Stop Believing Everything You Think | Ep 445

In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, Kimberley Quinlan shares powerful tools to help you stop treating every thought and feeling like a fact—so you can break free from anxiety’s grip and start living in alignment with your values.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why not every thought deserves your attention—and how to tell the difference
• How habitual fear responses keep anxiety (and OCD) going
• A simple mindset shift that helps you create distance from intrusive thoughts
• The importance of self-compassion when your brain gets loud and scary
• How Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) helps retrain your brain
• What it really means to live a values-driven life, even when anxiety shows up

Stop Treating Every Thought Like a Fact: How to Reclaim Your Day from Anxiety

Have you ever had one intrusive thought completely derail your entire day? That flash of fear, shame, or panic can feel so real that it tricks you into believing something terrible is coming—and suddenly you’re canceling plans, changing routines, or spiraling.

In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, Kimberley Quinlan offers a powerful reminder: just because you think or feel something doesn’t make it true. And more importantly, you don’t have to live your life in fear of your thoughts.

Let’s dive into the essential tools she shares for managing anxiety, OCD, and intrusive thoughts.

 

Thoughts Are Not Facts. Neither Are Feelings.

The most important takeaway from this episode? Your thoughts are not facts.
Neither are your feelings.

We have thousands of thoughts every day—many of them random, unhelpful, or completely disconnected from our values. Learning to treat them as noise instead of danger is the first step toward freedom.

 

Breaking the Habit of Reacting to Every Thought

Our brains are wired to keep us safe. That’s a good thing. But anxiety teaches us to treat every “what if” thought like it’s an emergency.

Kimberley explains that this is a habit—one we’ve practiced over and over. And like all habits, it can be broken with:

• Repetition
• Intention
• Mindfulness

Imagine trying to walk upstream in a river. At first it feels exhausting. But with practice, the current starts to shift—and so does your brain.

 

Categorize Your Thoughts: Helpful, Neutral, or Noise

Not all thoughts are created equal. Kimberley teaches a helpful framework:

• Helpful thoughts align with your values and support your goals.
• Neutral thoughts are everyday mental chatter (like deciding what to eat for lunch).
• Unhelpful thoughts include intrusive fears and self-critical spirals.

The key? Don’t label intrusive thoughts as “bad” or dangerous. That only gives them more power.

 

How You Respond to a Thought Matters Most

You can’t control which thoughts pop into your head. But you can control how you respond.

Instead of panicking or trying to “fix” a thought, Kimberley recommends using mindfulness:

1. Name it: “I’m having the thought that ___.”
2. Observe it: Like watching a play or a silly performance.
3. Soften your body: Drop your shoulders, release tension.
4. Get curious: “That’s an interesting one, brain.”

These tiny shifts help create distance from the thought and reduce the urge to react compulsively.

 

Self-Compassion Is Non-Negotiable

When your brain is shouting scary, mean things at you, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Kimberley reminds us that self-compassion is an essential part of this process.

Try placing your hand on your heart and saying:

“Of course this is hard. Of course I want to avoid this. But I can still be kind to myself as I move forward.”

 

Align With Your Values (Not Your Fear)

Instead of letting fear dictate your next move, ask yourself:

• What did I plan to do today?
• What matters most to me?
• What action reflects the person I want to be?

Then do that—even with the discomfort. This is a cornerstone of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): showing up for your values, even when anxiety is loud.

 

Use Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) When Needed

For those struggling with OCD or intense anxiety, Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the gold standard.

Here’s how Kimberley breaks it down:

• Exposure: Deliberately face the fear (for example, recording the podcast even if people might judge it).
• Response prevention: Resist the urge to seek reassurance, check, or avoid.

ERP helps retrain your brain so that over time, those scary thoughts lose their power.

Final Reminder: Fear Doesn’t Get to Run the Show

Your brain might tell you all kinds of wild, catastrophic stories. But that doesn’t mean you have to listen. You can live by your values, and not by your fears. 

Instead, ask yourself:
What would I do today if I weren’t afraid?

Then go do that.

 

In Kimberley’s Words…

“You are here on this earth to do amazing things. Don’t let fear write your story.”

 

Want more support?
Visit CBTSchool.com for self-paced courses on anxiety, OCD, panic, BFRBs, and more. Or work with a licensed therapist trained in ERP through services like NoCD.

And as always, remember Kimberley’s favorite mantra:
“It’s a beautiful day to do hard things.”

 

The podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, convenient therapy available in the US and outside the US. To find out more about NOCD, their therapy plans, and if they currently take your insurance, head over to https://learn.nocd.com/youranxietytoolkit

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Transcription: Stop Believing Everything You Think

Have you ever had a moment where one thought, just one thought, sent you into a spiral of uncertainty, fear, shame, and panic, and then as if that wasn’t enough, that one thought or maybe many thoughts caused you to completely change the plan for your day? This is such a common thing, and it’s so easy when you’re anxious to completely abort the plan and give all of your attention to trying to prevent the fear from happening.

 

What if I told you that the most life challenging tools in managing anxiety and uncertainty, OCD panic is to stop treating every thought like it is so important and so dangerous. I am Kimberly Quinlan. Welcome back to your anxiety toolkit, your go-to resource for all things anxiety, OCD, and mental health.

 

This is a place where you can leave all the fluff behind and access specific effective. And compassionate tools that are science backed and used by me, my clients, and my students. So let’s get going.

 

Okay. Before we get started, let’s just cut to the real point, which is the main thing I want you to take away from today is we have to stop thinking that every thought we have. Is a fact just because you think something. Doesn’t mean it’s a fact or true or imminent or dangerous. We have thousands and thousands of thoughts every single day, and we have to learn how to not consider each and every one of them as facts.

 

Now, I know that’s easier said than done. We’re gonna talk about it today, but that’s the main thing that we’re focusing on here, is that your. Thoughts are not facts. For some people, this is life changing because they’ve been told that their thoughts mean something, that just because they feel like they have this feeling that’s associated that they should pay attention and that it’s a sign and that.

 

You know, they’ve maybe learned about manifestation. And the problem with that, I’m not against it, but the problem with that is if you have anxiety, it becomes very, very difficult to differentiate the difference between a true gut feeling and an anxious intrusive thought. So we’re gonna talk about it here today, and I want you to just keep reminding yourself that, just because I think something doesn’t make it true, just because I.

 

Feel something doesn’t make it true either. And we’re gonna talk about some key points to take away from that. Now, the first thing I want to address here is. We are human beings of habit. Habit means that we often are acting in a automatic way, and we have automatically learned to take every thought, do a quick examination of it, and if it feels scary.

 

If it feels like it could possibly happen, we tend to habitually, and I keep emphasizing habitually respond to it as if it is a fact, respond to it, is as if it is a danger. And what happens there is that beha that action. Is a normal part of being a human being. In fact, it is a good part of being a human being.

 

It is what keeps us safe. Our brain is constantly scanning for danger. As you walk into a room, your brain quickly does a scan, whether you know it or not, to see is the roof gonna fall down? Is the floor gonna fall away from me? Is there anyone dangerous in this room? That is what our brain does. Thank it for that because that’s its job to keep us safe.

 

However, we have learned to habitually respond to that response in a way of that taking everything as if. Just because it could happen means it will. And that habit can cause us to actually tune our brain. And those neuro pathways of our brain become an automatic way of responding to fear and responding to what if thoughts.

 

So we wanna understand this is a habit we can break, but just like any habit it is. A lot of repetition. It’s a lot of intention. It’s a lot of thoughtful, mindful, careful acts. So I want to sort of remind you, and I remind myself and my clients of this is when you start this process, it’s kind of like walking up a stream.

 

Up ways, right? So when you’re in a stream, let’s pretend it’s like at your hip, right? That’s as high as the water. And walking down the stream actually feels pretty easy. That’s the habit piece. But if you turned around and you kind of walked against the stream, it would feel pretty difficult. You would.

 

Probably feel pretty exhausted. You would probably wanna give up because it’s pretty exhausting and that’s what breaking habits is going to feel like. I want to get that out right ahead is that’s what it will feel like, but with practice it will get easier. And so that soon enough, and the more you practice this, the stream will then be going in the direction and we will have new habits that will be much easier and automatic for you to do.

 

Okay. All right, so let’s talk about the main. Ways in which you can stop believing everything you think. You can stop acting as if everything you think and feel is a fact. Now, the first thing you’re going to understand here is that not. All thoughts are created equal. There will be thoughts that are helpful and in line with your values.

 

You’ll also have a ton of thoughts that are unhelpful and not in line with your values. You might have thoughts about doing things that you would never want to do again. That is a normal part of being a human being. It only becomes a problem when you have a thought and you go, no, I shouldn’t have that thought.

 

That thought is wrong. That thought doesn’t line up with my values, and therefore I have to extensively go out of my way to try and prevent myself from ever having that thought again. Now, the majority of our thoughts are neutral. They’re neither good or bad. They’re just thoughts. All thoughts are neutral, but again, some are helpful, like you know, the thought that you’re valuable and that you matter and that you can go good places this year and that you’re going places in your life and these are all positive thoughts that are very effective and help you move to towards the life that you want to live.

 

There are very unhelpful thoughts, as I’ve said, like intrusive thoughts, thoughts that are very much not in line with your values, but the majority of them are pretty neutral. They’re, they’re just thoughts about, you know, what, you’re gonna have lunch and so forth. Now the thing to remember here is if you are someone who has intrusive thoughts, if you label them as bad, you are actually training your brain to be more afraid of them.

 

So again. If you have a thought and you treat it like it’s important and a threat, it will continue to send out a message that something is wrong and something is bad and we need to fix it. Okay, so these are sort of concepts. I want you to sort of wrap your head around how you respond to a thought. Can, in many cases, determine.

 

How, um, your brain in the future will respond when that has that thought in the future. Okay. We’ve already addressed that. Thoughts are not facts. Feelings are not facts. They are a part of being a human being and our job is to. Examine them very, very briefly, right? We’re not here to ruminate about them, but first to check in with our mindfulness and identify, is this a thought that I feel is effective and moving me towards my values, or is this a nonsense new, noisy thought, meaning like it’s just noise.

 

Or is this a thought where I can identify? That I’m not going to engage in, um, because when I engage in it, I only engage in behaviors that move me away from my values, right? That, that shift me out of my values and out of the way I wanted to spend my day. Okay? So if you are looking for effective OCD or BFRB treatment that’s covered by insurance.

 

I’m thrilled to announce to you this week’s sponsor no cd. No CD provides live face-to-face video sessions with licensed therapists who specialize in OCD and related conditions. Through exposure and response prevention therapy, a highly effective treatment designed specifically for OCD, their therapist can tailor a plan just for you.

 

OCDs treatment approach is clinically proven to significantly reduce symptoms with an app that helps you stay connected to therapists and peer communities in between sessions, so you’ll always feel supported. No CD is available in all 50 states and even internationally, and accepts most insurance plans, making care affordable and accessible.

 

If you think you might have OCD or are struggling to manage symptoms, there is hope. Book a free call@nocd.com. You don’t have to struggle alone. Big hugs. And now let’s get back to the show. Now we do want to understand that. Thoughts will often trigger emotions. So I’m a cognitive behavioral therapist. A very common component of cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy is understanding that when we have a thought, that thought can often determine a feeling, and that feeling can often determine a behavior.

 

So an example of that is, let’s say you have the thought like. You’re good for nothing, right? That thought is probably going to bring on an emotion of sadness. Makes sense? And if you treat that like facts, you might then engage in a behavior where you devalue yourself. So we can see how those can often happen.

 

What we wanna do here is break that cycle. So when you have a thought, let’s say it’s a what if thought, like what if something terrible happens today? You will probably have some anxiety, right? That’s a common response. You can’t stop your brain and your body from having that anxiety. If you identify that you’re having these thoughts and feelings, but you don’t identify them as you know, not a fact, you might then go and spend your day trying to reduce the chance of that.

 

What if thought coming true, that terrible thing from happening. That takes you away from the things that you value. So let’s say today I plan to record this podcast and I had a thought, what if you hate it? Right? And what if all my, all my people who listen hate this episode and decide that this episode is terrible and you know they’re gonna hate it forever and throw eggs at me.

 

I, if I have that thought, I’m probably gonna have some anxiety. And then if I treat that like it’s a fact and I go, oh my gosh, you know, maybe people will be throwing eggs at me. I’m not going to record this podcast now. Well then that I am treating that thought like a fact. I’m treating that feeling like a fact, and it’s moving me away from the plans I had today, the agenda I had and the things that matter to me most.

 

When we are stuck in this cycle, that’s when anxiety disorders and OCD can. Run rampant through our life. So again, we wanna catch, we can’t control our thoughts, we can’t control our feelings, but we can control how we respond to it. That is a core component of what we teach our clients in our private practice.

 

It’s a core component of what I teach all of my students in over@cbtschool.com. So let’s talk about what you might do instead. Let’s say you do have that thought. What if everybody hates this? They hate me. They throw eggs at me, and they never wanna spend any time with me again. We first identify that this is a thought.

 

That’s all it is. That’s a thought that. Thoughts aren’t facts, thoughts don’t mean anything. Most of the time they’re neutral or, uh, you know, random. And I don’t have to treat every single thought as if it is a hardcore evidence, you know, fact about what’s going to happen. For me, it might be acknowledging ps I don’t have this specific fear, but if I did, I would acknowledge like, okay, it makes sense that I care about that because I care about my listeners.

 

I care about you guys. I don’t want you guys to hate it. I want you guys to get. Tons from this, I want you to leave feeling empowered and educated and like you know what to do next. So I might just acknowledge like, yeah, of course I’m gonna have that thought because it matters to me so much, right? I value it.

 

And we often fear the things that we value the most. So once I identify it as simply a thought, then I’m going to practice just observing it. And you might even notice if you’re listening here on YouTube, is I have a big fat smile on my face. And what I mean by that is when we observe a thought, we could observe it by going, oh, no, no, no, no, please.

 

Please don’t. I don’t like that thought, and you might tense up and squeeze your fingers together and pull your shoulders up. As you’re listening to this, I want you to drop your shoulders, soften your grip, maybe like raise your eyebrows up and down so you can loosen your forward and really look to that body language that you have.

 

And we wanna observe it. I always pretend like, and we wanna observe it, like it’s the most absurd thing you’ve ever heard, right? Like if you were watching a play, you were at the theater and it was like a funny act about a very scary story, you would probably be like, you know. Loving it and thinking it was such a great story.

 

And I often try to think of my anxiety as just a great theater show of my brain. It’s my brain, the production company of my brain, creating a very, very dramatic theater show. And so we wanna be able to observe our thoughts like we would if we were in a theater show. We would look at them, observe them, see them as separate to us, and watch the show play out.

 

But not really change our behavior because of what play or show or theater experience we’re in. We’re just gonna observe it. We might soften, we might smile. We might gently lean in instead of lean away, and we might then offer some curiosity like, huh, okay. That’s an interesting thought. That’s an interesting idea, brain.

 

Thank you for that. I’m gonna let you finish this play up. I’m not going to interfere. However, I’m not gonna let that production in my brain steer me away from doing the thing that I value. One really helpful sentence you can use when it comes to learning to observe a thought is to say, before the thought, I’m observing that I’m having the thought blank.

 

So instead of saying Someone might hate me and hate this episode and throw eggs at me. I’m going to say I’m observing the thought that people will hate me and throw eggs at me. I’m observing the anxiety about someone throwing eggs at me. That is how we can start sentences to, again, help build some distance and allow us to observe a thought instead of engage and fuse with that thought.

 

Now the next step, and I say this always is you are going to have to practice a lot of compassion when your brain tells you terribly scary, mean stories that are catastrophic and often. Target who we are and what we love and what’s important to us. We have to be gentle with ourselves. For me, it might be putting my hand on my chest, closing my eyes just gently and saying it makes complete sense that this is no fun for me.

 

It makes complete sense that I wanna run away. It makes complete sense that this doesn’t feel good because it’s targeting something I deeply care about. And so for you, if it’s having thoughts about your children or your friends or your work or your health or whatever it is, you can honor, like of course this matters to me.

 

Of course, it’s going to be hard, and it’s a very, very normal response to wanna clench up and avoid anxiety. Of course, that’s my first response. Of course, that’s my habitual response. And not, but, but, and I’m gonna use this as an opportunity to be as so kind, as kind as I possibly can as I observe the production company of my brain.

 

As I notice the story, the drama that it can create in a moment or in a split second. Now, the last step here, and this is the most important, and I’ve been leasing this concept throughout, so this is not going to be something brand new, and that last point is to retrain your brain. On how to respond. Now we can do this a couple of ways.

 

Number one, when you have a thought, you could shrug and say, maybe, maybe not, but I’m going to do the thing I value. I had a plan. I had an agenda. I don’t care what you have to say. I’m sticking to the agenda and I’m gonna let and observe that thought. Go on and on and on while I stick to my agenda. That’s more of a values or an.

 

Act approach, acceptance and commitment therapy, but a very, very helpful one, particularly if your thought is not really re really repetitive and, and it’s not gonna like completely derail you from the day if it is very, very repetitive and is likely to derail you with your day. What I do in my private practice and what I do in all of our online courses at CBT School is we pivot to a little bit more of a strategic approach, which is using exposure and response prevention.

 

Now, exposure and response prevention is a gold standard treatment for OCD, a lot of anxiety disorders, other disorders as well. But what we wanna do when we’re using ERP is identify the specific fear and practice on purpose, exposing ourselves to that, and then the response prevention component is reducing and removing the compulsive behaviors that I may or may not do when I have that fear, you.

 

So let’s use the example, and this is not a great example for OCD, but it’s the one we’ve been using. So let’s say my fear was that everyone will hate me and they will, you know, ridicule me, judge me, throw eggs at me. Let’s say that is my OCD obsession. Again, OCD obsessions, that still could be one, but we’ll use that for the sake of now, even though it’s not perfect is in this case I might expose myself by.

 

On purpose recording this episode and on purpose, giving myself and them permission. Maybe I would on purpose do something a little wacky, a little more, you know, authentic. Maybe I would, you know, be a little more expressive. Something that I would usually be afraid to do, and then in reducing those compulsions is I’m going to practice not ruminating about this.

 

Event. Once it’s done, I’m gonna practice not reassurance seeking with people who are a part of the production. So I mightn’t, maybe I would in the past, show this to my husband and say, you know, do you think it’s bad? Do you think they’ll like me? Do you think they’ll throw eggs at me for. So I might reduce that reassurance seeking.

 

I might reduce any checking behaviors by going back and listening over and over and trying to make sure there’s nothing I didn’t say that would be bad. Or maybe, you know, the fear that there are a lot of people with OCD are afraid of saying something. Bad or wrong without knowing it. So we would reduce that checking behavior.

 

We would also reduce any self punishment that we’re engaging in, and we would make sure that the episode got released. We would reduce any avoidant behavior that may happen. Sometimes people do the exposure. But then they don’t release the thing they did. Maybe they wouldn’t have released it up and uploaded it on to go out, and so everyone can listen to it.

 

Maybe they would avoid it next time. Maybe they would avoid topics that they would be afraid of covering. So we wanna really look at it through the lens of how can I. On purpose, face this fear. Maybe for me it would be asking to go on someone else’s podcast so I can practice being shunned by them as well.

 

We can wanna find ways where we can stand up to that fear and show that fear that we’re not backing down, we’re not treating it like it’s a fact. We’re not treating it like it’s so important that we need to listen. Our job is to get really clear about what matters to us, what is important to us, get really clear on the long-term goal for us, and then from there, staying in line with that.

 

No matter what fear sets, no matter what uncertainty we have, we wanna stay consistent. We wanna stay. Honoring our values and what we’re here on this earth to do. And I know you, you’re on earth to do some amazing things, to touch some hearts, to have joy, to grow, to learn, to experience, and I don’t want fear stopping you from doing those things because.

 

We have this one life. It is a gift. It is hard, but I want you to squeeze as much out of this life as we can. I do not want you to live your life according to fear. That is my whole agenda with the work that we do here over at your anxiety toolkit. Now, if you’re nodding your head and thinking, okay, how do I specifically do this?

 

You can head over to cbt school.com. We have a course for anxiety and panic called your Anxiety and Panic Toolkit. We have a course for OCD called your OCD Toolkit. We have courses on depression, we have time management courses, we have hair pulling and skin picking courses. We are having courses rolling out all the time.

 

BDD, health, anxiety, social anxiety. So head over to cbt school.com. Um, you can learn all about us there or if you want more one-on-one care, reach out to a mental health professional in your area. I am here just to help you get back on track and get clear on how to manage those moments moment to moment to moment when anxiety wants to disrupt your day and take you away from the things that you care about most.

 

So let’s wrap this up together. Number one, your thoughts are not facts. Number two, your feelings are not always facts either. Our job is to learn how to identify. Does this line up with my values? Does this help me be the person I wanna be? If not my advice to you, my, you know, what I challenge you to do and all my clients and students to do is stand up to fear.

 

Instead, live a life according to your values. Live a life according to what you want to do, what you would when you put your head down on that pillow. At the end of the day, you wanna be able to say. That was a hard day. That was a hard day. However, I did what I needed to do to help retrain my brain to create new habits and to stand up to fear.

 

That’s what we’re here to do. Okay? Of course, please always remember, it is a beautiful day to do hard things. You are doing amazing. I am so impressed with the work that you guys do. I know this is no easy work, right? I know it feels unfair sometimes, but I do promise you baby steps lead to middle size, medium steps, and then big size steps, and that’s the goal here.

 

Okay. Take care of yourself. I’m thinking of you always, and I’ll see you next week. Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbt school.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com