Don’t think about a pink elephant. Don’t do it! Oh, you did. That’s okay, because you all should look up the Pink Elephant experiment done in 1987. It is a fascinating research study on intrusive thoughts and how, when you try hard to get rid of thoughts, feelings, and/or images, they come back even worse than before.

Anonymous_234

Date posted: 3y

when you were in your recovery process, when you learned to accept the thoughts was it scary at first or did the thoughts get worse? i feel like today i’ve been doing pretty good with letting my thoughts pass but i’ve just been worrying about my thoughts lately.

Nica

Date posted: 3y

Yes, it was definitely scary. I remember a few months before I started doing ERP and jumping into the recovery process, my therapist tried to give me a little push. He said, “What if you agree with your thoughts? It’ll make them less scary eventually.” I said NOOOOOOPE I can’t, that’s impossible. But a few months later, it was possible. I was accepting thoughts that haunted me for 5 years. Then I realized I made *myself* sick for 5 years by fighting so much. My therapist was with me for 3 of those years (before I started in on recovering) but he knew he could only push so much or else I’d break. He’s very patient and was basically waiting for me to basically hit rock bottom hard enough that I said I wanted to get better. Fighting is futile against OCD. Or a pink elephant 😂

Chels0212

Date posted: 23w

Intrusive thoughts

I struggle so bad with intrusive thoughts. They can be so bad that I'll cry because I KNOW that's not how I feel or want to do. (Too embarrassed to say what they're about) I'll constantly try to figure out why I have them, and constantly figure out what they mean, causing me to constantly circle around and around. I had to get on anxeity meds, which helped a little but the thoughts still happen. How do you help yourself with this? How do you know that you're just not some physcopath? 😅

Young adults with OCD

Boss34

Date posted: 20w

Question…

When you get a stuck thought in your mind, as stupid or untrue as it may be, how do any of you block them out, or try to at least? It’s like my mind has another voice telling me making up the stupidest things?

summertime33

Date posted: 20w

Intrusive Thoughts

This is hard to admit, but I’ve been struggling with intrusive thoughts where the central theme is racism. I don’t use racial slurs but my brain worries that I have said something that hurts or offends someone and now I find myself analyzing every social interaction.

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