Finding Refuge from Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts

You take your heart and mind with you wherever you go, and you can’t get away from them. This makes it even more distressing if you find yourself struggling with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Life is best experienced in the moment, without being pulled away by distractions around you or inside of you. Thankfully, there are ways for you to grow in being more present and to quiet your anxious and intrusive thoughts.

How Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts Are Connected

One of the more comforting promises the Lord made to His followers was this: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27, ESV). Even though Jesus gave this peace to His disciples, and He gives that peace to them through the Holy Spirit, they often find themselves having little peace, struggling to hold onto a semblance of calm.

If that is you, you aren’t alone, as anxiety and intrusive thoughts are struggles that many believers face. Often, they do so in silence because they may feel it’s unbecoming to struggle in this way. Think about it, though – anxiety and struggling to quiet our hearts is a common enough concern that it features quite often throughout Scripture. It’s important to understand the connection between our anxiety and intrusive thoughts.

There is a close connection between anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Anxiety is the natural response we have to danger or situations where we feel under a threat of some kind, even if it’s mild. Intrusive thoughts are typically unwanted and disturbing images or ideas that just pop into your mind unrequested. You’re just going about your day, and then a random and unpleasant thought lodges itself in your mind.

The connection between these two is not one-sided. Anxiety and intrusive thoughts can feed each other in an increasingly disturbing cycle. Your anxious mind is hyper-alert, on the lookout for threats, whether real or imagined. Being in that state of mind can make intrusive thoughts more frequent and even more intense.

On the other side of that coin, intrusive thoughts can add fuel to the fire of anxiety. Such thoughts can make you feel even more unsafe, out of control, or even ashamed. What you have is a situation where anxiety can prime your mind to latch more easily onto troubling and even outlandish ideas, and intrusive thoughts can feed your anxiety, making it even more intense.

Anxiety and intrusive thoughts thus exist in a complex relationship. They heighten or intensify each other, catching you in a cyclical pattern that can be deeply distressing and hard to break. You need to be intentional about breaking the pattern for you to claim your freedom and the peace that Christ offers.

Some Common Types of Intrusive Thoughts

Many kinds of intrusive thoughts have a close connection with anxiety. Some of the more common types of intrusive thoughts that an anxious person may experience include the following.

Blasphemous or sinful thoughts

These may include unwanted sexual or violent images, or unwanted ideas that conflict with your faith and values.

Fear of harm

These unwanted thoughts are often about a worry that something bad will happen either to you or to the people you love. You may be worried about physical safety or concerned about health issues.

Catastrophic thinking

This is imagining the absolute worst-case scenarios in everyday situations. It could include a bad outcome to a conversation with a friend, tanking a job interview or important test, or something going wrong on a trip.

Self-doubt and guilt

These thoughts are when a person is persistently plagued by worries about their worthiness, failure, or whether they will make a mistake in a given situation.

When these and other kinds of thoughts intrude and lodge themselves in a person’s mind, they can be quite alarming, particularly when they go against everything you believe in and hold dear. The result is often confusion, and it may also result in deep spiritual distress.

How to Cope with Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts

Anxiety and intrusive thoughts can be quite overwhelming, and they can distract you from being present for your loved ones and yourself. You must remember that you are not alone. Other people struggle with anxiety and intrusive thoughts.

Not only that, but you should take courage in the fact that there is hope for healing, and God can be your ever-present help to carry you through.

There are several different strategies you can implement to help you cope with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Take these steps toward a calmer heart and mind:

Renew your mind

Romans 12:2 (ESV) says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Our minds can be renewed as we surrender them to Christ, taking on His patterns of thinking and being in the world.

Hiding Scripture in your heart by memorizing it and meditating on His promises can help you redirect your mental focus, and it gives you truth to help you counter untruths or distressing thoughts and ideas that come into your mind. You’re not manifesting anything; simply countering your fears with the fact that they are not reality and don’t have the final word.

Take every thought captive

Intrusive thoughts aren’t necessarily sins in themselves. However, letting them have the run of your mind and allowing them to influence your actions and decisions is giving them more power than they deserve. Instead, take your thoughts captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), rejecting lies and declaring what is true from God’s word.

Rest and cast your cares on Him

Our anxious hearts can’t always settle themselves. We need to entrust ourselves and our anxious thoughts to God, with the knowledge that He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). You can do this through prayer, as Philippians 4:6-7 urges us to do. This is not a once-off thing, but a daily, and maybe even moment-by-moment practice.

Trust that the Lord wants what’s best for you, and He cares for you (Matthew 6:25-34). You can take on practices such as playing or singing along to worship music, doing gratitude journaling, and being sure to take breaks to rest. These can all work to quiet anxious hearts and give you an outlet for anxiety.

Learn how to self–soothe

When you’re feeling anxious or wrestling with intrusive thoughts, it affects your body and nervous system. Using breathing exercises like deep breathing and grounding exercises, as well as other tools like progressive muscle relaxation, you can calm yourself down. Practices like structured journaling can help you to externalize and even evaluate your fearful and anxious thoughts.

Don’t overstimulate yourself

Another key part of taking care of yourself and handling anxiety and intrusive thoughts is to watch what overstimulates you. Things like caffeine or sugary foods and drinks can worsen anxiety. For other people, they may become overstimulated when they are exposed to social media or distressing news.

Limit your exposure to such stimulation if it worsens your anxiety or the intrusive thoughts that assail you.

Seek wise and effective counsel

Anxiety can be rooted in a variety of causes, some of them genetic, some of them environmental, or otherwise. A person’s anxiety can range from mild to severe, becoming debilitating and making it hard for them to function in daily life. With severe anxiety, interventions such as medication may be necessary to help reduce the symptoms.

It’s important that you don’t walk the journey alone. Having regular fellowship with wise and compassionate believers can be a source of encouragement, support, and accountability. With the help of a Christian counselor or therapist, you can better understand your anxiety and the intrusive thoughts that affect you, and you can move toward breaking the pattern that those thoughts and anxiety can lock you in.

Next Steps

Intrusive thoughts and anxiety do not define who you are or what Christ has in store for you. You can overcome anxious and intrusive thoughts. Using evidence-based strategies and biblical wisdom, your counselor or therapist can help you to break the hold of anxiety on your life.

Contact our office to speak to a representative and schedule an appointment with one of the Christian counselors or therapists in our directory. Speak to someone today about starting a new, peace-filled chapter of your life.