intersecting point between our emotions, our physicality, and the spirit

realm. And ultimately when you're in renew your mind, you will spend time learning how to

heighten discernment, claim territory in your mind, and you will learn practical tools,

but it's much more about understanding how the mechanisms work rather than exclusively working

on yourself. And we know this because we've talked about neuroplasticity so many times,

the mind becomes what it repeatedly believes. And if you want to build a different life,

it has to start with learning how to guard the territory of your mind one thought at a time.

I've already told you this, but if you let one go, it exponentially augments. So you have to

guard your territory with intention, with tools, go download that PDF in the show notes,

do report back, do join the rewire room. It's a totally free community on the stand store.

Let me know how I can help you with this. You do not have to live with intrusive thoughts. They

can be rewired. I told you that if we had time, I would give you a couple stories that I think

are important. One is, and I know it's a hot topic, and if you want another great episode on this,

it's my episode with Dr. Dave Reben on the Psychedelic Report. We talk quite a bit about medicine

and hallucinogens, et cetera. So one thing that I want to mention is that when we're talking about

intrusive thoughts, one of the access points or doorways that you can open is through engaging

in medicine ceremony. So things like ayahuasca, eyeball gain, peyote, et cetera, even honestly,

like MDMA, Molly, that kind of stuff. So when you are engaging in something like that, you are opening

yourself up and arguably the sovereign part of your soul spirit often goes kind of to the background

which allows you to be more easily influenced by other things. And if you don't have a really strong

sovereign spirit and already know how to, in essence, fight in the spirit realm, doing medicine

journeys can be profoundly dangerous. I've seen people come back from medicine journeys,

suddenly convinced that they were gay, even though they were married for years before,

had a perfectly beautiful life. And ultimately, what really happened was that some sort of spirit

actually hopped in there, got access. And then they started to have intrusive thoughts and

rumination. They couldn't get out of it. Thankfully, I was able to get those clients out of it

completely. And I've seen this happen multiple times over. And I've also seen this happen with

weed as the gateway. I think some of you who've been watching this podcast and have done break

method, you know how I feel about weed, maybe we'll do a whole episode on that. But the point is,

when you put yourself into a situation where you're not firmly rooted in objective reality,

you're not of sober mind. It's so much more easy for these intrusive thoughts to manipulate you

and dig their claws in there and get you feeling as though you are not wholly yourself. And it's

because you've stepped back and you've allowed too much space. I think this is why biblically we

are called to be of sober mind, which doesn't just mean sobriety like, you know, don't drink alcohol,

although certainly, you know, being of sober mind, it comes along with those items as well.

But it means to be firmly rooted in the present moment, right? Like highly aware of the detail

in your environment so that things can't get twisted or manipulated. And when you intentionally

engage in something that shuts off that sobriety, you can leave an open door for intrusive thoughts

to jump in there. And just as I laid out in this episode, they do augment. They do have the ability

to grow exponentially. And then you can start to feel very quickly like you lose yourself.

And with certain things like, for example, ayahuasca, you do go into the state of neuroplasticity

after that where you are more malleable. You are kind of less sure of where your hard,

sovereign edges are. And those two things, when sandwiched together, can lead to a complete

psychological crisis. So this is why I always encourage if you are going to do something like that,

do something like break method first where you have firmly rewired. You've rid yourself

of the blind spots in the self-deception tendencies so that when you can go in there, if that's one

thing that you choose to do, you can go in there with what we call and break your break helmet on

and you know how to actually go to battle with these things without essentially being influenced or

deceived by things that do objectively operating the spirit realm. So that is something to be

really cautious of. And I mentioned in a couple of these client scenarios that they engaged in other

forms of therapy that certainly made this worse. One of them is a very specific type of exposure

therapy. So this poor gentleman was told by a therapist, well, go watch gay porn and see if you

see if you feel anything. It's like, okay, this guy literally came back. He didn't, he suddenly

heard this voice saying, you're gay or gay or gay, he'd never had a thought like that in his whole

life is married. He has kids. He's like, help me. I need this voice to go away. And what this therapist

told him to do when this person is already highly susceptible to visual images is to go watch a bunch

of gay porn. So it was a colossal fail of the mental health system. This person came to me on the

brink of suicide. And thankfully, we were able to pull this person out of it and get them to the

other side. And it was, it was very intense experience. But I bring this up because this is

unfortunately not uncommon. This is very common. When you understand an in-break method when you

do brain pattern mapping, we see your behavior markers. Somebody that has a very specific

behavior marker that shows that in their protective response, they go up into their head.

They can lose touch with objective reality very quickly. And if you tell a person like this,

oh, go expose yourself to all these other visual stimuli. You're actually piggybacking those

intrusive thoughts and you're pushing that person all the way into that fourth, fifth domino

for sure. And then you're making it harder for them to ever remove those visuals. So I'm saying

this because this is not an isolated event that in more traditional forms of therapy, intrusive

thoughts and remanation and even things like gender dysphoria have been made worse by the types of

exposure therapy that they're asked to do. So consider that if this is something that you are

experiencing where you have a child or a teenager that's experiencing this, take me up on this.

Take your first step as brain pattern mapping. We will show you if this is something that

is likely to work for you and what the potential risks are of going down the road of

potential exposure therapy with a lot of visuals, even things like EMDR,

working with hallucinogens because there are certain people that are highly susceptible and at risk

when they have a brain pattern that matches what I'm describing right now. There are other

things that can certainly work better, faster, more effectively, with less risk for you. So

if I'm speaking to you and this is something that you or a loved one are experiencing, brain

pattern mapping is $47. It doesn't take you that long to complete and at least then we know

what we're dealing with. What are the underlying architectures that are needing to be

worked with to get you to the other side because nobody wants you to be held hostage in your own

mind. I know how awful that can feel and it's why I spend my entire life helping people

free themselves. I'm not for you. I'm teaching you how to get the key and unlock your own cage

because we were not designed to be in constant struggle and remuneration and suffering.

There is a way to the other side and yes, it does take work. I'm not going to lie to you. It's

hard work but it is work that when done in the right sequence with the right person can free you

for the rest of your life. You do not have to live with intrusive thoughts but you do have to

understand why they're there in the first place, where they're coming from and how to uproot them.

So I do hope you will take me up on the brain pattern mapping and do go to the show notes that

PDF is going to be a nice little exercise for you to practice how to break the strongholds of

these intrusive thoughts because you do not have to live this way. I hope you enjoyed this

episode. Please share it with somebody who needs it and do me a favor. Go on the YouTube version

even if you're not a YouTube person. Hit subscribe, hit like, give it some love in the comments.

I really appreciate we're really trying to grow YouTube and I know that we have a heavy audio

listener base but if you could do that, I'd be so grateful. And if you could also go to Apple

or Spotify and give us a rating, hopefully five star because there are some people that don't seem

to like my, what they decide are my political beliefs. Every one star is because I apparently have

some sort of political beliefs that they don't like, although I don't really talk about politics

on here. So anyways, if you could do that, I would be so grateful and I will see you all next week. Bye.

Your brain isn't broken. It's running an old code.

Break method is a system that maps your neurological patterns, decodes your emotional distortions,

and rewires your behavior fast. No talk therapy spiral, no getting stuck in your feelings,

just logic based rewiring in 20 weeks or less. Head to breakmethod.com and see what your brain

is really up to.