Not so “Taboo’’ Thoughts

Sex, harm, religion, pedophilia, oh my! I can almost guarantee the thoughts that you’re having aren’t as unusual as you might think. You may be feeling isolated simply because no one discusses these “taboo” thoughts. When it comes to OCD, these types of intrusive thoughts are incredibly common to get stuck on. In fact, some of the most frequently seen OCD “themes” include:

• Religious/moral OCD
• Harm OCD 
• POCD (pedophilia) 
• Relationship OCD
• Sexual orientation OCD
• Existential OCD 

This might surprise you given the heavy focus on germs and contamination OCD in the media. 

You may be concerned about sharing some of your “taboo” or disturbing thoughts with your therapist, but a trained OCD therapist will not bat an eye. We know these thoughts don’t reflect who you are as a person, even if you don’t believe it yourself yet. Let’s normalize weird thoughts! Even people who don’t live with OCD have these types of thoughts sometimes. The difference is that they respond with, “Oh that was odd…moving on.” If you have an ‘OCD brain’ however, it latches on and assigns meaning to them: “why am I having these thoughts?” “What does this mean about me as a person?” “How can I make them go away?” By asking these types of questions, you are engaging with the thoughts. Like a social media algorithm, the more we engage with content rather than scrolling past, the more it’s going to pop up in our feed (or brain.)

I encourage you to come to A Little OCD Treatment Center to begin learning to continue living your life all while your brain comes up with it’s most shocking thoughts and stories yet. I look forward to hearing them. 😉