Another way of dealing with these intrusive thoughts, whether they are decidedly AV, or if they are anxiety, or fear, is to open the 'feeler' up instead of closing it down. Focus on it, and try to experience it in all its aspects, physical, emotional, cognitive, whatever. The essential part of this is not to judge or evaluate this feeling as being good or bad, it just is. Accept what is. Try to be impartial about the whole thing, as though you are watching yourself experience these feelings. This will put some emotional space around these thoughts, make them less prickly.
When I started accepting that I was going to get AV type thoughts and understanding that I was not going to do anything to lose my sobriety, that they were powerless to make me do anything, they stopped making me anxious. I stopped fretting about them, and this did a lot to make them less compelling and worrisome, and they became less frequent too.