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Episode 23 · 27 min · Jun 30, 2026

What Qualifies as Intrusive Thoughts? | Kristen McLoud, LCSW

with Kristen McLoud, LCSW

Kristen McLoud still remembers the first time she realized she could not think an intrusive thought away. Even with her training and years of practice, the impulse was always the same: push it down, pretend it was not there, move on. It did not work then, and as she explains to Jessica Herwitz on Therapist Voices, it never does. That honest admission from a licensed clinician who has navigated her own anxiety is what makes this conversation so valuable. This is not a clinical lecture. It is a practitioner sharing the exact tools she uses with clients because she has needed them herself.

Kristen McLoud, LCSW, is the owner and psychotherapist at Mental Wholeness Psychotherapy, licensed in New York, Florida, and South Carolina. She came to therapy from an unexpected direction, spending her early career in digital marketing before recognizing that her real calling was mental health. A formative internship at Post Graduate Center for Mental Health and mentorship from CBT specialist Dr. Barry Panzer shaped her clinical approach, and today her practice focuses primarily on anxiety, with particular depth in intrusive thoughts and the cognitive rewiring that helps clients move through them.

The conversation opens by defining what intrusive thoughts actually are. McLoud describes them as automatic, uninvited thoughts that the brain generates in response to a familiar threat pattern, even when the current situation is not the same as the original one. They often intensify during major transitions, including new parenthood, caregiving responsibilities, or career changes. For many people, the thoughts themselves are less of the problem than the shame attached to them. That shame, McLoud explains, is one of the most significant barriers to seeking help. Clients often believe that having certain thoughts makes them uniquely broken, and the relief of discovering that these thought patterns have names, and that other people experience them too, is frequently the turning point in treatment.

McLoud walks through the treatment approach she uses with clients, building from awareness toward active skill. The first step is acknowledgment: recognizing that the thought is there and that it is affecting functioning. From there, clients begin logging their thoughts using simple apps or paper journals, tracking what the thought was, what emotion accompanied it, and how they responded to it. That record becomes the raw material for the next stage, which involves identifying cognitive distortions. Catastrophizing, fortune-telling, and mind-reading are among the most common patterns McLoud sees. When clients can name the distortion they are experiencing, the thought loses some of its authority. The brain's categorization system, designed as a protective mechanism, begins to feel less like a trap and more like a process that can be examined and retrained.

The discussion also covers an important physiological piece that therapists sometimes skip over. Before challenging a thought, the body needs to come out of fight-or-flight. McLoud incorporates mindfulness and relaxation techniques directly into sessions, including guided meditation, visualization, and progressive muscle relaxation. She walks clients through deep breathing in session rather than simply assigning it as homework, because the difference between doing it correctly and incorrectly is significant. Slowing the breath genuinely slows the heart rate; gasping for air does not. This body-first approach creates the physiological conditions in which cognitive work can actually take root.

Toward the end of the conversation, McLoud addresses the relationship between intrusive thoughts and OCD, clarifying that intrusive thoughts can be part of an OCD diagnosis but can also appear independently. She brings nuance to the question of medication as well, reassuring listeners that going on medication does not mean staying on it forever. For many clients, medication and therapy running simultaneously accelerates progress, and when clients have built the skills and retrained the underlying patterns, tapering off is not only possible but expected.

For anyone who has ever watched an unwanted thought return the moment they tried to banish it, Kristen McLoud's message is both practical and reassuring: the brain is not broken, it is just running a protection program that has gone into overdrive, and there are real, repeatable tools for turning down the volume.

In this episode, you will learn:

  • Recognize that suppressing an intrusive thought reinforces it rather than eliminating it.
  • Use a thought-logging app daily to track patterns across situations and emotional responses.
  • Label cognitive distortions like catastrophizing, fortune-telling, and mind-reading to strip them of authority.
  • Practice progressive muscle relaxation and slow diaphragmatic breathing before attempting cognitive reframing.
  • Understand why shame around intrusive thoughts is one of the biggest barriers to seeking treatment.
  • Combine medication and therapy simultaneously to build lasting skills and enable eventual tapering.
  • Identify how intrusive thoughts intensify during major life transitions such as new parenthood and caregiving.
  • Distinguish between generalized intrusive thoughts and OCD-linked obsessive patterns to get the right level of care.
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