Anyone experiencing intrusive thoughts about harming others should contact their GP, according to a Dublin psychologist.

Intrusive thoughts are unexpected thoughts or images people can have at any time without warning.

While they can often be strange or distressing, they are relatively normal and happen to almost everyone from time to time.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Counselling Psychologist and lecturer Leslie Shoemaker said intrusive thoughts exist “on a spectrum”.

“We’ll have intrusive thoughts like ‘chocolate cake’ for me this morning, to thoughts that cause people distress,” she said.

“In terms of the intrusive thoughts and images, they’d often come with anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).”

Earlier this year, intrusive thoughts began trending on TikTok, with users posting videos of themselves making impulsive decisions such as dying their hair and attributing it to intrusive thoughts.

Ms Shoemaker said most of these users actually have impulsive thoughts, which are one-off ideas that happen less regularly than intrusive thoughts.

 “In one of the videos I watched, the guy had ‘horse’ tattooed on his thigh, for reasons unbeknownst to me, so he acted upon the thought,” she said 

“The individual with OCD when they get an intrusive thought, they believe the thought is real. 

“For example, somebody who leaves their homes and then they’re worried they left the stove on, they’ll come back and check the stove, they’ll leave, they’ll come back, they’ll check their stove again, and this just becomes a pattern.”

'They might remove all the knives from their homes'

Ms Shoemaker said people can also have intrusive thoughts about harming others, even if they don’t want to hurt anyone. 

“They might remove all the knives from their homes because they are worried that they are going to do something terrible,” she said. 

She said it’s important to remember that “just because you have a thought, doesn’t mean you’re going to act on it”. 

“People might have intrusive thoughts around harming people, but they don’t act on them and that's the key thing about OCD,” she said. 

If someone suffers from intrusive thoughts, Ms Shoemaker said the “first port of call” is to contact a GP, who should have a list of cognitive behavioural therapists to contact. 

Helplines: 

Samaritans (available 24 hours a day) - 116 123 

Pieta (available 24 hours a day) - 1800 247 247 

Text About It - Free-text HELLO to 50808 

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