Do I have to accept that my Intrusive Thoughts (Obsessions) are true?
Jonah Lakin PsyD
Given the plethora of information out there about OCD, many people have heard about the importance of acceptance in overcoming their OCD. A question I get often is: do I have to accept that my Intrusive Thoughts/Obsessions are true? This is an excellent question because intrusive thoughts tend to be pretty upsetting. Here’s some typical kinds of questions I often hear:
“So I’m just supposed to accept that I’m going to lose control and murder someone?”
“I’m just supposed to accept that I’m going to hell?!”
“Am I supposed to accept that I’ll get HIV?”
“So you’re saying I have to accept that I’m a pedophile?!”
The answer to ALL of these questions is an emphatic NO! You do NOT have to accept that your fears are going to come true.
What you do have to accept in OCD is simply that you are having a thought about those things. So let’s apply that to the examples above….
“I am having a thought that I’m going to lose control and murder someone.”
“I am having a thought I’m going to hell.”
“I am having a thought that I have HIV.”
“I am having a thought that I am a pedophile…”
A thought can be true or false or somewhere in the middle, but acknowledging the presence of a thought doesn’t mean you endorse it’s accuracy, it’s just an idea. Intrusive Thoughts, or Obsessions, are just ideas that run through our minds, like a million other ideas. In a given day, I may think about the past, the future, things I love, things I hate, things that annoy me, things I’m grateful for, diseases I could have, ways I could get into trouble, food I could eat, regrets, etc….
So when we say “accept your thoughts” we mean just that: accept that you are having these thoughts; we don’t mean accept them as true. The questions always becomes, “why do I have to accept the presence of these thoughts? I hate them so much?” The answer is simple; everyone has Intrusive Thoughts. People with OCD have them with greater frequency, and experience greater fear than the average person when they experience these thoughts, but intrusive thoughts are a totally normal human experience.
Why does everyone have these thoughts? Our brains are complex machines that are capable of some pretty amazing things. They are, however, not perfect. The same parts of our brain that allows us to imagine wonderful things also allow us to imagine horrible things; if we can visualize heaven, then we can also visualize hell. If we can visualize having a wonderful family, then we can visualize losing that wonderful family. There is a cultural idea (mostly in Western cultures) that people ought to have very good control over what they think about. Most of us have heard, or been told, “If you are miserable, just think happy thoughts and you’ll feel better!” Or we’ve been told to “think positively.” While these ideas are appealing, they are misguided. Although we have a small amount of control over what we think about in the short-term, in the long-term we have almost no control. Evidence consistently shows that when people try to intentionally “not think” about an idea, they either fail right immediately or they succeed in the short-term but then end up thinking about it a whole lot later on. In fact, they think about it even more later on then the people who thought about it immediately (this is a called a “rebound” effect). That means, that you might be able to delay thinking of your Intrusive Thoughts for a bit, but they’ll just hit you even harder later on. You might as well just let them come in and now.
Let’s put this all another way. The reason you have to accept the presence of unwanted thoughts is because they are present whether you want them to be there or not. Similarly, you might have the gray overcast Cleveland winters, but they are here to stay anyways. Our refusal to accept the presence of things we don’t like doesn’t get us any closer to learning to cope with them; it just gives us a new problem to deal with.
Key Points
Accepting thoughts simply means that you accept that you have them—that they are ideas going through your mind; it doesn’t mean you believe the thoughts to be true.
We may be able to delay having unwanted thoughts briefly, but they just come back more strongly later on.
We accept the presence of unwanted thoughts because we have no choice; they are a normal part of being a person.