Intrusive thoughts 24/7 please help

I'm so glad that you started ERP therapy yesterday OrMsB, I'm so hopeful that you can learn some skills to help with those questions quickly! My suggestion for now is to think about how many thoughts you have throughout the day that you DON'T question if you will act on. I'd bet you think about at least a dozen things you could do, and end up not doing them or at least not right that second. You demonstrate daily that thoughts are not behaviors, but for some reason, THESE ones matter. Why? Because OC says so, and it's working! Tomorrow, try noticing all of the varied kinds of thoughts you have throughout the day (heck, even an hour!). I'd bet you think about food, going places, calling/texting people, etc. and the thought comes and goes, no biggie. Now let's do the same thing with the OC themed thoughts. Yep, that seems powerful and important, and is also just another thought like what you'll have for lunch, because that's all thoughts are. They can impact our behaviors, but they don't cause them. And compulsions don't prevent the behavior, they're just the stand-in that we've convinced ourselves protects from the scary action. If thoughts equal behaviors, I'd be going out in my pajamas to buy and then demolish a king size container of oreos right now because that's all I can think about. Instead, I'll probably brush my teeth and go to bed, because that's my chosen behavior. I can interrupt the belief that I have to do a compulsion or else I'll act out on my thought by shrugging and saying "okay maybe I'll do that tomorrow night, but for tonight it's time for bed." Feel free to share some examples of random thoughts you had throughout the day that weren't directly tied to actions, OCD themes or not!