You Are NOT the Thoughts that Show Up in Your Mind

Do you struggle with disturbing, dark or “crazy” thoughts that pop into your mind that make you immediately wonder, “What is wrong with me?” That was my life for a long time. Fear-based, anxiety-ridden, intrusive thoughts would spin me out, and I felt convinced they were exposing something horribly wrong with my heart. In this message, I want to walk with you through a deeply important truth for your mental, emotional, and spiritual health: you are not the thoughts that show up in your mind.

I’ll share from my own journey and help you understand why intrusive thoughts do not define your identity. I will also help unwind confusion many believers have about the topic of “as a man thinks, so is he.” I’ll also unpack what is actually in the heart of someone who struggles with intrusive thoughts and find themselves in continual spin cycles that keep them stuck in anxiety, confusion and despair.

Most importantly, I’ll give you practical ways to relate to your thoughts in renewed ways, giving practical metaphors on how to see them and respond fruitfully. If you feel tormented by your inner world or scared that your thoughts mean something ominous or destructive, this message is for you.

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Let’s talk about your thoughts. Specifically, the intrusive thoughts that just show up — the disturbing ones. The ones that knock on the door of your mind and leave you standing there going: Wait. Where did that come from? Many of them can be deeply unsettling. Strange thoughts. Weird thoughts. Dark thoughts. Disturbing thoughts. Maybe even the kind that make you wonder, Am I crazy?

Let me raise my hand first. I have had all of the above. Fear-based thoughts, anxious thoughts, disturbing thoughts, contrarian thoughts, existential thoughts that would spin around and around. Dark thoughts. Heavy thoughts. And yes, the kind I’ll just call crazy thoughts.

And for a long time, my response to those thoughts was: This must means something about me. I felt compelled to investigate, interrogate, and excavate every one of them for meaning. Because surely this thought meant something about God. And surely it meant something about me. This is who I am. Something must be really wrong with me. That path and response only led me deeper into torment.

Working through intrusive thoughts required me to completely change my relationship with them. But really to change how I relate to ALL my thoughts.

And one of the most important insights in that journey is this: Just because a thought arrives in your thinking does not mean it is who you are.

That’s the big idea. A thought showing up in your mind is not a confession of your character. It is not a verdict on your soul. It is not God showing you who you really are underneath it all.

Just because a thought shows up does not mean it is tied to your identity. And here is something even more important to hold onto — even if you act on a thought, it does not mean that is who you are. Paul said in Romans 7 that when he sinned, it was no longer he who did it, but sin that dwelled within him. He had clarity about his identity, and that clarity was not based on the thoughts that showed up, nor on his sinful actions. Identity is who God says you are.

You need to know that in your lifetime, all kinds of thoughts will show up. Some will be great and help your journey forward. Many will not be good, not helpful, and not representative of who you are. That doesn’t make you strange at all. Masses of other people have the very same struggle.

You may feel like you are the only person on earth who struggles with the particular thoughts you have. I want you to hear this from someone with thirty years of experience walking with people: you are not alone. Study after study has found that the overwhelming majority of people — across cultures and backgrounds — experience intrusive thoughts. Unwanted thoughts. Thoughts that surprise or disturb them.

The issue is never just the thought itself. It’s what you do with it next. The difference between people who struggle deeply and people who are able to move on is not whether disturbing thoughts show up. Everyone has them. The difference is in the response, in the relationship they have with their thoughts.

Now, someone is already thinking about Proverbs 23:7, which says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” This verse gets used often to suggest that whatever thoughts show up in your mind reveal who you truly are. But have we taken the time to bring real context to this passage?

Read the surrounding verses: “Do not eat the bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies; for as he thinks in his heart, so is he. ‘Eat and drink!’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you. The morsel you have eaten, you will vomit up, and waste your pleasant words” (Proverbs 23:6–8, NKJV).

The subject of this passage is an evil man — a miser who invites you to his table but secretly resents every bite you take. On the outside he acts friendly; inwardly he is working against you. The passage is tucked into a section that offers wisdom for eating with rulers, the elites, the wealthy–who actually are fools that resist the wisdom of God. It is about discernment, warning you that some people will hide the motives of their heart in order to manipulate you. What the evil man thinks about you in his heart is who he really is, even though he is presenting something entirely different on the outside.

This is not a verse about the intrusive thoughts you wrestle with. Thinking in your heart, in the biblical sense, refers to what you meditate on and what you live by — the deep-seated values that reside within you. What’s in your heart can at times be seen in the pattern of talk that someone lives out. But it is not describing a dark or strange thought that flashed through your mind uninvited.

So what is actually going on in the heart of someone who battles intrusive thoughts? Allow me to bring you to the core of what is going on in the heart of an OCDer or someone who wrestles with intrusive thoughts.

The real struggle is usually this: there is an internal pressure to have everything feel “just right.” There is heightened doubt and uncertainty. There is fear that is erupting over the thought. And underneath all of it, there is a distorted interpretation that says, “This thought means something about me, or about how God sees me.” That interpretation turns into catastrophizing — making something enormous out of a thought, rather than recognizing that a thought is just a thought. It produces a false sense of responsibility, as though you are obligated to do something about every thought that shows up. And it creates a desperate need to control your thoughts, your environment, and your inner world.

The problem is not actually the thought itself. The problem is what happens after the thought arrives.

You excavate it. Where did this come from? Did God send this thought to me? Am I capable of this? What does it mean about me? What it actually means is that the thought goes against your values and that alone actually tells you something important and good about your heart.

There is also something called thought-action fusion, where having a thought feels the same as doing it, or where the thought seems to prove that you are capable of the worst. Your feelings get hijacked. They get interpreted through a toxic lens. But just because a thought creates an emotional reaction in you does not say anything about its validity, its importance, or who you are before God. You merge the thought with your identity. This is where the real damage happens.

Your identity is what your Father in heaven says about you, from His Word, rooted in your righteous standing in Jesus Christ. That is who you are. Not what your thoughts try to say about you.

And then fear grows. You become afraid of yourself and your own inner world. You become afraid of places or topics that might trigger the thought again. But here is what I need you to hear: fear is what feeds the power of the thought. You develop freedom not by avoiding the fear, but by practicing not feeding the fear.

So what does a healthier approach look like?

Start by learning to see your thoughts as waves of the sea. All thoughts and emotions are meant to move through you — not to take up permanent residence. You can think of disturbance like a roller coaster ride, or like a storm that blows in. There is a massive difference between going through something and being that something. The storm is not you. You are the one standing in the middle of it.

Practice facing the fear without reacting to it. When a troubling thought shows up, notice it and then gently redirect your attention. This is not about pushing the thought away forcefully, which only feeds it. It’s about not engaging it, not interrogating it, not giving it the weight it’s demanding. Over time, that gentle redirection shrinks the thought’s power.

Remind yourself: thoughts are just thoughts. You notice it, and you let it keep on moving.

And through all of it, let everything be done with compassion toward yourself. God our Father is the one who says who you are. We learn to receive that by allowing ourselves to be rooted in His love. Let the love cast out the fear. Let the love redirect your attention. Let the love anchor you in the storm.

That disturbing thought that keeps showing up IS NOT YOU. It is not who you are. It is not God trying to get your attention.

That anxious spiral you have been caught in — that is not your identity. That dark, heavy thing that keeps returning, it is passing through, but it is not the definition of who you are.

You are a person who is known, named, and loved by your Father in heaven. He has spoken over you. And all the noise is just noise in a system that is on its way to healing.

So this is a journey and allow yourself to take the journey. Take a deep breath. All you need to do is simply take one renewed step after another.

Empowering You to Live Healed and Free

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