I can remember once I was putting a jumper on and the collar went into my eye. Immediately I got an intrusive thought saying "what if I went blind" which made me feel anxious. I then had this "flash" of how I'd cope and what life would be like. I started questioning why I was getting this thought.

I wanted to take the jumper off and put it on again to counteract the thought but I felt if I did that, each time I put this jumper on, my mind would replay this intrusive thought so I'd then be afraid of wearing it again.

I decided just to ignore the thought and not react to it. I left the jumper on, the anxious feelings gradually subsided and the thought never bothered me again because I just forgot about it.

If we repeat actions due to intrusive thoughts, we leave an imprint in our mind so that the same intrusive thoughts will occur each time we perform a particular action. They'll keep coming back.

If we carry on, reminding ourselves that they are Just a frightening thought, the thoughts gradually become less frightening because we begin to realise they can't actually harm us and nothing bad will happen.

No one knows what our thoughts are except US. If you see someone putting a jumper on then taking it off again only to put it on once more, you'll think to yourself why are they doing that? If you then put yourself in that persons position and pretend looking at yourself, you'll see the thoughts are "invisible" to the world except you.

The more we repea actions, the more we try to control our thoughts and the more they'll keep coming back to scare us. They'll only stop frightening us when we stop attempting to control them and stop reacting to them.

Yes, I've suffered OCD in a Bad way where thoughts controlled my day to day actions but I realised that we have to allow ourselves to think them But not react to them. They then eventually lose their fear factor, our confidence builds, we take control of our anxiety and we start to enjoy life again.