4. OCD Treatment: Understanding "Intrusive" thoughts

God bless, you!  I have intrusive thoughts and I constantly fear I am a bad person.  Then I try to analyze that thought and why it's worrying me so much.  That just makes it worse.  If I was really a criminal I would have done that horrible deed by now.  The shame is horrible.  I've noticed when I am stressed about the future, these thoughts come back.  If I'm busy and feeling all right they aren't there.  Stress and anxiety brings out the thoughts that don't want to go away.  Thank you so much, for your insight.  You are a blessing from God.  No joke!  :-)

what you resist, persists 

It's not the thought itself that's the problem, it's how you CHOOSE to respond to it. You cannot control the intrusive thoughts, but you CAN CHOOSE how you respond to them. My intrusive thoughts used to cause me so much distress and anxiety. But now I simply view them as mere mental noise and nothing more. I haven't had any anxiety or anxiety attacks in over 8 years now. I will always have OCD, but now I understand what it is and what causes it, it doesn't bother me at all anymore. People make the mistake, that the path to freedom means getting rid of the OCD symptoms themselves. Instead of realising that it's how you respond to the OCD that is truly the difference between either suffering or happiness/freedom. The amazing thing is, the more you stop trying to get rid of your OCD. And start positively focusing on your responses to it. The less intense the OCD symptoms become.Accepting that you have this disorder, but also realising that it is up to you 100%, about how you choose to respond to this disorder. Is the key to freedom. 

You dont even have an idea of how much i apreciate this. Thank you so much for taking the time to do these videos :D

I have had intrusive thoughts, thoughts that TERRIFY me and make me question what kind of person I am, They control me so much that I end up in a mess. I am only understanding very recently that for all the mannnny decades I have paid attention to them it has grown stronger. While watching this video I was getting very emotional as intrusive thoughts and annalysing ANYTHING and EVERYTHING had totally crippled me. It is very hard to just like the thoughts sit but I know this is the only way to get some relief. It's like f you watch a horror film every night before bed you are going to dream scary things ever night. I have spent from a kid up until now in my late 30s paying attention to thoughts and this is why i am in SUCH a state now. I will keep trying these methods which I started doing before i saw this video but your videos do confirm what I have been trying to do :-)

Thank you!!!! I have intrusive thoughts everyday! It drives me crazy && gives me suchh panic attacks thinking its me whos thinking such things, but this really took a lot off my shoulders (:

Hi Katie, my main issue now is that I feel my mind is totally restless and won't give me peace. The 'thoughts' I have been having are hard to ignore given how grotesque and frightening they have been and I fear it may be getting worse. I'm not even sure if mentioning them now is a good idea as I am fuelling them further. As soon as I seem to get rid of one thought another one jumps in so I'm in a constant state of mental upset to the point where I'm afraid to be alone (which I am alot of the time given my lifestyle). I have been having to get outside randomly as being home alone almost feels like a mild case of insanity.

That pink elephant challenge is extra hard for us Swedes -- our most beloved kids' TV show of all time featured a pair of pink elephants in pretty much each and every episode.

Hi Katie, Thanks so much for doing these videos and putting them up on YouTube. I have quite a severe form of Pure-O OCD, and it is very useful to know how to handle it.

Thanks. I agree totally, that the thoughts are not the problem, it is the relationship we have to our thoughts, and for most of us that relationship is unconscious. Things really begin to change when we build a conscious relationship based on friendliness (never aversion) to our intrusive thoughts. It may sound counter-intuitive, but aversion only feeds the problem of OC thoughts. This is a very important principle in Mindfulness Therapy, which I teach online.

Hi Katie. I'm really grateful for these videos. There hugely informative and you explain things really clearly. You have helped me out. Thank you

Thanks Katie, when I have a thought I consider important....( this starts from the moment I wake up till when I go back to sleep), I go through a ritual as sort of asking permission to excuse it by a feeling of relief. I've had this problem since my teens and now 55. Thanks for putting it all into easy understandable teachings. I will apply what I've learned.

thanks a lot for this advice. 

Wow this was quite excellent. Thank you. 

Hello Katie D'Ath, I just want to thank you for your videos. They are truly helpful. My story seems to be a little different. In my life I recall experiencing two episodes of anxiety and intrusive thoughts, the first was when I was sixteen years old in high school, that year I was preparing to take 5 regents exams and my SAT's and it was the first time in my life where I had been introduced to stress at such a high level, my brain and mind felt like it was under a cloud for about a year and many different thoughts came to me, some of fear of failing, dying, being homosexual, and others but basically everything that went against my moral character. Not that I have anything against what I just mentioned but its just not who I am. So oddly enough after passing all of my exams I was still down for a while because I didn't know what was going on with me. But after a year or so when I started college it was like it never happened. I had completely forgotten what I had gone through. Now fast forward 13 years, my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and I didn't take any time off from work so this and the lack of sleep, I began to get anxiety attacks and unlike before these thoughts were really disturbing to me, these thoughts had to do with worrying about hurting my son, it got to a point where I didn't want to change his diaper, shower him, but as I went online and educated myself the symptoms did get a lot better. I accepted what I had and spent more time focusing on how to overcome what I was going through then to let it consume me. I exercised more, ate healthier foods, made sure I got enough rest and ate brain friendly foods such as blue berries and walnuts. I am not completely cured as I understand that this process will take sometime but at least six months later I know that when I do get these thoughts I know exactly what they mean, they still rub me the wrong way but the huge fear of losing my mind has settled now. My question to you is, is it reasonable to say that my anxiety has come at moments of very high stress and is it safe to say that I can narrow my trigger points down if this in fact is true?

Hello Katie ! What a great informative video. It helped me and will most likely help others too. Thanks.

Thank you. :-)

Hi Katie, I cannot thank you enough for these videos. Over the past few days I've had some form of anxiety breakdown and subsequently I've been left with horrendous thoughts, I'm employing your techniques by letting the thoughts 'be there' however afterwards, once they're gone I get crippling guilt and I get so angry at myself for thinking such things. If you can, could you explain how to overcome this guilt please.

Hello, thank you very much!

I am a 15 year old from Manchester, UK i have been thinking of weather or not i will become a pedophile when i grow up, i have had the same obsessive thought for 3 months now i see a psychiatrist but not working. I hope i can let them go but its really hard when i have been having them for so long.