does anyone’s intrusive thoughts ever manifest and not being able to get rid of a certain word? Sometimes when I walk past a black person my brain just repeats the n word over and over and it’s really distressing because it’s the last thing I’d ever want to say

I was with my ex in Prague once. She sat right on the ceiling of this famous bridge, and suddenly I thought: I could push her down now. This was horrific, because I thought like wtf is wrong with me. I told my therapist that story and he said: you like family guy, how often do they open the windows on a plane. To me that made perfect sense: these are all just thoughts, it’s just the way we feel about it, hence the feeling is what makes them so uncomfortable, not the thought itself. At least in my opinion. Maybe you could watch the wire?

PS; oh, and yes, i do experience that, it can be words or short sentences. I usually ignore them and try to focus on other things, which, I know, isn’t any help.

I experience the exact same thing. I also struggle with false memories which include “what if I said that?” “What if I called my friend that a long time ago?” “What if I just sang it or hummed it in a song?”. The truth is, I would 100% know if I did. And just like that, you and I would never say that because it’s so wrong it distresses us. We just gotta remind ourselves it’s all in our head!

I do have other ocd symptoms, so I’m no expert here, but I’d say yes. I’ve had horrible thoughts in my life (as we sometimes all do, because our mind is build to present with all sorts of stuff), but I never acted on them, because I’m a nice person. If I experience thoughts I feel are wrong, I’m imagining them on a fully loaded train, sittting right behind and in front of thoughts like “maybe I should get a dog” or “I wonder if Donald Trump ever watches John Oliver”.

I do like the picture of the train, because it visualizes that we are not our thoughts, just like the conductor is not anyone on the train. It’s not our thoughts we are responsible for, it’s what we actually do.

Good luck to you and your healing process!

That’s a good way of thinking of them actually, I’m trying to incorporate more of that kind of visualisation in my healing process