In the wake of recent events, I wanted to set the record straight for the OCD community. Intrusive thoughts do not cause harm and do not make people cause harm to others or to themselves. If they did, then all of us would be in trouble, because no human alive would be able to say that they have never had an intrusive thought or image or urge. I want to be very clear on this point – just because you have a thought or image or urge does not mean that you want or like that thought or image or urge or that you are likely to follow through on that urge.
We know that people who have a type of OCD which involves being concerned that they could harm someone would not enjoy having a weapon available to them. In fact, they would likely try to do anything and everything they could to assure that there were no weapons available to them at all. They would not rejoice in the fact that they had a weapon or that they were given a weapon as a gift.
OCD thoughts and images and urges are considered ego-dystonic – they are unwanted and cause discomfort. Individuals with OCD will do all that they can to try to put distance between themselves and any chance that they could do something that would be harmful to others or to themselves.
There are a lot of rumors flying out there right now about recent unfortunate events and what may have been written in a journal or on a drawing. It is just not worth speculating on this at all since no one seems to have all the facts at this time about what happened.
What we do know though is that someone with OCD would have done all that they could to try to actually prevent any kind of tragedy from occurring, either by isolating themselves to assure the safety of others, or checking over and over again to be sure that they did not have the means to cause mass harm to others, or by constantly seeking reassurance from others that they were a good person and not dangerous.
We here at NOCD know that your OCD will use incidents like this to say to you, “Hey, could that be you?” Or, “What if you did that?” But, just because OCD is an opportunistic jerk does not mean that it is right or correct or tells the truth. Don’t let your OCD get the best of you by scaring you into thinking, “Well, it happened to that person so now it will probably happen to me.” That is just a hook that OCD throws out there to try to get you to believe that it is true, and it is a sinister, cold-hearted plot to scare you into doing more compulsions.
In these times, it is so important to stay the course, do your ERP, and keep reinforcing to yourself that you are not going to let OCD win – you are going to do all that you can with great Response Prevention exercises to assure you that you will continue to stand up to your OCD and not give it another inch. OCD can throw anything to you – you have one job in response to OCD and that is to choose to believe that it is just not true, no matter how hard it tries to get you to believe that it is.
Some of you may even say, “But it feels so real.” I always tell people that it has to feel real – if it did not feel real then I would not have a job because no one would believe OCD. But, just because it may FEEL real does not mean that it IS real. No need to confuse those two words here – feeling that something is real does not make something real.
I hope this all makes sense to you and that you are not going to let your OCD get the best of you. You can develop and have some really thick skin and the OCD barbs can just bounce right off. You got this.