Dear Kshitij:

You are welcome!

“I had a nightmare/intrusive spiral while I was half-sleepy around 6:00 am, and it had some of the most disturbing thoughts I have experienced till now… I am feeling better now and back on track.“- see, this is proof that intrusive, disturbing thinking- even the most intrusive and disturbing you ever had- is not dangerous: you were not injured, or killed, and you are back on track less than 7 hours after the spiral.

This reminds me of a movie I saw long ago where (I remember very little of it) the main character was terrified of a monster that visited her in dreams. What it took to overcome her fear was to face the monster, look it in the eye, and say: you don’t exist! And the monster (that was never real, as in flesh-and-blood real), defeated, disappeared forevermore.

Like in the movie where the monster intruded on the main character in dreams, intrusive thoughts (also not real, as in flesh-and-blood real) intrude on you in waking hours and when you were half-sleepy this morning. Confront the intrusive thinking, look it in the eye, so to speak, and say: you don’t have the power to harm me!

Really, scientifically, objectively: it’s not the thoughts that is the problem, but the fear of the thoughts. Confronting this fear in regard to my OCD is just what I did many years ago, and that monster in my life disappeared: I am no longer afraid of my thoughts, and I no longer fit the OCD diagnosis

anita