Mastering Intrusive Thoughts: Neurocognitive Origins, Mechanisms and Predictability of Spontaneous Intrusive Thoughts

In this course, clinical psychologist Dr. Bruno Cayoun, Doctor of Psychology and founder of the MiCBT Institute, introduces a neurocognitive and phenomenological account of spontaneous intrusive thoughts and their progression from ordinary mental events to persistent sources of psychological distress. Dr. Cayoun examines the roles of recency, frequency, emotional depth, the default mode network, self-referential evaluation, interoception, the salience network, reactivity, and memory reconsolidation. Using the Co-Emergence Model of Reinforcement, he demonstrates how thinking, bodily sensations, and behavioural responses interact to create self-reinforcing cycles across clinical presentations including rumination, worry, obsessions, trauma-related re-experiencing, addiction, chronic pain, and nighttime intrusions. Clinicians are encouraged to move beyond a stimulus-to-thought-to-emotion formulation by recognising the clinical importance of embodied cognition, interoceptive processes, equanimity, and learned states of disequilibrium.<br><br> This course is the first part of a two-part series on this topic. The second course is titled <a href="/catalogue/courses/mastering-intrusive-thoughts-helping-clients-understand-and-effectively-manage-distressing-thoughts" target="_blank"><em>Mastering Intrusive Thoughts: Helping Clients Understand and Effectively Manage Distressing Thoughts</em></a>.