Small epiphany moment: It’s OKAY to have intrusive thoughts! It doesn’t mean you want them to come true or accept that they are good. A thought is simply a product of the human brain. Allow yourself to have the intrusive thoughts. Acknowledge them, accept them, and allow the thought to come and go as it wants! Be an observer of your intrusive thoughts. A thought is just a thought! It has no power unless we give it power. YOU are the one who gives meaning to your thoughts!

Exactly! Our brains are just creative. With all of the knowledge we have, it’s perfectly normal for it to conjure up random crazy thoughts. They don’t have to mean anything! :)

It's easier said than done, especially when thoughts come with feelings. For example, I struggle with POCD a lot and I have tons of moments when my thoughts come with such strong and overwhelming feelings and sensations that it's so, so hard to acknowledge and accept them without doubting yourself or looking for reassurance, mostly because they feel like proof that there is a great chance that you might be what you REALLY don't want to be!

Even Being aware of this knowledge,OCD doesn't sit queit

Truly am aha! moment. It's one we often need to have multiple times before we internalize the learning and can apply it in our lives

Ok, quick experiment. Read the sentence below, preferably out loud. "I want to eat greasy grimy gopher guts" Do you actually want to eat them?

For me, it helps by taking a step back and looking at it as “wow, I just had a thought/image/urge that I actually wanted to do this. I’ll look at it as still just a thought/image/urge without examining the actual content.” If it feels like you need to “prove” to yourself that you don’t want to do it or reassure yourself that you didn’t want the thought, try to resist that. Instead say “I don’t know if I want to do this or not, but I’m not going to try and figure it out. I’m going to focus on what is in front of me that is important.” Our thoughts that provoke anxiety seem like they are SUPER important, and that they need to be figured out or suppressed or pushed away immediately. Whenever I feel this way, it raises a red flag for me, and I look at it as just an OCD thought and try to not be afraid of the content. I try to let the thought sit, and no matter how disturbing or against our nature the thought is, accept it as just a thought. Hope that helps!

Its hard for me cause my thoughts are of the "want" variety as opposed to "what if" which then makes me feel horrible. I have harm ocd so this just makes me feel disgusted and ashamed. I don't "want" any of this, not the thoughts and not acting on it.