An intrusive thought is just a random thought. As soon as you have it, you evaluate, decide it’s absurd, and discard it. There’s no intent or desire behind having the thought. It doesn’t reveal any dark secrets about yourself. It’s just a thought. Since there’s no desire behind it, it doesn’t actually lead to action, and therefore survival isn’t brought into the equation.
Interestingly, depression/anxiety have a lot to do with whether we pay attention to these thoughts, which can make them distressing. For example, a normal, sleep-deprived, stressed out parent might have a brief thought of smothering their baby to get them to stop crying. Normal process is that it’s a flash of a thought, then gets evaluated as absurd and unhelpful, and you barely register that you had it. A mother suffering from post-partum depression might have the same thought but then overreact to it, thinking it must mean she’s a bad mother, or that she has some impulse to kill her child and she’s dangerous. By giving too much weight to the thought, she can cause herself distress, even though tons of people have those thoughts and are great parents.
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