Danielle Jhiani explains that intrusive thoughts are common, but people with OCD attach extra meaning to them, causing distress. Recovery isn't about eliminating the thoughts, it's about changing how you react to them so anxiety decreases and your brain can reset.
Do you ever wonder if your intrusive thoughts are normal or not? So the answer is yes or no. It kind of depends. But typically on the beginning of an OCD spike, the types of thoughts that we get are actually quite normal. But you just might be giving them more meaning and attention than anybody else would. Once OCD gets worse and worse and worse, it is common to get more abnormal and intrusive thoughts, which is okay, too. It's not about whether the thoughts are normal or not. It's all about learning to react to them in a different way. And when you learn to do that, what you'll find is no matter what type of thought you get, it's not going to bother you anymore, it's not going to give you anxiety, and they're going to return to a more normal level. Now, intrusive thoughts are just intrusive because they cause you a lot of discomfort. That's what an intrusive thought is. It doesn't mean that it's normal or abnormal. I use the example of driving over a bridge and we have the thought of, oh my gosh, what if I drive over the edge? Many of us have had that. It's a kind of a creepy, scary thought. Most of us just let it go and we don't give it that much attention. Somebody with OCD might start to question why they had that thought. What does it mean? What does it mean about them or their desires? So hopefully this explains the difference between an intrusive thought, an ocd, and a non intrusive thought, and how someone with OCD might react differently to a thought. And really what you're learning in recovery is to learn to react to those thoughts differently. And again, when we do that, our brain scan can look very normal, like that of somebody without ocd. Once we learn the recovery skills, feel free to visit myocdcoach.com for my recovery programs.
