Tip: No Thought is Too Outlandish with OCD

OCD works by making you worry about thoughts that you inherently know aren’t true and about actions that you will never do. So consequently, OCD has a ton of material to work as since everything it is feeding you is false anyways, it might as well try to hit you with any and every idea in its arsenal. Its only limit is your own imagination.

For example, a good friend of mine with OCD (who has allowed me to share her story) once became deathly afraid that ninjas were going to attack her. Even though she was sitting in the highrise of a major city and ninjas haven’t been a threat to people for centuries. She knew it was outrageous stupid, and essentially impossible, but it still caused her anxiety as in that moment, her OCD had convinced her that ninjas were coming to attack.

Another story she told me about was when she went to the doctor in full panic attack mode as her OCD was trying to convince her that her throat was actively closing up. She then had the toughest time trying to inform the doctor that she inherently knew that her throat wasn’t actually closing up, but that she needed a medical professional to tell her she was fine or else her OCD would continue to attack.

These stories go to show the overwhelming power that OCD can have as while these types of anecdotes would seem outlandish and incomprehensible to “normal” people, in the OCD world they are a dime a dozen. I have heard stories from people in my support groups that contain some of the most improbable/impossible worries. Fears that these people know are dumb and will never happen, but yet these thoughts still provide them with anxiety because of OCD’s pernicious efforts.

And while these outlandish thoughts can be some of the toughest ones to deal with as you can feel like you are losing your mind worrying about something that is so impossible, I think that these thoughts also present a silver lining. They help to remind us that this all can be traced back to thoughts in general. And thoughts really mean nothing. Everybody has weird, uncomfortable, horrible, and impossible thoughts and that is totally ok. People with OCD just treat those thoughts in a counterproductive way because of the way their brains are wired and that is why a lot of OCD therapy is about retraining the brain to recognize that these thoughts are insignificant and that actions are what matter, not thoughts. So, understand that your OCD brain will try and present you with absurd, anxiety-provoking thoughts and that your best response to them is simply to let those thoughts pass through your mind without a second….thought.