What I have noticed is that when I try to use positive thinking and challenge my thoughts I feel better but then I end up avoiding intense bad thoughts. Those thoughts bubble up and then I cannot calm down unless I use ERP. Then I feel sad because thats all I can think about. How can I balance this?

When you think bad thoughts or thoughts you label as bad remember this. "Thoughts are just thoughts until you assign meaning to them". Everyone on the planet has bad thoughts. The difference in us and them is we analyze the thought and try to find meaning in them, and there is none. You can't control your thoughts, so quit trying. The key is learning to let those thoughts pass and move on. Then if you have a thought that gets stuck challenge it. Don't challenge it in the sense of weather its true or false necessarily. Challenge the logical evidence of the thought.

When one has OCD, challenging thoughts as in traditional CBT is not very helpful and it may turn into a compulsion. The ACT approach is better, acknowledge them, let them be and don't give them any more air time.

Your values, morals and ethic system have nothing to do with your thoughts. That is a very common misconception, that we choose moment by moment based on what we are told by our brains right then. The fact that you don't go on punching random people on the street when you are angry is not because there is a thought telling you that it's "bad" (hurtful to others). You already know that, it is part of your value system. It turns out that turning "evil" is not that easy to accomplish. You would have to have severe intensive cognitive restructuring for someone to drastically change their value system, which takes many many years.

Yes. It's hard to make sense out of your brain lying to you. But with OCD it does! OCD typical prays on what means the most to us consciously and subconsciously. So for example a person with OCD may have a thought about for example "Beating an animal". This thought might be so strong it almost feels like an urge. In reality the person probably cares alot about animals and there well being! Therefore the thought is very distressing to them. The thought goes against there very nature.

i guess my question is if we just label thoughts as thoughts how do we know if what we are doing is good or bad?

This is a great conversation/explanation ?

Ok cool, yeah I need to work on that. I often get into asking myself if the therapy is working, then sometimes i get commanding thoughts telling me to do things I don’t want to do. Those are the ones I should challenge the evidence I think.

that makes sense, what about positive thoughts? same idea to just let them pass?

Your mind does not distinguish between positive or negative - You are the one giving them those labels. So if you hang onto "positive" thoughts compulsively then the same pattern will apply to the "negative" ones. Best thing to do is just regard thoughts as thoughts.

good point! then maybe overtime i won’t hang onto any thoughts too long

So I have HOCD and I conquered it for the last two years with the help of my specialist. Unfortunately, I am currently in a relapse because of life changing etc. But what gives me strength sometimes is knowing, hey you’ve seen and proven that this stuff can be managed and that it’s not real. That wall is scary, but you gotta break through it because on the other side is mental greatness??

yeah that makes sense, i think sometimes ocd makes it hard to believe that sometimes because we see a trigger like a knife or gun and all the sudden we are telling ourselves to hurt others.

Do you work with a therapist that does ERP therapy ?

No they are just starting to do ACT and suggest ERP.

Do you mean CBT?

essentially along with talk therapy

Talk therapy helps some but learning good CBT skills along with some ERP therapy I think works best. ERP though I don't reccomend trying it without the aid of a licensed therapist helps tremendously with OCD. At least it did for me.

ok cool. i think from my experience challenging my thoughts makes things worse. i want to get way better at thought passing, that way i don’t tie down to anything