When people
think of OCD, they will most often think of people hoarding, washing their
hands, and checking locks repeatedly- the visible signs of OCD. There is
another side of OCD, though, that isn’t visible- obsessional thoughts. While it’s
possible for someone with OCD to ruminate on neutral thoughts, the one’s that
can make lives miserable are ones of violence, sex, and blasphemy.
These aren’t
thoughts that just come and go. They become fixed in the mind of the sufferer,
repeating themselves- and horrifying the person. That’s key to these thoughts-
they are of things that the person would never conceive of doing. Thoughts of
harming or even killing their babies may come to young mothers. A person may be
driving and the thought comes that they might hit someone. People have images
of themselves performing sex acts they have no interest in – and sometimes are
revolted by. People with deep religious feelings may find themselves imagining
yelling obscenities in church, defiling the altar, or having sex with Jesus or
Mary. And while most everyone has a few thoughts like that drift through their
mind sometimes, the majority of people are able to dismiss the thoughts as just
thoughts. To the person with obsessions, though, the thoughts are signs that
they are intrinsically bad, and that they represent a real threat- even though
the person is repulsed by these thoughts.
This short book
goes over the three classes of these thoughts, and them presents ways of dealing
with them: medications and exposure therapy (it *is* possible, even though thoughts
are not physical things), the same things that work on regular Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder. The author even gives self-help instructions- very
valuable since people with obsessive bad thoughts rarely want to confide in
anyone, for fear of being thought a menace.
The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. This in no way influenced my review.
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