Quotes & Sayings About Intrusive Thoughts

I found, and find, the scrutiny of Dr. Lecter uncomfortable, intrusive, like the humming of your thoughts when they x-ray your head. — Thomas Harris

Yes, I am a prisoner of sorts, but my prison isn't the house. It's my own thoughts that lock me up! — V.C. Andrews

I've gotta stop thinking I know what other people think, cause most of 'what other people think' is something I'm making up. So I should just let them have their experience, I'll have my experience and not pretend to know, and just get past that. [I think that] is a major obstacle: manifesting that insecurity, that fear. Believing the audience in your head as opposed to what's really going on in the world - not responding to the one I'm making up, which is always going to judge me harder than the real one. — Marc Maron

I had learned that some people feel that books are "intrusive," in the sense that books put things in their heads that they don't want there. Some people call these things "ideas." Maybe they're right. Sometimes these ideas sprout into what are known as "thoughts," and you know my feelings about school, government, and big businesses
thoughts are the last things they want rattling around inside people's heads because thoughts inevitably lead to consumer protection, free speech and hippies. — Gary Reilly

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also has dissociative symptoms as an essential feature. PTSD has been classically seen as a biphasic disorder, with persons alternately experiencing phases of intrusion and numbing... [T]he intrusive phase is associated with recurrent and distressing recollections in thoughts or dreams and reliving the events in flashbacks. The avoidant/numbing phase is associated with efforts to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma, emotional constriction, and social withdrawal. This biphasic pattern is the result of dissociation; traumatic events are distanced and dissociated from usual conscious awareness in the numbing phase, only to return in the intrusive phase. — James A. Chu

Shamed and enraged, I sit by the side of the road and cry.
Eclipsed by a sense of disgrace, my emotions feel momentarily stifled and disconnected. Instead of anger, I feel dishonored and exposed. I cannot even formulate my thoughts, much less speak them. My integrity and humility have been violated. I have only my own indignation to spur me on. — Holly A. Smith

The fear, though, is unassailable. The dark balls of dread pinball through my brain. This is what anxiety does to a brain, I know that. A barrage of intrusive, unwanted, and distressing thoughts that the person thinking them can't turn them off no matter how hard they try... — Lauren Miller

I tried to point out that it's not a gimmick to teach patients suffering with OCD that their intrusive thoughts and urges are caused by brain imbalances, and that we now know they can physically alter those imbalances through mindfulness and self-directed behavioral therapy techniques. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

I thought when the abuse stopped I could move on with my life. Instead I am still running from Brian. The only difference is now I am running from him in my dreams. — Erin Merryn

OCD is an anxiety disorder, one that brings conscious intrusive thoughts and compulsions - 'Touch the bannister. Pick up that rock. You'd better do it, or something terrible will happen.' — Tim Howard

He tried to sleep, but his head was filled with the faces of lunatics, their palsied hands, their shattered eyes. — Sebastian Faulks