how go I get rid of these anxious OCD kind of thoughts?!

[mglover92]

its so annoying! For example, im watching a movie where this guy leaves his girlfriend behind and she gets eaten by a zombie. I then get a OCD thought of "omg what if I was in the position and I left my girlfriend behind to get killed?" theres no way in hell I would. But that is beside the point. Why does my mind latch on to these thoughts and continue to go with them? This is what triggers my anxiety. and I have found it. I constantly take things that sort of have a impact on me and latch on to them and form these crazy assumptions. I NEVER USE TO DO THIS BEFORE ANXIETY. How can I make it stop or what are some techniques to calm it down or say to myself? There is more to this also. Its with various things. Please someone help me out who has gone through this.

[sweetypie]

I have these crazy thoughts all the time, too. It's really hard to deal with them, but I'll try to help.

I don't know about you, but a lot of what causes these thoughts is how horrified I and other people would be with me if they knew I were thinking these things in my opinion. Like, do you feel like your girlfriend would hate you if she thought you would consider killing her in that situation? Would you hate yourself if you believed these thoughts were real?

Like, one problem I have right now is that I can't stop obsessing over my fiance's teeth. He has really bad teeth problems, all his teeth are decayed to some degree, and he's really insecure about it, so I know if I thought his smile was ugly that I would greatly hurt his feelings. I've never thought his smile could possibly be ugly until recently because I'm SCARED of thinking it's ugly. I'm scared of hurting his feelings and scared of tricking myself out of falling in love with him. (Because I'm constantly scared of falling out of love.) So I keep saying in my head over and over,"STOP THINKING ABOUT HIS TEETH" and getting hysterical because I can't stop.

Because as soon as you say,"Don't think about _______" in your head, you can't stop thinking about it.

Like, if I say to you right now: "Don't think about monkeys and especially don't think about them eating bananas", you have to think about it to think about the fact that you CAN'T think about it.

The funny thing about all this is my ex-boyfriend of five years had a giant gap in his front teeth. I thought it was ugly at the time, but didn't care much because I knew I was attracted to him and loved him. I never worried that I would fall out of love with him because of his gap or worried that I would hurt his feelings for having had that thought. I was calm about it, so the thought disappeared from my mind quickly whenever I thought about it.

The only way to get over these thoughts is to accept them. For instance, I used to be scared of having blasphemous thoughts. People were making jokes at the time about Jesus doing sexual things in front of me with Mary Magdelene or whatever and they used to make me hysterical. I couldn't stop thinking about them and because of it, I thought I was for sure going to a bad place in the afterlife. But once I stopped believing that God would be angry with me for having those thoughts, I stopped having them entirely.

Maybe figure out why these thoughts scare you so much? Do you believe they make you a bad person? That everyone will hate you for having them? Deal with that issue and try to accept the thoughts and they will go away.

A LOT easier said than done, but I do know that the more you say,"I'm not allowed to think about this." The more your mind panics over it and therefore obsesses.

Something that may help you, too, is telling the person you are afraid of offending about the thoughts if you think they will be understanding. This doesn't always help, but if they can understand what you are going through and accept it, the thoughts lose their power some, too. But this will backfire if they aren't understanding people.

I also think distraction is helpful, but only when you are capable of distracting yourself. I know sometimes the thoughts are so bad that I can't actually mentally distraction myself so I either talk to someone about what I am thinking or I do something physical to distract myself, like go running or walking for instance.

P.S. If it makes you feel any better, I've had that EXACT same thought about zombie apocalypses, but about my male fiance.