Thought popping into head.

[aangel]

I've dealt with with intrusive thoughts (honestly I'm still dealing it's been a long couple of weeks). I'm so tired of the tears and the feeling anxious and nauseous. I went to sleep around six this morning and was up again around 9. I woke up drenched in sweat. I'm not even a sleep sweater. Anyway, I wouldn't really call this an intrusive thought. But anyway I'll be sitting and doing something and the thought will come even when I'm not having intrusive thoughts that say. "I'm not *insert awful thing that OCD/anxiety tries to makes you think you are* And it's true I'm not that thing or thought (I try to remind myself that it's not me). Is the some kind of compulsive habit? It seems random at times.

[MyNameIsTerry]

It would be compulsive if you consciously do it but this sounds more like a positive version of your intrusive thoughts.

Since intrusive thoughts are classed as disturbing, it can't be one of those as this appears to be a positive or neutral thought. I'm less clear on these from an involuntary thought but there is some new science around something called Mind Pops, and this might be relevant here. It's a relatively new concept though and still under research, although research shows it to be genuine, it's just not well understood yet.

However, regardless of what it may be called - if it is a positive thought, fantastic! How do you react to it? If you are reacting to analyse it with anxiety based thinking e.g. questioning what it means, whether it's a sign of something sinister, etc...don't. I know it is often what we try to do but the best thing here is to accept it, maybe even agree with it? Use it as a building block.

It could mean you are moving forward in your recovery and so it should be embraced.

[aangel]

I guess that maybe there was a moment or two where I was thinking the thought on purpose. I try not to argue with the intrusive thoughts cause at point one my reaction was 'I'm not that thought' in my head in an argumentative tone. Regardless, I'm going to let this go I have no interest in being anxious over a positive thought because my reaction a couple a times before was to get annoyed and think 'Nobody said you were' in response to 'I'm not *blank* My mind must be tired.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Yeah, never try to approach a negative intrusive thought with a negative reaction such as arguing with it, you give it it's feedback as it's only looking for a negative reaction. Challenging it logically with positive/neutral responses (as in CBT) is fine but if you have OCD you also need to be on the lookout for turning that into a new compulsion too. Otherwise, observation & acceptance work very well as you are doing.

Thinking it consciously is ok as long as it's not something you do a lot to make it into a compulsion or in a reactive way to fear.

Yes, good spot. Try not to feed into things in a negative way with these positive thoughts, if it's actually some form of trigger that you haven't spotted somewhere, negative reaction only feeds it all so accepting it will stop that.