Why Do I Keep Having These Thoughts? Understanding Intrusive Thoughts and Automatic Negative Thoughts

Blue umbrella standing out among a crowd of black umbrellas, symbolising feeling alone while surrounded by others.

Reading time: about 8 minutes

Have you ever been lying in bed, worn out after a long day, when your mind throws something at you that makes your stomach drop?

What if I lose control?

What if I’m a terrible person?

What if I never get this right?

For a moment, it feels real. Your heart speeds up. You start questioning yourself.

Then another thought lands.

Why would I even think something like that?

If any of that feels familiar, you are far from the only one. A lot of people quietly carry thoughts they feel too ashamed or too frightened to say out loud. There is often a fear that if they put words to it, someone will decide they are dangerous, or weak, or losing it.

I meet people all the time who have spent months, sometimes years, trying to make sense of what goes on inside their own mind.

One of the first things we do together is work out what kind of thoughts they actually are.

Because not every thought means the same thing.

Two of the most common are automatic negative thoughts and intrusive thoughts. They can feel equally frightening. But they are not the same thing at all.

And understanding the difference is often where things start to loosen.

Let me tell you about Emma

I have changed some details, but you might recognise something of yourself in her.

Emma is 38. She works hard. People see her as reliable and organised, the one who remembers birthdays and shows up for everyone. Most people would call her kind.

Person sitting at a table looking disengaged while others talk around them, reflecting emotional disconnection in social situations.

What they do not see is what happens when she gets home.

She replays conversations from the day.

Did I say the wrong thing? Do they think I’m useless? Should I have handled that differently?

Then, out of nowhere, another thought flashes in.

What if I pushed someone into the road?

She feels sick. She would never do that, not in a million years. The thought is gone almost as fast as it arrived, but now she cannot stop asking why it turned up at all.

So she does what a lot of us do. She searches online at midnight.

Does this mean I’m dangerous? Am I losing my mind? What if some part of me actually wants to?

Now there are two very different things happening at once.

The voice that keeps telling her she is not good enough.

And a single unwanted thought that frightened her simply by existing.

They feel similar from the inside. But they come from completely different places.

The thoughts that quietly criticise you

Automatic negative thoughts, sometimes shortened to ANTs, are the ones that judge, criticise and predict the worst. They arrive on their own. You do not sit down and choose them. And because they have been around so long, most people do not even notice them happening.

They tend to sound like this.

I’m not good enough. I always get things wrong. They probably think I’m stupid. I’ll only mess this up. Everyone else has it together except me.

Notice who these thoughts are pointed at. You. Your confidence, your ability, your worth.

Left unchallenged for long enough, they stop feeling like opinions and start feeling like plain facts. And that is often how confidence quietly drains away, without you ever quite knowing why.

Where do they come from?

Automatic negative thoughts usually start much further back. Maybe you grew up feeling you had to achieve to be accepted. Maybe mistakes were not really allowed. Maybe someone criticised you often enough that you began doing it for them. Or maybe life taught you, early on, to brace for disappointment.

Your brain learned a pattern. It started scanning for anything that matched those old beliefs. And even now, when your life may look nothing like it did back then, it can still hand you the same old messages.

The thoughts you never asked for

Intrusive thoughts are a different creature altogether.

They are unwanted thoughts, images or urges that drop into your mind out of nowhere, completely uninvited. And they often go against everything you are: your values, your character, the things that matter most to you.

Someone driving home might picture steering into oncoming traffic.

Someone sitting quietly might think something shocking or crude.

Someone on a train platform might picture stepping forward.

These can be terrifying. Not because part of you wants them. Because every part of you does not. That is the whole reason they land so hard.

Take Tom. He is a devoted dad, the sort who checks on his children twice before he goes to bed himself. One evening, standing at the top of the stairs with his baby son in his arms, a thought arrives from nowhere.

What if I dropped him?

He grips the banister. His heart pounds. And for the rest of that night he lies awake, certain there must be something wrong with him for thinking such a thing.

There is nothing wrong with him. The thought horrified him precisely because harming his son is the very last thing he would ever do. That horror is the clue.

Like Tom, most people who have intrusive thoughts are horrified by them. The thought feels so far from who they are that it shakes them.

Why do they feel so real?

Your brain produces thousands of thoughts a day, and most vanish before you even register them.

The trouble starts when one thought feels shocking.

Your brain sits up.

That was awful. What did that mean? Why would I think that?

And now your attention is locked on it. The more attention you give a thought, the more your brain assumes it must matter. So you start checking. Reassuring yourself. Avoiding certain places. Searching for proof that you would never act on it.

And here is the cruel twist. All that checking and reassuring is exactly what makes the thought feel bigger, even though it was only ever a thought.

So how do you tell them apart?

Automatic negative thoughts	Intrusive thoughts
Usually criticise you	Usually shock you
Tend to feel believable	Tend to feel unwanted
Focus on failure or self-worth	Often go against your values
Lower your confidence	Create fear about what the thought means
“I’m not good enough.”	“What if I hurt someone?”
Often linked to low self-esteem	Often linked to anxiety and OCD

Both can frighten you. Both can keep you awake at three in the morning. Both deserve some compassion. But they ask for slightly different responses.

Why the two get so tangled

She has spent years believing she is not good enough. Every mistake becomes more evidence. Every compliment gets brushed off. Her confidence has been shrinking for a long time.

Then one day, an intrusive thought arrives.

And because she already doubts herself so deeply, she does not think it was a strange, unwanted thought. She thinks it must mean something is wrong with her.

So she treats it like a confession rather than a stray thought. She starts analysing herself. Watching herself. Trying to prove she is not a bad person.

And the more frightened she gets, the more the thoughts seem to come.

That is the loop. And notice where the fear actually lives. It is not the thought itself. It is what she believes the thought says about her.

This is so much of what we gently untangle in counselling. Because a thought is not a fact. A thought is not an intention. A thought is not who you are. It is simply something your mind has produced, the way it produces thousands of others every single day.

What actually helps

Name it before you believe it

One of the most useful questions you can ask is simply, what kind of thought is this?

Is this my inner critic, the old familiar voice? Or is this an intrusive thought that has frightened me?

Just naming the experience can take some of the heat out of it.

Stop putting every thought on trial

A lot of people feel they have to prove each frightening thought wrong. It is exhausting, and it never quite works.

Try letting the thought be there instead. Noticing it. Letting it pass, without turning your mind into a courtroom where every thought needs a verdict.

Get curious instead of scared

Rather than asking what does this thought say about me, try asking why my brain might have offered me this today.

Stress. Exhaustion. Anxiety. A big change. A broken night’s sleep. All of these can turn the volume up on your thoughts.

Come back to what matters to you

Here is one of the biggest clues with intrusive thoughts. They almost always go against the things you care about most.

The gentle person fears being cruel. The careful parent fears causing harm. The loving partner fears betrayal.

The fact that the thought upsets you so much often tells you far more than the thought ever could.

How counselling can help

A lot of people arrive convinced they need to get rid of their thoughts. Usually, that is not where we start.

We start by understanding them.

Together we look at where your automatic negative thoughts might have begun, and at the beliefs you have been carrying for years without realising. We notice the patterns that keep them going.

And if intrusive thoughts are part of your experience, we work on why they feel so frightening, and on how to respond to them differently, so you are no longer caught analysing and fearing every single one.

The aim is not to promise that difficult thoughts will never turn up again. It is to help you meet them differently. To notice the space between you and the thought passing through you. And, slowly, to trust yourself again.

Questions people often ask

Are intrusive thoughts normal?

Yes. Most people have them from time to time. They only become a real problem when they cause ongoing distress or start affecting daily life.

Do intrusive thoughts mean I secretly want to act on them?

No. Intrusive thoughts are unwanted and usually go against your values. They are distressing precisely because they are the opposite of what you want.

Can automatic negative thoughts really affect my confidence?

Yes. Repeated, critical self-talk can wear confidence down over time, feed anxiety, and make it harder to see your own strengths.

Can counselling help with both?

Yes. A qualified counsellor can help you understand your thinking patterns, ease the grip they have on your life, and build gentler ways of responding.

Something to hold onto

If you take one thing from this, let it be this.

Not every thought deserves to be believed. And not every thought deserves to be feared.

Your mind produces thousands of thoughts a day. Some are helpful. Some are unkind. Some are strange. Some are frightening. Not one of them, on its own, is the whole of who you are.

If you have seen something of yourself in Emma or Tom, you really do not have to work through it on your own.

Talking it through with a qualified counsellor can help you understand what is happening, why these thoughts feel so powerful, and how to build a kinder relationship with your own mind.

The sooner you reach out, the sooner you can begin to understand your mind rather than fear it.

If you would like to talk, you can arrange a free 15-minute introductory call with me at hello@oceanwavescounselling.com. There is no pressure, just a chance to see if it feels like the right fit for you.

With warmth,

Anne