psychology

How to Deal with Intrusive Thoughts: Four Questions to Ask

How to Deal with Intrusive Thoughts: Four Questions to Ask

You’ve had it happen to you, haven’t you? That thought that jumps into your head, seemingly out of nowhere?

You’re driving along a winding mountain highway and you imagine what would happen if you yanked the steering wheel to the right: what would the crash look like? How would you tumble down the mountain?

Sometimes thoughts are born out of our curiosity. Other times intrusive thoughts enter that are born out of our hearts. We stew on our mistreatment from a colleague or friend and we imagine how we could put them in their place. We imagine harassing them, embarrassing them, even humiliating them.

Part of being a fallen human being is to have intrusive thoughts. An intrusive thought is a thought that enters our mind un-summoned. They might be morbid (imagining our death), violent (imagining injuring someone else), or sexual (imagining a sexual experience). Different people experience intrusive thoughts with different regularity. Different seasons of our lives can increase intrusive thoughts.

How do we deal with these thoughts? Let’s navigate four questions to ask ourselves when we experience intrusive thoughts. Next week we will consider some biblical wisdom on navigating these thoughts.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1.       Modern Research About Happiness Repeatedly Reflects Biblical Principles: Randy Alcorn walks through eight findings about happiness from psychological research and their eight biblical parallels.

2.       The Top 50 Countries Where It’s Hardest to be a Christian: Of particular interest to me is India not only remaining #10 on this list, but unfortunately taking the top place in a new designation. Jayson Casper explains, “India ranks first in the new category of physical or mental abuse, which includes beatings and death threats. The continuing rise in the subcontinent of a militant Hindu nationalism contributed to 1,445 of the reported 14,645 cases worldwide.”

3.       Patrick Lencioni's Personal Leadership Crash: This Carey Niewhof podcast is gold. It's loaded with helpful leadership insights about a leader's health.

4.       National Giving Trends: Lifeway recently published a report on national giving trends. A few takeaways: the national giving percentage has remained at 2% for decades. Diving deeper, "giving to religious causes receives the largest amount of gifts when compared to other sectors. It is at 31%. However, in the 1980’s, religious giving received 58% and has been on a steady decline every year. This is not good."

5.       Can The Cosmic Crisp Live Up to Huge Expectations? You might have heard of the new breed of apples that just hit store shelves. But can the apple pay back the huge investment that has been made in it?

6.       What Does the Bible Say About Divorce and Remarriage? Tom Schreiner answers this difficult question.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1.      8 Reasons Young Adults Leave Your Church (And 8 Reasons They Stay): Ben Trueblood reflects, "There simply isn’t an understanding of what the church is, how it functions in their life, and how they are meant to be function as part of it.”

2.      May She Be My Delight: Greg Morse reflects on Christ's love for the church and our call to love our wives with that same delight, "God does not tolerate his church. He does not ignore her. He does not wake up in the morning thinking he married the wrong girl. Familiarity does not dampen his passion."

3.      Behind Every Good Woman Stands a Good Man: Courtney Reissig concludes, " Our gifts both in the marketplace and in the church are not for ourselves, but for others. So when I free him to work and serve, I’m part of that work, too. And vice versa. Behind every good man, stands a good woman. And behind every good woman, a good man stands, too."

4.      Secularism is Boring: Nicholas T McDonald's long and dense post is well worth the read. He dissects the layers of problems of our secularist world, "'Irony tyrannizes us.'...Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: ‘How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.’”...Because we are a plotless people. We’re banging our heads on the nothing wall." 

5.      Belief in Hell and Psychological Health: David Briggs Arda compiles some interesting studies on belief in hell. He shares,"The findings, some of which even surprised research team members, included: The more religious an individual was, the less likely they were to display hell anxiety. Unhealthy fears were not related to dogmatism or religious fundamentalism."

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1.      The Lie of "Happy Wife, Happy Life" Greg Morse picks apart this oft-told piece of advice, "In the end, a nearsighted “happy wife, happy life” mentality throws the toys in the closet to go outside and play. Happy wife, easier life does not lead to happiness, but to a closet full of regret, bitterness, and selfishness, which we all must open eventually."

2.      Yale and Stanford Psychologists say, "Find Your Passion" is Bad Advice: Quartz reports, "The answer to these questions, it turns out, hinges on our approach to interests. Based on the latest findings, people who have a fixed mindset—the almost mystical belief that passions are revealed to us magically—seem to be less curious and motivated than those with a growth mindset, who understand interests unfold as a process."

3.      Her Name is Monroe Christine: Brandon McGinley reflects on the disgusting saga around the birth of a beautiful girl to a surrogate mom while her reality television star dads watch, "Her name is Monroe Christine. She is a little girl who was paid for by two men. Her mother was picked out of a catalogue; the woman who gave birth to her was a contractually obligated guest star on a television show who was publicly humiliated by her father."

4.      God Wants You to Ask Him Again: Marshall Segal encourages us to pray the prayers we've stopped praying, "But in Christ our trials are not trivial in his eyes. Our burdens are not small or irrelevant to him. His global purposes do not draw him away from us. Our prayers are not peripheral in his priorities, because our trials and prayers are deeply and intimately connected to his greatest burden as a good Father: his own glory."

5.      Revisionist History: All three series of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast have been excellent, but I think his most recent third season is best. His episodes on Elvis, Brian Williams, and Sammy Davis are particularly interesting.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1.      5 Ways Your Personality Changes in the First Year of MarriageCari Romm reports on a recent study in Developmental Psychology, "Overall, it’s kind of a mixed bag — the very beginning stage of a marriage can change people for the worse, but also for the better. A better takeaway, then, might be the fact that they change at all."

2.      How to Make a MarriageGary Thomas with wise advice on the long process of making a healthy marriage, "In fact, one study suggests that it takes from nine to 14 years—at least a decade, and sometimes a decade and a half—for two individuals to stop thinking of themselves as individuals and to start thinking of themselves as a couple. That’s right—the journey from “me” to “we” takes years to achieve."

3.      What is Wrong? Americans' List is ShrinkingAaron Earls reports on a new Gallup poll that reports that across the board, Americans approve more of extramarital sex, divorce, cloning, suicide, gambling, same sex relationships, etc than they did ten to fifteen years ago.

4.      Simplicity for the Sake of the GospelI found Jen Oshman's article very convicting. She shares, "We feel glutted—overstuffed on overabundance. We are sick of our calendars and Amazon shopping carts being jammed full with far more than we need. Maybe less is more, we think. A decluttered entryway. Leisurely evenings. A reduced pace of life. We’re searching for the simple life. But to what end? What is it we’re after? What will fill the void created by our new, simple lives? When my husband and I sensed God calling us to plant a church in our new neighborhood, the man we consider our spiritual father had some wise words for us. 'Do not get busy,' he said. 'If you want to minister to your neighbors and your community, you need to be home. Don’t make a bunch of commitments. Just be there. They will come.' I didn’t believe him." 

5.      Safari Botswana: I dare you to not want to go on a safari after this up-close-and-personal video.