Need help for INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS

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You've described my many years' suffering through this same cycle... the only difference being the cause of my agitation, which was bullying, hurtful (non-constructive) criticism, etc. It became a vicious, repeating cycle that I still struggle with at times, though much less so recently.

yes, i was reading something in a science book that supported this idea. if a person has intrusive thoughts and is disturbed by them, there is little-to-no chance they will act on the thoughts. the people who act on the thoughts are the ones who are NOT upset or bothered by them. did you know this instinctively or did you learn it somewhere?

OP, it has also been found that 100% of people suffer from intrusive thoughts at one time or another. the difference is in variables like subject matter or frequency/severity. it's very common to imagine random violence against children and the elderly (yes REALLY!). i saw this list of the top ten intrusive thoughts of normal/non-OCD people (at least not diagnosed):


i have some criteria for OCD but the shrink didn't feel like adding more diagnoses to the pile so she kept it open. i get A LOT of intrusive thoughts; i have difficulty going a few minutes without a random intrusive thought popping into my head. usually i am just imagining horrible things happening to myself or to other people - i am not often feeling any impulse to do any actions myself. it is better if i am at home with very little change in environment or stimuli.

i think some people do CBT do deal with this kind of thing. and i agree with the above posters that it sounds like OCD, in the form referred to as "Pure O".

@hyperlexian most of those seemed to do with nudity or sex, lol

Fixed the really bad typo

Last edited by Alexender on 22 Feb 2012, 2:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

it's true - sexuality and violence are really common for intrusive thoughts, i think it's because those things are really taboo or shameful.

Hey MM,

As others have said that does sound very OCDish. For a while (years) in my teens I had a horrendous time with disturbing, intrusive thoughts and/or images popping into my head. During the worst time It was pretty much continuous. Sometimes it involved 'intentions' toward others and at other times towards myself (i.e. images of sharp objects cutting into my eyeballs). I also had the "counting" thing with light switches, like Jack Nicholson does with door locks in "As Good as it Gets."

Anyway, I didn't tell anyone because I didn't know what it was and thought that it meant that I was nuts and would be "put away" if anyone found out. Luckily for me, though, it faded as I got older. By the time I was 20 it was almost completely gone (and has stayed gone). I've read that one-third of OCD cases get worse, one-third get better, and one-third stay the same.

Oh, and I've also had the thing where a painful or embarrassing memory will pop into my head out of nowhere. I still get that sometimes, though, so, to me, that seems like a different phenomenon.

Various thoughts are always popping into my head. They are me trying out as many of the possible things as I can.. basically constant brainstorming, some of it so automatic now that it just happens, like breathing or blinking.

I used to let certain thoughts annoy me but I've learned not to do that anymore. They are simply ideas, or the very beginnings of ideas, and if I don't focus on them, then nothing happens.

Getting annoyed at things never helps me in general.. it just makes me annoyed.