Heya. I've always had trouble with OCD & intrusive thoughts (particularly neverending rituals and excessive rumination) and while I've been to therapy (and am currently in the process of attending it again) in the meantime I'm having a really difficult time figuring out ways to nip those thoughts in the bud.

They're mostly your run-of-the-mill "Oh god, all of my friends secretly hate me", "I'm just a burden to my girlfriend with my mental issues", and possibly the worst of them all, "I'm an evil, evil person & I just don't know it yet"... Stuff like that.

As you can imagine, these pervasive thoughts are incredibly stressful to try & combat. To make matters worse, well, y'know when your OCD won't even let you talk about your OCD? It's even harder to vent to close friends and family about it. I feel like I'll be making my fears come true or something.

So far I've just been popping my anxiety medication, and that helps, but only for so long, y'know?

Anyway, TL;DR, how do you guys handle your intrusive thoughts?

I don't have OCD but I do have GAD and I tend to cope with intrusive thoughts by imagining literally stepping on them or stabbing a knife (through the thought) into a table/other surface. So like, visualising pinning the thought down so I can get away from it. It works for me but it's basically something I came up with and have never really discussed so who knows??

I have OCD. Super bad tbh. I barely cope, but when I do manage to cope it's usually through mindfulness and distraction techniques. Therapy is really useful for me, but only because I have a good therapist who I've known for yeeeaars - make sure you trust the therapist, it's crucial. What medication do you take? I've never found meds to be useful, and I've taken my fair share, but I take them anyway. Meh.

You don't need therapy to be able to access therapy tools - there are tonnes of mindfulness websites out there, lots of meditative videos you can find on youtube (super useful imo) or just listen to ambient sounds music which I personally love, lots and lots of OCD workbooks and things which you can find on various charity websites - OCD UK and OCD Action are really good. There are forums and stuff as well. There are several groups on facebook that have trained psychologists and long-term sufferers who help one another out.

The sad reality of it is that there is very little help beyond what you yourself can do in your mind. It has to come from within, which is cheesy as hell but true. You have to accept that there is no cure, that these thoughts exist in your mind and will continue to do so, you can only really accept them and let them move on. It all sounds like a load of crap until you actually start getting in deep with the mindfulness exercises, but honestly it's really helped me out. I've been struggling with OCD for a ridiculously long time, and it rules my life, but there are tricks to deal with it :)

Oh, I do that too, actually! Well, something similar, at least. A couple years back when I attended OCD DBT group therapy I would envision myself in a quiet coffee shop and each intrusive thought I had would represent a cube of sugar which I'd drop into my coffee and dissolve. Stabbing the thoughts, though... I have some serious anger issues, so maybe that would be cathartic in addition. Thank you for the suggestion, and hang in there... I have GAD too and it's a nightmare.

I take Klonopin, have for years. It's my go-to for anxiety/panic attacks, but I'd like to reach a point where I don't have to rely on it every single time I even remotely freak out, y'know?

Yeah, I have trouble trusting therapists because... I dunno, really, I have trust issues from past trauma, but usually I kind of block out my feelings in favor of seeming "polite"; although I've come to realize that's the exact opposite of what therapy is supposed to accomplish. I like this new one I have, though, she seems very forward and direct, not too "cushy" like other therapists I've had. I'll need to get to know her better. I've been with my psychiatrist for almost 10 years, so he knows pretty much everything that's gone down with me. I know I can trust him.

Yeah :( OCD is something like a roommate, I guess... A very annoying, demanding, manipulative roommate LOL. I know I'll be struggling with all the brainshit I have going on all my life, but I'm okay with that in the long term. The way I see it, it "builds character" (at least for me, anyway.)

I'll admit all those mental exercises sound and have sounded like a crock of bullshit to me for a long, long time, but mindfulness has helped me before, and the group/one-on-one sessions I'll be attending will surely dump all those techniques all over the floor for me, haha. Thank you so much, I'll keep your words in mind and remember them when things seem devoid of hope. Stay strong! 😄

I basically trained myself to "shake out the bad thoughts". If any of my intrusive thoughts get really bad I literally just shake my head back and forth and try to think of something else. It's a little weird but after a couple weeks of doing that I was able to get my head to associate the movement with stopping unwanted thoughts. Works pretty well now

- I've struggled with OCD for 12+ years, and I know how difficult it can be to trapped with your own self-punitive thoughts. I've met some people who have an incredible amount of trouble discerning between intrusive thoughts and their own ideas, so I think it's worth pointing out that the fact that you identify several examples of intrusive thoughts that bother you quite a bit is helpful. It means that you can point this out to yourself. It certainly is hard, and it takes time to train yourself to notice irrational thought patterns, but it's so very worth it.

DBT is extremely helpful for things like intrusive thoughts and depression (really, DBT is an excellent thing to practice regardless), but combining CBT and ERP can also be beneficial, especially when dealing with OCD.

Thought reframing is what I would suggest you try out - definitely as a kind of journaling, until you can identify and reframe the cognitive distortions present in your intrusive thoughts without looking at them on paper. I can provide you with some examples (worksheets & etc) of how to do this if you haven't already been introduced to the general idea, but I'm sure you can get tons of information from your therapist if you ask!

The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, any DBT workbook, gratitude/positives journaling, practicing mindfulness (and accepting your thoughts not as 'good' or 'bad', but just as thoughts, and things that you typically can't control) and other related activities are also helpful.