383. The psychology of intrusive thoughts
The Psychology of your 20s
iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Intrusive thoughts can feel shocking, confusing, and deeply personal - especially when they show up out of nowhere and go completely against who you are. But in reality, the majority of us have them. In today’s episode, we’re unpacking the psychology of intrusive thoughts - why they happen, why they feel so emotional, and what actually helps when your mind won’t let something go.
We explore:
• How common intrusive thoughts really are
• What intrusive thoughts are - and what they aren’t
• The most common intrusive thought themes
• The white bear effect and the ironic process theory
• Alternative tools to help manage the thoughts
If you’ve ever been frightened by your own mind and wondered what it says about you - this episode is for you.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. |
| 0:08.5 | Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spike and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, |
| 0:13.7 | the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s |
| 0:19.8 | and what they mean for our psychology. |
| 0:28.9 | Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to |
| 0:34.6 | have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the |
| 0:38.6 | psychology of our 20s. So today, we're talking about something that I can pretty much |
| 0:46.5 | guarantee you've experienced at some point in your life, maybe even today in the past week, |
| 0:51.4 | in the past hour. Today, we are talking about intrusive thoughts. |
| 0:56.3 | And when you hear that, you might immediately think we're going to be talking about OCD again. |
| 1:01.2 | That's definitely a big element of it. |
| 1:03.8 | But in reality, the majority of people experience intrusive thoughts on a daily basis without having a |
| 1:11.5 | CD and they can feel really, really scary, really hard to let go of, just so confronting. |
| 1:18.9 | And I think when you don't know why they're happening or what they mean, that fear can become |
| 1:25.7 | even more intense. One of the biggest pieces of evidence of how |
| 1:31.0 | common this actually is comes from a massive international study led by this guy called |
| 1:38.3 | Adam Radomski and his colleagues where they interviewed over 700 students across 13 countries using a very structured interview process, |
| 1:47.1 | and they found that amongst these students, 93.6% reported experiencing an intrusive thought |
| 1:55.2 | in the last three months alone. And that estimate may actually be kind of on the lower side. Another study found |
| 2:04.1 | 99.4% of participants interviewed, had experienced an intrusive thought in the last, in the |
| 2:12.6 | last three months to six months. They can feel so shocking, so shocking that it can be hard to, you know, |
| 2:19.5 | admit to them or talk openly about them, but they're also an incredibly normal part of |
... |
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