Fear of liking intrusive thoughts

[bk82]

Hi.

I was wondering if it's possible to feel like you like an intrusive thought when retracing it, when you truly don't like the intrusive thought.

I've been trying to accept and allow intrusive thoughts to pass without worrying about or listening to them, by instead recognizing them as intrusive thoughts and continuing with whatever I was doing. But then I had an intrusive thought yesterday I ended up getting caught-up with, and replayed the thought in my head to test my reaction when rethinking it. I didn't have any problems, but this morning I remembered the fear and tested myself again by picturing the intrusive thought. But this time, I felt like I liked - or may have liked - the image. It made me very fearful and scared that I do agree with the intrusive thought. I tested again after and didn't like it those times, except one time I felt again like I "liked" it but realized I only felt like I liked it because I feared liking it so I had some kind of "reverse psychology" symptom or something. I have had it before where when retracing I would "like" an image because I feared liking it, and I'm not sure if that's what happened this time or not.

Is it normal to feel like you "like" an image when you don't want to, or if I like the intrusive thought then I agree with the intrusive thought?

Thanks.

[Brad10]

Hey I had this exact same thing last year, it's because your obsessing you're looking for another thing to obsess about if that makes sense ? It will pass it's just anxiety

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi and welcome to NMP :welcome:

I've put a load in here about my experiences with these thoughts which talks about this:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=184847

I had the "liking" issue with mine. And I noticed you are performing "checking" which occurs in OCD and is aimed at reproducing the fear response to ensure we are still disgusted by the thoughts.

But there are flaws in checking. It relies on an A-B approach with complex thought processes and when it doesn't appear perfect, we then worry we are turning into what we fear. There can be reasons for not getting the same response e.g. if you are depressed you can't expect brain chemistry to be the same at that time and so you may see a change in response.

And something else we tend to forget is that how are you supposed to ever recover from these thoughts if you must always react with fear? We work on accepting them which means we desensitise from them. This doesn't mean we agree with the content of them or see them as acceptable in terms of content, it means we accept & agree thoughts are just thoughts and part of how the human mind works so it doesn't imply some deeper meaning about ourselves.

So, as you recover doesn't it seem completely logical that your response to the thought has to change with it? i can remember laughing at how ludicrous mine were and at that point I knew I had made a significant step towards recovery from them. I had and now they no longer affect me.

I still have them, all human beings do, they just don't bother me anymore. Does this mean I see them as normal? Yes and no. I see them as part of normal brain functioning, that doesn't mean the content is acceptable but it's irrelevant as I know my deeper moral systems know they are wrong in terms of content and that I'm not someone who would act them out. It's just they get the same response as a thought popping up to buy a bottle of milk when in the supermarket.