this is a rlly rlly dumb question and i feel like i know the answer but i’m gonna ask anyways in case i’m wrong but, if u know ur obsession isn’t true why do u keep getting anxious about it? like shouldn’t ur mind just move on like it does with literally any other thought? what makes certain thoughts stick and others not stick?

Yeah like Jayro says, it really is just a weird brain thing. Sometimes it's because thoughts are related to core fears and beliefs (like that you're a bad person or not in control etc), or it could be something else about them like the fact they're so opposite to what you know that you're shocked at getting the thought. Whatever the reason is, it all starts at the beginning with an emotional response to a thought/idea, followed by compulsions to make yourself feel better (arguing with the thought/reassuring yourself, distracting yourself etc). Any response which isn't just letting the emotional response happen without labelling it as meaning something. Because you responded that way, your brain sends it to you again when there's a trigger around because it thinks it's important. Soon our emotional reasoning makes us decide that if our brain thinks it's important, it must be a relevant thing. And for me before I knew it was OCD, I thought it was my conscience telling me I'd done stuff wrong even though logic and my memory said I hadn't. Emotional reasoning fail. As we continue to respond to it with debate and reassurance etc, it keeps coming back and getting stronger. It's difficult to undo the process because it involves feeling the maximum amount of anxiety your brain has created about the issue, without doing anything about it. But luckily, once you've done ERP to get rid of a theme, you learn to be much more flexible about feeling all of your feelings, so you can prevent new potential themes from developing. It's all just dysregulation of the HPA axis plus your habitual behavioural responses plus emotional reasoning and other cognitive fails.

I think it's because of the fact that you get anxious about these thoughts that the brain perceives it as a real danger. That's why there is ERP where you teach you basically let your response to the thoughts not result to anxiety which will eventually lead to the thoughts just to go away. Simply, it's the fear of these thoughts that lead to it sticking!

This is what I am asking myself right now !!!!

Could it be because of some substance imbalance in our bodies? Insecurities of some sort? Whispers of devil? All of that? I dont really know but I suppose that they are related and that there are much more things we do not know about that might cause it Maybe sometimes we hate it so much that it sticks? Or it is just a mixture of different reasons not knly one

This is a very good explanation wow thank you

Thoughts are only thoughts but the physical feeling of anxiety is what makes them tougher to deal with because then we perceive them as real threats even while we know that the thoughts aren’t real then we obsess and over think the why we have thoughts like those and then get more frustration and anxiety from doin that it’s tricky but once we learn to retrain the mind and how our body reacts to the thoughts then we can begin to heal