5 Myths: Harm OCD & POCD

Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton Gianni. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, helping people recover from anxiety, OCD and insecure attachment, just like I have, so you can have an amazing life and and healthy, happy relationships. Today I'm going to give you five myths about harm, OCD and pedophilia. OCD and four realities. I want you to start following. So the first myth is that somebody with thoughts about harming others or inappropriate thoughts about children actually want to do those things. That is actually false. With anxiety and ocd, you get these intrusive thoughts that cause a lot of diseases, discomfort, and someone who is actually a pedophile isn't going to be uncomfortable with these thoughts. They're going to keep them to themselves. They know they're wrong, but they're not uncomfortable with them. They're actually probably more exciting to them. Unfortunately, someone with ocd, when you get harm or pedophilia intrusive thoughts, they're very, very uncomfortable. But they don't mean that you actually want to or are thinking about doing those things. Myth number two is that these thoughts are abnormal and other people don't get these. That is actually false. Other people do get similar thoughts, especially at the beginning of when these thoughts start to show up. They're actually a lot more normal than we realize. People get them. They just don't give them attention. It's very normal for our brain to give us strange, crazy, out of the box thoughts that we normally wouldn't think. So these thoughts are a lot more normal than you think. Now. The more we give them attention, try to get rid of them or let them bother us, they may get more and more abnormal. But at the beginning, they're actually very normal. It's just somebody with anxiety or OCD gives them meaning and then they start to increase. Number three, the feelings that I get with these thoughts mean something. It means that they're true. Again, false. Our feelings come from our thoughts. And so when we give a thought attention, when we automatically believe a thought or we start obsessing about it, we're gonna get more and more of the feelings that come along with it. Think about all of the other thoughts that you just dismiss all day long. And you don't have feelings that come up with those thoughts, typically because you're really not believing them or giving them any attention, you're letting them come and go. Number four, I need to take these thoughts seriously. You don't. Thoughts are just thoughts. We all get them. Positive, negative, weird, random. We all get them My advice to you is if it doesn't make you feel good, don't give it attention. You don't need to because the more attention you give an uncomfortable thought, the more uncomfortable you're gonna feel. And number five, there's something wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with you. Intrusive thoughts are so much more common than we think. And yes, you may be experiencing intrusive thoughts or even ocd, but that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. It's very, very easy to treat this. You can get to the point where you're not experiencing intrusive thoughts anymore. I haven't had intrusive thoughts for years. And you can get there too. It's just learning what's going on in your brain, your response that's making it worse and what to do differently. And the more you learn what to do differently and practice that, the less intrusive thoughts you're going to get and it's going to go back to normal thoughts that you choose not to give attention to that don't stick. So let's go back over the four realities I want you to remember. Intrusive thoughts are just uncomfortable thoughts. Everybody gets them from time to time. But somebody with anxiety and ocd, they may feel more intrusive based on how our response responding. So it's important to understand that what you're experiencing here is fear and anxiety, not factual thoughts. And once you learn how to rewire your nervous system not to be so anxious and fear based, you won't get intrusive thoughts anymore. It's the anxiety responses that is more likely for our brain to give us these types of intrusive thoughts. And you can rewire this. Number two, everybody gets weird, strange, positive, negative, random thoughts. They don't feel as uncomfortable for somebody else. Because people without anxiety or OCD just don't give it attention. You can learn to do that too. Number three, thoughts create these uncomfortable feelings when we take them seriously. So learning not to take them seriously and the techniques that you need to use so that you can get better and better at that will decrease the amount of intrusive thoughts that you get returning back to a more normal level. And therefore you won't experience the anxiety and discomfort that you're experiencing with them now. And lastly, there's nothing wrong with you. Anxiety is actually very normal. OCD is so much more common than you think. We all have things that we have to deal with in life and work on. So there is nothing wrong with you. If you are experiencing OCD and anxiety and a lot of intrusive thoughts. We can help you with this. We can get you to the point where you're not experiencing this anymore. You just need to learn what's happening in the brain, how you're responding that's making it worse and what to do to make it better. And to learn what to do to make it better, click the link in the description below. Check out our recovery programs. You can reach the lifetime recovery stage for anxiety, ocd, or insecure attachment. We can help you get there, just like we've done. We'll talk to you soon.