When Your Mind Becomes Your Worst Enemy
What if I’m seriously ill? What if the plane crashes? What if something terrible happens to someone I love? What if this feeling of dread means something awful is about to happen?
Most of us have thoughts like these from time to time. They can appear out of nowhere, often when we’re feeling perfectly fine and suddenly we’re imagining the worst.
For some people, these thoughts become so persistent and convincing that they begin to affect everyday life.
Anxiety is normal and we actually need it.
It’s part of our survival system, designed to alert us to danger and keep us safe.
The problem comes when that system becomes oversensitive and starts warning us about things that aren’t actually happening. Our brains are very good at imagining what could go wrong, but not always so good at recognising when there’s no real threat.
And the physical feelings can be powerful. A racing heart, a tight stomach, nausea or dizziness can make a frightening thought seem even more believable.
Before long, we’re not just thinking something terrible might happen, we’re almost convinced that it will.
When Your Mind Becomes Your Worst Enemy
What I often see in therapy is how much time and energy people spend trying to make themselves feel certain that everything is alright.
They Google symptoms, repeatedly check their bodies, ask loved ones for reassurance or avoid situations that make them anxious. It makes sense. Nobody wants to sit with the possibility that something awful might happen.
But there’s a problem with this.
Reassurance usually works for a short while, then the doubt returns. Another symptom, another thought, another reason to worry.
And each time we respond by checking or seeking reassurance, we can unintentionally strengthen the anxiety. We’re teaching our brain that the thought was important enough to investigate.
Sometimes these patterns are part of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
People often associate OCD with cleaning, tidiness or checking things but it can also involve persistent, unwanted thoughts about illness, harm or catastrophe.
The compulsions aren’t necessarily visible. They might involve mentally reviewing situations, seeking reassurance or repeatedly trying to convince yourself that nothing bad will happen.
Not everyone with intrusive thoughts has OCD, but recognising these patterns matters because they can be treated.
One of the things I encourage people to understand is that you don’t have to respond to every thought your mind produces: just because something feels frightening doesn’t mean it’s likely to happen.
Take someone who is frightened of flying: they might spend the entire flight listening for unusual noises, watching the cabin crew and interpreting every movement as a possible warning sign. They’re trying to keep themselves safe, but all that monitoring does is keep their attention focused on danger.
Learning to recognise the thought, allow the anxiety to be there and return to what they were doing can be much more helpful than constantly searching for reassurance.
Health Anxiety can work in a similar way
A normal bodily sensation becomes something to investigate and before long a person is caught up in searching for explanations and imagining serious illness.
Of course, genuine or new health concerns should be appropriately assessed - but once something has been checked, repeatedly returning to it because of anxiety can keep the worry going.
A big part of overcoming these difficulties is learning to live with some uncertainty. We can’t guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen, however much we worry or prepare.
Yet anxiety can convince us that worrying is somehow protecting us, as though imagining every possible disaster might prevent it.
It doesn’t. More often, it just makes life smaller.
The aim isn’t to eliminate anxiety or stop intrusive thoughts altogether
That’s neither realistic nor necessary.
It’s about learning to recognise when your mind is raising a false alarm and choosing not to get drawn into the same patterns of checking, avoidance and reassurance seeking.
This takes practice, particularly when the fear feels very real.
In my therapy practice, I work with people experiencing anxiety, intrusive thoughts and OCD using various therapeutic approaches, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
Where OCD is identified, CBT incorporating exposure and response prevention (ERP) can be particularly helpful. We look at what is maintaining the anxiety and work on changing how someone responds to it, rather than simply trying to make the thoughts disappear.
Anxiety has an important job to do and we wouldn’t want to be without it - but we don’t have to treat every anxious thought as a warning or every uncomfortable feeling as evidence that something is wrong.
Sometimes our minds get things wrong, and learning to recognise that can make a considerable difference to how we live.
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