The Truth About Intrusive Thoughts and OCD

for and or completely out of alignment with who you think you are?

“You ask yourself, why would I think that? Does this mean something about me?”

Am I secretly capable of something horrible? Most people immediately assume that if that thought entered their mind, it must somehow be coming from some deeper layer of themselves. But this assumption is one of the most destructive misunderstandings about how the mind actually works. Your brain is wired for deception, but here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be written.

Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen? Let's start with a question that many of you are afraid to say out loud. What do you do when a thought enters your mind that feels disturbing, for and or completely out of alignment with who you think you are? I thought flashes across your mind, and immediately your body reacts. Your heart rate starts to increase. Your stomach tightens,

and suddenly you are questioning everything you want to know about yourself. You ask yourself,

“why would I think that? Does this mean something about me? Am I secretly capable of something horrible?”

Most people immediately assume that if that thought entered their mind, it must somehow be coming from some deeper layer of themselves. And don't even get me started on shadow work or parts work. Believe me, we will get into that in future episodes. But this assumption is one of the most destructive misunderstandings about how the mind actually works. Enchusive thoughts are unwanted, unrequested, often really disturbing thoughts that appear suddenly and repeat themselves in

cycles that can be discerned through pattern work. They can involve fear, taboo images, catastrophic scenarios, relationships, doubts, sexual thoughts, fears about harming others, fears about your faith or going to hell. Many people experience them, but don't ever talk about them, because they feel ashamed. And I get it. But intrusive thoughts are far more common than most of

you realize. In fact, many people live with them for years and have never even heard the term. I see

this time and time again in break method. People get to the end of module one where we have a lecture about intrusive thoughts in OCD. And people show up on their next session and say busy, you just explained 30 to 40 years of my life and my pain and I finally feel understood. So I want you to remember, you are not your thoughts just because something populates inside of your mind doesn't mean that it originated from you. And it doesn't mean that it's originating from some deeper shadowy

side of you. Okay, I will break this down extensively today, but this is going to be a thread. We'll have to keep pulling because it is extremely complex. We'll try to highlight the different areas from the physical structures involved to the emotional structures involved, but this even has tentacles out into multi-dimensionality and spiritual conversations. So I will try to help highlight or illuminate the entire system, but this is going to take a couple,

a couple piggybacking sessions to fully expose it. To understand intrusive thoughts, we have to first

understand anxiety itself. anxiety is really not the villain that many people think that it is especially in today's world where people talk about anxiety and panic attacks is this thing that can hold you back. And here's the reality. You guys know from watching these episodes. If anyone knows about anxiety and panic attacks, it's a girl. I've been there for many, many years of my life. So I understand how destructive and debilitating panic attacks and

“severe anxiety can be. Certainly not trying to diminish that. But I think what ends up happening”

is we talk so much about very debilitating anxiety or generalizing anxiety disorder and panic attacks. And then we shy away from claiming the emotion of anxiety. We try to kind of bulk them all together. So it's very frequent that I would have a client break no like, oh no, I don't experience anxiety. And I'm like, really, okay, let's go down the list. And it's like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And like, so you do actually experience anxiety. You're just not having panic attacks. You are using it as a way to

stay busy, stay functional, stay on top of things, make sure that nobody gets in trouble. That is still anxiety, my friends. So we have to keep in mind that anxiety has gotten bulked up into, I think, a lot of variables that are really more specific toward generalizing anxiety disorder and panic attacks. Those are separate. You can still experience anxiety as one of your primary emotions without having panic attacks. And it's important to consider that when we're

thinking about anxiety, one of the easiest ways to draw correlation would be, because it's language that many of you understand, the language of flight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop. And one of the

back to early episodes in season one, I explain to you what the different emotional addiction

“cycles are and which ones are the most common. So you can go back to that. I believe the episode”

is on like the overwhelmed trap or something like that. You can go on the deep dive. You can go on old scavenger hunt. For us case scenario, you find another epic episode and you're welcome. So going back there, just to kind of drop a little bit of foundational knowledge is in break method. We have found that people experience a cycle of three emotional states. You start with your origin, emotion, which is how everybody responds to fear. Fear is the most primary

emotion that every human being experiences. It is what often is wrapped up into our instinct.

Right? Our instinct is to run away from the bear, divert any sort of unnecessary blood flow

to areas that aren't required so that we can put all under our large muscles and we can save ourselves by arguably running away. This would be the origin emotion. We then move into a protective

“emotion. So instead of what happens when we initially realize we're in a bad situation,”

the protective emotion is what am I going to do with what I assume is going to happen to me. Do I run toward the danger and try to fight my way out of it? Do I run away from the danger and try to avoid it entirely? Do I go toward the danger and try to reason with it, manipulate it, fawn to try to make it like me? Right? These are all the different things the brain is running through. And we each have specific patterns that we repeat over and over again. Example would be,

you don't fight and fawn. Someone, because we know there's a three-part cycle, you may fawn in your protective response, which, you know, that's me. I've fawn in my protective response, but eventually, that doesn't work. You trying to control or manipulate or coerce or whatever other people. Sometimes it's effective for saving yourself. Sometimes it's not. And for the reality is often it's not these. We can't actually control other people's reactions. But I digress.

If your protective emotion is that fawn response, you're probably stepping in. You're trying to smooth over. People, please, play, hate, be helpful to other people to try to keep them stable. Eventually, you're still going to get pissed. You're still going to build up resentment. You're going to overload your plate. You're going to feel like the whole world is on your shoulders. Eventually, you're going to get overstimulated in guess what. When you get to your escalating

emotion, which is that third emotional position, you're probably going to snap into anger. And then, you may fight. Example for me, I fawn and then I fight. I don't ever run away. Maybe I should. That might be some pattern observation that I should consider. But I don't run away and avoid. So typically, if you were to look at that spectrum of the fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, freeze, fawn and flop. Typically, you have one that matches with your protective

emotion and then you have an alternate that matches with your escalating emotion. When people go

to anxiety as their protective emotion, they almost always go to anger as their escalating motion.

In break method, we have found that you can also go to an alternate of apathy. So example would be that would look like in the flight flight language flight flight. I keep wanting to say flight. Maybe we want to make a good thing. Fight. In that language, anger could be fight. anger could also be flight. And then if you're adding in the apathy element, that could be the flop mechanism, which is where you essentially stop trying to do anything and you either dissociate or you

detach or you go into some sort of catatonic state. In either case, you stop trying to help your

“self at all. So it's important for those of you listening to try to wrap your head around what”

your cycle is because if you do the opposite and you go to anger as your protective emotion, which for those of you that are in a relationship with one of these, I am. It's not hard to tell. People know when they're quick to anger. So a person like this is quick to anger and then they typically will go to anxiety as their escalating motion. And they could have one of those those piggybacking patterns where they have an anxiety shame pattern or they could have an

anxiety apathy pattern. And in the case of anxiety shame, sometimes you have either a like a freeze fawn or you could have a fawn freeze that corresponds to that. If you have anxiety apathy, you could have a freeze flop, you could have a fawn flop, either one of those would correspond. So when we're thinking about these anxiety now for our working definition is your brain trying to figure out what it needs to change about its external environment as a way to stay safe.

I have to double check this. I have to play Kate this person. I have to withhold this

of what you have to do to survive. That is anxiety. So if you do that, do you experience anxiety.

So anxiety is your brain's attempt to protect you through thinking your way through.

“So instead of fighting your way through, how can I use my brain to strategize my way into survival?”

So in this way, the brain is becoming both superhero and psychics simultaneously. Because it's superhero, it's like we can save you, we can get through anything. But also it's psychic because it's trying to anticipate all be it through assumption. What is likely to happen to in the future? And guess what? It's probably going to skew it. Negative, it's probably going to skew it catastrophic, and this is where we find ourselves in this

conversation. It convinces you that if you think hard enough, worry hard enough, analyze, anticipate every possible scenario, somehow you can prevent bad things from happening.

It actually tricks you into feeling productive. But the reality is that most of the things the

anxiety tries to control are actually completely outside of your control because last time I checked you are not God. At the same time, anxiety is convincing you that it has some sort of special insight into the future. It's also telling you possibly that this is intuition. If you want more information on this particular issue of the instinct versus intuition, go back to season one episode four, that episode is awesome, and it takes really deeply into

how to discern instinct from intuition. But right here where we're at in the anxiety loop, this is telling you that the danger is real. It's telling you that something terrible is about to

“happen and that you have to pay attention. And this is the psychic illusion of anxiety. And this is”

why it's so important to learn how to discern the difference between instinct and intuition. Because intuition, quite honestly, is usually inviting you toward the scary thing, not to justify pulling away from the scary thing. While instinct, of course, going back to that initial example of running away from the bear, instinct is usually causing you to manage your distance from whatever that perceived a dangerous thing or person is. And what happens in anxiety is that your

brain starts to believe these assumptions, which again, are really just predictions about what it thinks is going to happen. But many of these predictions are rooted in assumption in these assumptions are built through your early childhood emotional pain. So they're not necessarily taking into consideration real objective reality today. If you are a consistent listener of this show, you probably listened last time about probably two to three weeks ago, basing on the timing of our production

schedule, an episode about somatic healing. And I shared a story about how, as a younger child, I was really anxious, but that anxiety would kick in when I was subject to my parents decision-making. And then suddenly as soon as I was by myself on the mean streets of New York City in the middle of the night, I was suddenly not afraid. Why is that? Was one situation objectively more safe than the other? Yeah, for sure. I was most likely objectively much more safe in the situations where I

was in foldable and panic with my parents because they didn't trust them. Then I was on New York City streets by myself at three o'clock in the morning. But my brain interpreted one as safe, although objectively it was not. And the other has unsafe even though objectively it was probably

“not unsafe. So it's important for us to remember that what our brain deems as safe is not based on”

the rules of objective reality. It has everything to do with all of our previous emotional experience, what we perceive about ourselves, what we perceive about other people involved. So we have to remember that all these patterns that we're talking about today are jumping off of this launch pad of our early childhood experiences. And the brain is going to adapt to those experiences by producing protective responses like what we're responding with today. So,

example, I used that I go to fawn and then I go to fight. No flight, but I am seriously considering that as we're talking about this right now. So those protective responses are likely to show up. Now in your adult age, in very deep ruts, it's very hard for us to change behavior. As an adult, we can often become more aware of it. And unfortunately, what I have seen more often than not in the mental health, Instagram, therapy, conscious community, spiritual community,

places is people become more aware of their patterns and they become better at talking about them, but they don't actually change the pattern from the root. And as you may know from most into this podcast, that is the only work I'm genuinely concerned with. Anything that just

causes you to talk more elegantly or intelligently about your problems, but doesn't ultimately

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where the health care system is about to transition, this is one of the most grounded educational courses I've seen yet. Enrollment is open now, and if you use the code busy 300, you're going to get $300 off the program, just head to the show notes and enroll. So I tend to focus all of my work on not just teaching you to be aware and talk about it in an intellectual way, but how to actually get to the root and uproot the entire patterns that you don't have to be held hostage by this

pattern for the rest of your life. Because these responses will persist, and they will dig deeper roots, and they will cause you to consider the roots that they've created as the sort of safety

familiarity. But those roots cause you to not do the things in your life that you ultimately really

want to do. Maybe really do want to have a connected relationship where you experience peace and vulnerability, and that feels not just attainable, but safe, right? That involves you learning to get out of your rut to step out of the pattern in which your brain is currently stuck. And this is where intrusive thoughts often enter the picture, because the intrusive thoughts act like triggers to put you into your protective emotion. So I'll give you an example. Let's say that you're having

a totally normal relaxing day. The kids are at school, the house is clean, I'm baking, and then without any sort of request your brain's like, maybe your mom's going to die and you're like, wait, what? I was just trying to enjoy the fresh smell of bread and now you're trying to get me to think about what would happen if my mom died. Okay, so this is an example of an intrusive thought. Why would I go from peaceful, relaxing situation? My senses are engaged now. My brain

almost daring me to think about something horrifying. Well, I'm glad you asked. Sometimes, and there are different types of intrusive thoughts, as I mentioned, because we are going to talk about some of the spiritual etiologies of intrusive thoughts as well. But let's use the example of the one I just gave you. Like, maybe your mom's going to die. My brain was not used to as a child experiencing

peace, because something was always about changing, something was always about to go wrong. So as a child,

it became a setup for me to feel at ease in peace, because then I would get blindsided. So my brain decided, if I remain in a hyper-vigilant state, and I'm always ready for something bad to happen, then at least I'm not caught off guard, and I can step into that strategically. Right? This is the example of the anxiety showing up like a superhero. Like, it's cool. I'll just remain hyper-vigilant all the time. I'll always be ready for some sort of strategy, and then I won't get blindsided.

It's going to be great. What is that to your nervous system over the long haul? Well, it's not good. I got diagnosed with loopas when I was 23. I had three different forms of cancer and cancer, GSM when I was 15. It was a wild time. So let's just say, my body didn't manage being in constant hyper-vigilant well, as nobody's does. But nonetheless, my brain decided that was a more viable, long-term strategy to keep me safe. So now fast forward into my adulthood, thankfully, for break,

“and a wonderful husband, and amazing kids, and financial access, and success, all these things, right?”

I can have days where I am at home doing nothing now, baking bread, because I'm a sourdough mom, and the kids are at school, and maybe I do have these moments of just complete, relaxing peace.

hypothetical scenario. Thankfully, this doesn't happen many more, but certainly, like 2016-17-18,

“you batch it. This would happen for sure. So I'm relaxed. My brain actually gets the cue that”

relaxation and peace. That's actually dangerous, because now you've let your guard down. What if, right? That's where the what if message starts to come in, and it wants to pull me into hyper-vigilant, so you can't relax if you're relaxed, then what if? So what ends up happening is sometimes, for some people, the brain will think of an intrusive thought. You didn't try to call it in, but now your brain, body, somatic connection, is trying to get you to a place that feels familiar,

which, to me, would be hyper-vigilant if I were going off my old pattern. So what's happening is that my brain is triggering me to think about maybe a deep-rooted fear, or something that I've maybe been considering in the back of my subconscious, to try to ruin my moment of peace, because to my brain, peace actually feels dangerous. I hope that painted a picture. I hope that you can take a moment to think about what that would be for you, because each one of us has a different scenario,

“or maybe peace isn't your trigger, maybe it's feeling like someone's trying to tell you what to do.”

Maybe it is feeling like somebody's not listening to you. We all have whatever our primary trigger pattern is. So I urge you to consider that right now. If you have no idea what that is,

a great place to start is always to go to breakmetha.com and start with brain pattern mapping.

We'll be able to tell you what your biggest areas of trigger are, your self-disception patterns, how your blind spots are currently holding you back, et cetera. So you can go to breakmetha.com and do that if you're really completely unsure. So now let's get back into this anxiety. We now understand that our brain is trying to protect us to keep us in this sort of rut where life probably sucks to some extent, but it's a suck that our brain is used to so it feels safe.

So now our brain starts to come up with these different ways to make us think of something to get us back into the state that feels like the familiar. And the brain can start to scan for threats without you even thinking about it. So sometimes you're doing something and you think that

your focus on the other thing, but your brain is actually scanning for threats around you.

Sometimes your brain is actually trying to jump to some sort of wild future scenario that does nothing to do with what you're currently focused on. And I think it's important to remind you that when anxiety does pop up, it's typically coming to you packaged in a specific, okay? So very rarely is it going to be like, I wonder what it would be like to. That doesn't sound like intrusive thought. Intrusive thought anxiety sounds more like

your sunscreen today. What if because there's been avalanches, he goes on this one specific cliff and he does it without testing the snow quality, right? That's a more intrusive thought form of anxiety where it's trying to be pitched to you as highly specific, which makes your mind latch on to it more. When it kind of goes through generals, that's usually not a sign of intrusive thought. Because your brain is actually trying to pitch to you that this particular moment that it's

giving you is actually urgent. Like this is the thing to pay attention to. And the other thing

“that's important to remember that I've talked about in previous episodes regarding my panic attacks”

is even if you had had 2,000 panic attacks. Wherever you single time, you realize at the end, oh, that was just panic attack. In the moment, your brain is going to trick you into thinking, but this time it's a harder attack. It doesn't matter that the last 1,999 times, it was actually just a panic attack. This one time, this is actually really dangerous. This time I have to go to the hospital. And this is how it uses that specificity against you.

So if, as you're trying to talk yourself out of it, you're getting pushed back, but this time it's real or this time it's specific, we know this is a time to step back and observe very carefully. So now we want to zoom out for a moment and try to look at the mind from an entirely different perspective. I want you to imagine the mind, like a map of territory. So think about an ancient times when different plans would plant their flags and they've got their coat of arms and you

can see who ruled which territory. Your mind functions much the same way. Thoughts are constantly trying to plant flags in a territory of your mind. And some of those flags represent truth, clarity, faith, and wisdom. Great. Some of those flags you're actually trying to claim your territory in a sound way. Example, when you're going through break method and you learn Eli, every time you execute Eli properly, you are firmly planting a flag of sovereignty on the

territory map of your mind. But other thoughts are going to be more representative of fear, shame, despair, bitterness, self-disruption, regret, remorse. And the moment you allow one of

to remind you that territory is never lost all at once, so don't feel so overwhelmed right now

that you're like, "What's the use I'm too broken?" territory is always lost incrementally. One foothold becomes an outpost. One outpost is going to eventually become a fortress. In truths of thoughts will follow the same expansion pattern. And I'm not going to lie to you. They do escalate exponentially, but you can also collapse those exponentially as well. Because they're all starting from a very clear origin point. And if you know how to collapse them from the origin point, even if you let

it go, I'm giving an arbitrary number, 1,000 layers deep into intrusive thought. If we capture the right pattern origin, you can just as easily collapse out all of those same layers. But when we're thinking

“about the stages of this, I want you to remember that the first stage is a suggestion. It's a thought”

that appears suddenly, and it might feel shocking or disturbing. But at this stage, it's trying to see if you will take the bait. Right? It's dangling the thought to see what you're going to

do with it. And if you immediately challenge or dismiss it, it often fades away. The second stage,

you start to engage with it. You start to have a conversation with it. Maybe you start to bargain with it, start to justify it. And instead of dismissing the thought entirely, you are starting to analyze it. Maybe you're questioning it. Maybe you're searching for evidence. And I think this is one of the biggest traps of shadow work or parts work. Asking the question, is this coming from something deeper? Is this something that I don't really know about that's just compartmentalized?

I encourage you right now. Hear me when I say this. Do not do that with intrusive thoughts. Create separation, create distance. Do not allow these thoughts to engage with you. I will tell

“you some stories if we have a time at the end of this episode about clients that have mistakenly”

followed the advice of certain therapeutic modalities and done this and have made the issues so much more profound. So please tread lightly. Be careful here because if you engage with them at all and you potentially try to allow room for those to be coming from some deeper place in you, you risk actually identifying with it and allowing it even deeper access to you.

The third stage is narrative based. The thoughts start to become part of a story about your life

or a story that weaves into maybe deep insecurities about what you think of yourself. So instead of separating, that was a weird thought or ew. I wonder where that came from. You actually start to say maybe this is something that's tied to something about who I really am. Maybe this is something that's a hidden shadowy compartmentalized part of myself. The fourth stage is the stronghold. The narrative starts to solidify and to belief that starts to shape your behavior and perception

“for the long haul. This process can also be understood through something I present in break method”

called the emotional domino effect. Domino one is where the initial thought or memory appears without awareness of the underlying pattern driving it. So this is where it comes forward. We don't you didn't request it. It came to you. Domino two occurs when additional thoughts about the past or even imagined futures start to stack on top of the original thought. So they start to become a sandwich, so to speak. Domino number three is when those thoughts begin spreading into other

areas of your life, creating exaggerated or catastrophic assumptions about the future. So the initial thought becomes well, I'm going to now type to this person or this story. What if this problem augments and oh my god, what if now I'm going to get divorced? Right? The once you allow that initial interest of thought, you can slip off the edge very quickly. I had a client who struggled with interest of thoughts and this person was adorable, sweet, so kind from the

south. If you heard her voice, it would sound exactly like you're imagining right now in this moment. And this is by the way, not uncommon. I've had many clients like this, but this one in particular stands out. Any thought she would think she would latch onto it and think, well maybe. So this person, for example, would watch a documentary about a murder and she would actually think to herself, is it possible that I'm a murderer and I wouldn't know it? So such a deep-seated self-trust wound

that anything that popped up, she tried to immediately make it mean something more deeply about herself or assume that maybe it was coming from some deeper layer of herself. So this is an example of how an underlying issue can start to compound by tying it to other parts of your life. Oh well if that was true, maybe this is true, maybe I am, etc. So it starts to compound. Then we're looking at Domino number four, this is happening when your assumptions turn into beliefs and they're actually

anchoring themselves into your brain. So it starts to come back into that sort of more self-fulfilling prophecy and then Domino five is where those beliefs start to influence your behavior. So going back to the example of the wood if like, if I'm watching this documentary, they were murder and they didn't know what if I'm a murderer and I don't know it. I can't trust myself. Maybe is that Domino four assumption? Domino five is if I can't trust myself, maybe X, Y, Z could happen. We're now

let's think about this client for a second, what if that paranoia got so elevated that they chose

“to, I don't know, go to the police and confess to a crime that they never actually committed.”

Okay, this actually shockingly happens a lot. So let's say the Domino five example with this person is they watch the, they are fearful watching the documentary. Well, they didn't realize their murder, maybe I'm murder, and I don't know it. And then that turns into a story about maybe I'm a murderer and maybe in that state of paranoia, they actually go confess to a crime that they didn't commit it all. They're just in a paranoid state based on an initial intrusive

thought. And at this point, they're now confessing to a crime and what if they want to jail for the rest of their life for a crime that they didn't commit because this intrusive thought wasn't corrected and now it's influenced their behavior into a consequence that can't be undone. You think that this is unreasonable until you work in the line of work that I work in and it's not unreasonable, you guys. If you don't get really good at discerning where you are

in the Domino effect, you can slip off the edge far too quickly. I always tell people the line

between sanity and insanity is razor thin, if at all. And many people, in particular, those who have the brain pattern types that tend to correlate over to personality disorders, they're often very unaware of objective reality versus their skewed version. I know we've gone through this extensively on podcast episodes. It's hard for people like that to know where they are in the Domino's because they are not able to pull back and perceive with any sort of metacognition in the first place.

Right, there's so much emotion driving the train that they can't stop and see things differently. So for a person like that, being able to understand where they are in their emotional response Domino's can be really challenging. So when I'm going to emphasize here, stopping this Domino

effect as early as possible is extremely critical. Once the thought progresses, far enough down

the chain, it becomes hard to reverse. I'm not saying it's impossible. It's totally possible, but we have to catch it as quickly as we possibly can. And this is why, to me, awareness is an

“important stage. You do have to become aware of something in order to stop it, but far too many”

people get stuck at awareness and they don't learn how to intervene and rewire to make the thoughts stop in the first place. And by the way, you can get rid of interest of thoughts. I've said it before. I used to struggle with this a ton and now if I'm not actively thinking, my mind is completely quiet. I could never have conceived of that in the earlier years of my even like early adulthood and childhood. My mind was constantly full of back and forth chatter. Now if I'm not thinking,

it is completely quiet. And that is attainable for many of you. It's not easy, but it is a process that we do in break method that can restore your ability to actually be at peace and presence without constantly having that tug of war happening in your mind. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever noticed how you can know something is unhealthy and still do it anyways? You know you shouldn't react that way in argument. You know that habit isn't good for you. You know that that thought

pattern is irrational. And yet somehow your brain runs the same loop again. This is where a lot of personal development goes wrong. Awareness alone doesn't change the brain. Repeated behavioral and put dust. Your brain changes through neuroplasticity. Through the pathways you strengthen with action, not just awareness. And that is exactly why I created renew your mind. This program sits at the intersection of neuroscience, behavioral rewiring, and biblical teaching around the

command to renew your mind. Inside this program I walk through what's actually happening in the brain when patterns form, by your prefrontal cortex shuts down under emotional pressure, and how specific behaviors activate areas like the anterior mid-singulate cortex, which is responsible for resilience, discipline, and the ability to push through discomfort.

“But the most important thing we talk about is pattern opposition. Because if you want a new life,”

you can't keep feeding the same neural pathways that create the old one. Scripture says,

"Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." But most people were never taught how to actually

do that. Renew your mind gives you the framework to begin interrupting destructive patterns, strengthen your ability to regulate emotion, and build the emotional resilience that is required to become a new creation. If you've ever felt like your reactions, habits, or emotional patterns are running your life instead of the other way around, this program was built for you. Renew your mind can be accessed at stan.store/busygold. So I emphasize that thoughts do not exist in a vacuum.

Thoughts can have the desire to trigger you back to that emotional homeostasis state that you're brain and body are used to, right? We talked about that example. Your brain produces thoughts through memory, prediction, emotional pattern recognition. We know all of this, but these aren't the

bit about things that are more multidimensional, and here it comes so brace yourself. And this is a

“much more in-depth conversation. In my Renew your mind, of course, we go deeply into this. So if you are”

excited about learning more about the spiritual multidimensional side of mental health issues, definitely go on to stan.store/busygold, and you can go to my Renew your mind program. We go deeply into that. I'm going to, I'm going to skirt around the edges here because this is a topic that is not for everybody, and I totally recognize that, but I would be remiss in my duties as a teacher here to not acknowledge that there are other places that interests a thoughts can come from.

So if we're going biblical here for a second, scripture does describe that the mind is a place

where influence absolutely occurs. Ideas can be planted, distorted, amplified, and stolen. In the parable of the soar, Jesus describes how seeds are planted in the heart and immediately stolen away by the enemy. This suggests that thoughts can be interfered with and manipulated. A few years ago, I taught a three-day long series on deliverance and mental health.

“I do have this going up on my website for purchase again. I haven't, I've been moving things”

to my new website in in waves, and this will be ready pretty soon, but I am going to talk a little bit here about a piece from that called dimensional pathways, and if you go to the show notes for this episode, I am putting the PDF there so that you can download that PDF to get the visual of what I'm explaining right now. So in this visual framework, I help illustrate how thoughts and thought forms can be influenced by the spiritual realm. Emotional wounds can become entry points

for influence from other realms. When someone carries rejection wounds or thoughts about abandonment, it can become really easy to trigger you from these higher realms. When someone carries shame, thoughts of condemnation, these intrusive thoughts can gain traction really easily. When someone carries fear, catastrophic thinking, it becomes really easy to get deceived into aligning with your intrusive thoughts. Words also play a really powerful role in this process,

“because they act like agreements or contracts in the spirit. When someone repeatedly declares”

things like, "I will never change," or "nothing good ever happens to me," or "I'm just broken."

Those statements reinforce both neurologically and spiritually. Words shape your perception, they influence your choices, and they reinforce your identity narratives. They can either reinforce the truth, or they can reinforce yourself deception if you are not careful. This is why scripture emphasizes the importance of guarding your mind and taking every thought captive. Sovereignty of the mind requires that you place active resistance, that you be constantly planting

the flag on your territory. Intrusive thoughts cannot simply be tolerated or ignored, they must be challenged. So how do you do that in a practical way? The first step is to stop identifying with thought. A thought appearing in your mind does not mean that it belongs to you, or that it defines you, or that it's coming from some deep shadowy place inside of yourself.

The second step is to intentionally create distance from the thought. Observe it instead of

becoming it. The third step is to use logical questioning to dismantle the thought. This is something that we specialize in. Break method, and if you've ever heard me refer to ELA questions, I am going to place a PDF of ELA questions specifically for intrusive thoughts on the show notes. So that will be available on the show notes along with the framework from dimensional pathways. So do make sure to go to the show notes and do the opt-in to download the form.

The ELA questions are things that you can use to highlight the logical error in what your mind is currently coming up with so that you have the ability to see new possibilities and get your way out of it. You want to be asking yourself whether the thought aligns with objective reality or whether it's attempting to push you back into a pattern that you've experienced before. So I explained that this pattern operates like a rut, and our brain has become very good at using what seemed like

justifiable excuses and rationalizations to get us afraid to move out of the rut. Or in some cases to go back into the rut. Going back to that example of if I was just home relaxing in my house, my brain's going to use that in terms of thought, try to justify going back into hypervigilance because it's actually afraid of peace. So that is that example of me coming into your immune like, "Oh, you're right, and now I'm not in peace anymore." So from a scriptural perspective,

I've allowed the enemy to actually take that peace away from me and go back into hypervigilance arguably where going back to that domino example. I started to make worse decisions about my life and get myself further off track the longer I let that thought multiply into other thoughts. And with that in mind, the fourth step here is to reconnect with some very clear, measurable goals. Get clear on what you want from your life. What are you trying to accomplish?

to measure if what we're currently doing is ever going to get us there. And this is one of the

“things that I think is most helpful for overcoming anxiety. When we're thinking about how anxiety”

functions, it often functions like someone trying to keep you stuck in a cave. And if you've taken break method, you've heard me talk about Mr. Crewd from the movie. The Crewd's if you haven't seen it. It's an adorable movie. But in the beginning of the movie, it's about this kind of cave family from arguably Neanderthal times. I don't know if there's a lot of preferred term anymore. I don't know. I don't know what language is off limits. I think that's still the term.

I'm not even going to figure that one out. But in this movie, Mr. Crewd is the only one that goes outside of the cave and he keeps his whole family inside of the cave so he can keep them safe. So he tells them about what's happening out there. He draws them pictures. But to keep his family safe, they're not allowed to go outside because it's too dangerous. He goes outside, he brings back

food, he brings back water, etc. And I think his motto is something like, "Never not be scared

fear keeps us alive." So now I want you to think about when anxiety is behind the wheel and it's telling you all these things that have to have to get done so that you can air quotes stay safe. What it's really doing is it's acting as Mr. Crewd telling you can't go outside of this cave. Well, if you want love, peace, vulnerability, connection, excitement, pleasure,

“most likely none of those things are inside of the cave. So you have to get good at arguing”

with Mr. Crewd so you can get out of the cave. Most people don't know how to do this. And to be honest with you, most people can't even in this analogy. Highlight, I want to get out of the cave, right? Their brain has gotten them so twisted and actually justifying their own repetitive demise that they've become like Stockholm syndrome, right? They like being stuck in a prisoner of their own mind. So we also need to get you clear on

what it is that you want that is outside of that cave because we can then use those end goals to entice you out of the cave and to get better at arguing with Mr. Crewd so that you can get your way out.

When intrusive thoughts appear, one of the most powerful questions you can ask is whether

reacting to that thought will move you closer to that end goal or further away from it. Does this response move me closer to the relationship that I want? Or does this reaction move me closer to the life that I want to build for myself? Is this pushing me further into the cave? My brain keeps trying to trap me in. These sort of simple questions can tell you a whole lot about whether this interest of thought is something to consider or something to immediately

separate yourself from. And this is where the concept of renewing your mind becomes incredibly

“important. Renewing the mind does not mean pretending that intrusive thoughts don't exist.”

Right? I'm not asking you to set their goal. There are certain cases where I will have clients that have really intense loud intrusive thoughts put on a really loud song for a set period of time. But for the most part, I'm simply not telling you to go, "La-la-la-la." We actually have to go to battle with it. We have to learn how to challenge the thought, we have to learn how to dismantle it. And of course, rewire the underlying system that's causing it to rise up in the first place.

That process does require awareness. It requires intentional questioning. It requires behavioral opposition and ultimately alignment with the truth. In the downloadable that I'm giving you on the show notes, I'm going to have a whole little scavenger hunt exercise for you. So for those of you that experience any of this, please report back. Do join the rewire room, which is our free community. Let me know how it's going with your work on that scavenger hunt.

I have seen it help thousands of people before you. And I'm excited to share that tool with you for free in the show notes. In Cheers of Thoughts, you're not to find you. They're attempts at influence. They're invitations to get you to believe a story that's probably not true and probably has intent to do harm. And the moment you learn to challenge these thoughts rather than submit to them,

you're power dynamic in your mind shifts. Your mind was never meant to have open borders where

any single thought can start to take territory. It's meant to be your sovereign territory, and guarding it requires awareness, discipline, and pattern opposition. But the good news is that the brain is wildly capable of change. Patterns can be rewired, thought loops can be dismantled, and strongholds can be broken. Break method is a great way to learn how to oppose patterns and rewire from a very secular scientific based program. And if you're interested in how that piggy

backs with the spirit realm and what happens with familiar spirits and demons and other things in the spirit realm, Renew your mind is a great option for you. I definitely recommend choosing carefully. Obviously break method is a really in-depth long four to six month long intensive program. It is very much mental health-focused. Renew your mind is a lecture series and many of the people in Renew your mind have done my other work before. So Renew your mind is we still give a lot of

what's happening at the intersecting point between our emotions, our physicality, and the spirit realm.

And ultimately, when you're in Renew your mind, you will spend time learning how to

heighten discernment, claim territory in your mind, and you will learn practical tools, but it's much more about understanding how the mechanisms work, rather than exclusively working on yourself. And we know this because we've talked about neuroplossicity so many times. The mind becomes

“what it repeatedly believes. And if you want to build a different life, it has to start with learning”

how to guard the territory of your mind one thought at a time. I've already told you this, but if you let one go, it exponentially augments. So you have to guard your territory with intention, with tools, go download that PDF in the show notes, do report back, do join the Rewire room, it's a totally free community on Stan's store. Let me know how I can help you with this. You do not have to live with intrusive thoughts. They can be rewired. I told you that if we had

time, I would give you a couple of stories that I think are important. One is, and I know it's a hot topic, and if you want another great episode on this, it's my episode with Dr. Dave Raven on the psychedelic report. We talk quite a bit about medicine and hallucinogens, et cetera. So one thing that I want to mention is that when we're talking about intrusive thoughts, one of the access points or doorways that you can open is through engaging in medicine ceremony. So things like

“ayahuasca, ayabogane, peyote, et cetera. Even honestly, like MDMA, Molly, that kind of stuff. So when you are”

engaging in something like that, you are opening yourself up and arguably the sovereign part of your soul spirit often goes kind of to the background, which allows you to be more easily influenced by other things. And if you don't have a really strong sovereign spirit and already know how to in essence fight in the spirit realm, doing medicine journeys can be profoundly dangerous. I've seen people come back from medicine journeys, suddenly convinced that they were gay, even though they were

married for years before, had a perfectly beautiful life. And ultimately, what really happened was

that some sort of spirit actually hopped in their got access, and then they started to have intrusive thoughts and rumination that they couldn't get out of it. Thankfully, I was able to get those clients out of it completely, and I've seen this happen multiple times over, and I've also

“seen this happen with weed as the gay way. I think some of you who've been watching this podcast”

and have done break method, you know how I feel about weed, maybe we'll do a whole episode on that. But the point is, when you put yourself into a situation where you're not firmly rooted in objective reality, you're not of sober mind, it's so much more easy for these intrusive thoughts to manipulate you and dig their claws in there and get you feeling as though you are not whole yourself, and it's because you've stepped back and you've allowed too much space.

I think this is why, publicly, we are called to be of sober mind, which doesn't just mean sobriety like, you know, don't drink alcohol, though, certainly, you know, being of sober mind, it comes along with those items as well. But it means to be firmly rooted in the present moment, right, like, highly aware of the detail in your environment so that things can't get twisted or manipulated. And when you intentionally engage in something that shuts off that sobriety,

you can leave an open door for intrusive thoughts to jump in there. And just as I laid on this episode, they do augment, they do have the ability to grow exponentially. And then you can start to feel very quickly like you lose yourself. And with certain things like, for example, Ayahuasca, you do go into the state of neuroplasticity after that where you are more malleable, you are kind of less sure of where your hard, sovereign edges are. And those two things, when sandwiched together,

can lead to a complete psychological crisis. So, at this is why I always encourage, if you are

going to do something like that, do something like break method first, where you have firmly rewired, you've rid yourself of the blind spots in the self-deception tendencies so that when you can go in there, if that's one thing that you choose to do, you can go in there with what we call and break your break, helmet on. And you know how to actually go to battle with these things without essentially being influenced or deceived by things that do objectively operate in this

spirit realm. So, that is something to be really cautious of. And I mentioned in a couple of these client scenarios that they engaged in other forms of therapy that certainly made this worse.

a therapist, well go watch gay porn and see if you see if you feel anything. It's like, okay,

“this guy literally came back. He didn't, he suddenly heard this voice saying, your gay or”

gay or gay or gay. He had never had a thought like that in his whole life. His married, he has

kids, he's like, help me. I need this voice to go away. And what this therapist told him to do when this person is already highly susceptible to visual images is to go watch a bunch of gay porn. This was a colossal fail of the mental health system. This person came to me on the brink of suicide. And thankfully, we were able to pull this person out of it and get them to the other side. And it was, it was very intense experience. But I bring this up because this is,

unfortunately, not uncommon. This is very common. When you understand an in-break method when you do brain pedramapping, we see your behavior markers. Somebody that has a very specific behavior marker that shows that in their protective response they go up into their head,

“they can lose touch with objective reality very quickly. And if you tell a person like this,”

oh, go expose yourself to all these other visual stimuli. You're actually piggybacking those interests of thoughts and you're pushing that person all the way into that fourth, fifth domino,

first sure. And then you're making it harder for them to ever remove those visuals.

So I'm saying this because this is not an isolated event that in more traditional forms of therapy, interests of thoughts and remmonation and even things like gender dysphoria have been made worse by the types of exposure therapy that they're asked to do. So consider that if this is something that you are experiencing or you have a child or a teenager that's experiencing this, take me up on this. Take your first step as brain pedramapping.

We will show you if this is something that is likely to work for you and what the potential risks are of going down the road of potential exposure therapy with a lot of visuals, even things like EMDR, working with looseener genes because there are certain people that are highly susceptible and at risk when they have a brain pattern that matches what I'm describing right now. There are other things that can certainly work better faster, more effectively with less risk for you. So if I'm

speaking to you and this is something that you or a loved one are experiencing, brain pedramapping is $47. It doesn't take you that long to complete and at least then we know what we're dealing with. What are the underlying architectures that are needing to be worked with to get you to the other side because nobody wants you to be held hostage in your own mind. I know how awful that can feel and it's why I spend my entire life helping people free themselves. Right? I'm not

“freeing you. I'm teaching you how to get the key and unlock your own cage because we were not”

designed to be in constant struggle and remanation and suffering. There is a way to the other side and yes, it does take work. I'm not going to let you. It's a hard work but it is work that when done in the right sequence with the right person can free you for the rest of your life. You do not

have to live with intrusive thoughts but you do have to understand why they're there in the first

place, where they're coming from and how to uproot them. So I do hope you will take me up on the brain pedramapping and do go to the show notes that PDF is going to be a nice little exercise for you to practice how to break the strongholds of these intrusive thoughts because you do not have to live this way. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share it with somebody who needs it and do me a favor. Go on the YouTube version even if you're not a YouTube person. Hit subscribe, hit like,

give it some love in the comments. I really appreciate we're really trying to grow YouTube and I know that we have a heavy audio listener base but if you could do that, I would be so grateful. And if you could also go to Apple or Spotify and give us a rating, hopefully five star because there are some people that don't seem to like my what they decide are my political beliefs. Every one star is because I apparently have some sort of political beliefs that they don't like,

although I don't really talk about politics on here. So anyways, if you could do that, I would be so grateful and I will see you all next week. Bye. Your brain isn't broken. It's running an old code. Breakmet that is a system that maps your neurological patterns decodes your emotional distortions and rewires your behavior fast. No talk therapy spiral, no getting stuck in your feelings, just logic-based rewiring in 20

weeks or less. Head to breakmetthe.com and see what your brain is really up to.