Reply To: I REALLY need advice

[AndyFollettParticipant]

i think what they meant when they said that is that having an ability to be anxious is a normal healthy response. Likewise having unusual or upsetting thoughts is normal. The horrific thoughts and imaginings you might be thinking about are all completely normal. We watch gruesome things on TV and humans have a morbid fascination of horror. Most of us struggle NOT to look at a car wreck as we pass by. We imagine ourselves in the situation as victims bystanders or perpetrators. So being anxious and separately having a disturbing thought is normal and  I think this may be the point that this person was trying to make? However OCD (the cycle where anxiety drives the thought and the thought brings on the anxiety can DEFINITELY be broken (just not the way ocd sufferers automatically try to resolve it).

Even when youve learnt how to quickly break the link and stop an ocd thought, we still need to be mindful when another bad thinking habit or an old one comes back so that we can break it again. (Thats what talking therapies do. They teach new ways of thinking which might sound a bit wishy washy but absolutely work to provide the skills to defuse ocd). The fact that ocd can come back doesnt mean it would cause distress because with the skills you bat it away with a laugh. Also the point that the person who said this to you was likely trying to make, is that an OCD brain isnt really any different to any other brain. Thus ALL brains have a capacity to act in an ocd way (overly focused on a topic because its fired by fear of that topic) so ALL ocd and non ocd people can think in an ocd way. Those who have learnt how to deal with it become much better at noticing, relaxing and putting it aside though.