False attraction

Don't confess. Here's a new TOOL for your OCD tool belt: When situations like this arise, you have STOP TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IF THE THOUGHTS ARE FROM YOU OR THE OCD. This constant trying to figure out where the thoughts come from is a trap! It's an endless cycle, and we can never really figure anything out. With OCD, you need to make it your new policy that you are NOT going to try to figure it out. Instead, think about these situations like a big, tangled ball of yarn in our brains. We can't start pulling on threads. Instead, we need to WALK AWAY and leave the whole thing alone. The truth is that you have to treat ALL THOUGHTS the same, no matter where they come from. Just let all thoughts flow down the river of your mind. Imagine a tree planted by a river. You can watch the leaves fall off and flow down the river. But you don't try to fix the leaves or pick them up. You just let them flow by. The same is true with our thoughts. We need to just let them pass. Don't try to figure them out. Don't try to fix them. Don't confess anything after you had the thought. Just keep moving on with your life as if the thoughts never existed. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that you can let the intrusive thoughts flow by, but you have to confess all the "real" thoughts. But, like I said, you need to change your policy about this. From now on, try to let ALL thoughts flow down the river. You will never be able to tell what is OCD and what is not. They are all OCD anyway, but it really doesn't matter. Just let them all flow by. And then you keep moving on with life.

Ugh. So much easier said than done. I just feel so anxious and like I’m keeping secrets from my wife and I’m some sort of sexual deviant…