What If My Intrusive Thoughts are Dangerous? Harm OCD

Therapy in a Nutshell

Therapy in a Nutshell -Emma McAdam

Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Education, Health & Fitness:mental Health, Self-improvement

4.8 • 657 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dealing with OCD, Intrusive Thoughts, or unwanted thoughts? Dr. Kat Green teaches us valuable strategies from CBT and ERP to help you stop intrusive thoughts. Check out Kat's courses here: https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com/ocd-courses Learn the skills to Regulate your Emotions, join the membership: https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com/membership Struggling with OCD, intrusive thoughts, or unwanted mental images that just won’t go away? In this video, Dr. Kat Green shares practical tools from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)—the gold standard treatment for OCD. You'll learn why trying to suppress or avoid intrusive thoughts can actually make them worse, and what to do instead. Whether you’re battling obsessive worries, mental compulsions, or scary “what if” thoughts, this episode offers hope and real strategies to help you break the cycle. Learn how to face your fears, stop fighting your thoughts, and take your life back from OCD. #OCD #IntrusiveThoughts #CBT #ERP #MentalHealth #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #AnxietyHelp #UnwantedThoughts #TherapyInANutshell Looking for affordable online counseling? My sponsor, BetterHelp, connects you to a licensed professional from the comfort of your own home. Try it now for 10% off your first month: https://betterhelp.com/therapyinanutshell Learn more in one of my in-depth mental health courses: https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com Support my mission on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/therapyinanutshell Sign up for my newsletter: https://www.therapyinanutshell.com Check out my favorite self-help books: https://kit.co/TherapyinaNutshell/best-self-help-books Therapy in a Nutshell and the information provided by Emma McAdam are solely intended for informational and entertainment purposes and are not a substitute for advice, diagnosis, or treatment regarding medical or mental health conditions. Although Emma McAdam is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the views expressed on this site or any related content should not be taken for medical or psychiatric advice. Always consult your physician before making any decisions related to your physical or mental health. In therapy I use a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Systems Theory, positive psychology, and a bio-psycho-social approach to treating mental illness and other challenges we all face in life. The ideas from my videos are frequently adapted from multiple sources. Many of them come from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, especially the work of Steven Hayes, Jason Luoma, and Russ Harris. The sections on stress and the mind-body connection derive from the work of Stephen Porges (the Polyvagal theory), Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing) Francine Shapiro (EMDR), and Bessel Van Der Kolk. I also rely heavily on the work of the Arbinger Institute for my overall understanding of our ability to choose our life's direction. And deeper than all of that, the Gospel of Jesus Christ orients my personal worldview and sense of security, peace, hope, and love https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/believe If you are in crisis, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or your local emergency services. Copyright Therapy in a Nutshell, LLC

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to another episode of the Therapy in a Nutshell podcast. I'm Emma McAdam and I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist.
0:07.0	And this podcast is all about taking the life-changing, but usually kind of complicated topics of therapy and boiling them down into simple, easy to understand concepts that you can use in your daily life.
0:19.0	If you find today's episode as helpful to you,
0:20.9	please pass it on to someone else who could benefit from it as well. Each podcast
0:24.5	episode comes from a corresponding video you can find on the Therapy in a Nutshell YouTube
0:28.7	channel. Also, these podcasts are educational and don't replace the advice or
0:32.7	direction you may be receiving from a therapist or other health professionals. Now
0:36.6	please enjoy the episode.
0:38.0	Okay, so I published a couple videos, you and I've worked on a couple videos about some of
0:43.0	these methods for managing intrusive thoughts, which often include diffusion. It's this idea
0:47.3	of like getting better at noticing your thoughts, kind of labeling them, oh, thanks Brain for
0:52.7	that thought, labeling them, oh, there's my worry mind again, stuff like that, right? These kind of labeling them, oh, thanks, Brain, for that thought, labeling them, oh, there's
0:54.4	my worry mind again, stuff like that, right? These kind of typical diffusion techniques where you learn
0:59.3	to separate yourself a little bit from your thoughts. And I got a couple of questions from my audience.
1:05.7	People say, but what if they're dangerous? Like, what if these thoughts are dangerous? How could I just, you know, separate myself
1:12.8	from them or allow them to keep running if they're dangerous? So I brought in Dr. Cat Green,
1:18.6	OCD specialist, woohoo! To bring her brilliant wisdom and years of expertise to this topic.
1:24.1	So what do you think, Kat? What do we do about this? Yeah, I mean, this comes up a lot. One of the reasons intrusive thoughts are intrusive is because
1:31.7	they are scary. They're frightening and they're kind of laden with emotion. So whether it's
1:36.3	in the context of diagnosed Frank OCD or just significant anxiety and those intrusive thoughts,
1:43.2	any of them that are feeling intrusive are going to feel scary.
1:46.8	There's a couple of concepts, and this is related to the diffusion type. Intrusive thoughts have this
	...

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