Hey Everyone-

I've been away for awhile working on my career, but I wanted to stop back and say hello to everyone and offer my support to everyone that suffers from intrusive thoughts. I've been reading alot of posts from some of the new people and wanted to offer some insight and suggestions as someone who suffers from intrusive thoughts.

From my experience, most of my intrusive thoughts boil down to the fact that I don't want to be hurt and want to avoid mental anguish, disappointment, or rejection. I truely believe we have these thoughts to avoid all of these things. The thoughts are symbolic, not literal in nature. For instance, if you have these thoughts about someone you love or you're dating, and you've had really bad experiences in the past with relationships, naturally you're going to try to avoid a relationship no matter how much you really want to be in one. The way our subconscious gets us to avoid the relationship is to flash all of these images into our minds, which in turn scares the hell out of us, and helps us avoid the situation completely. Now, we don't have to worry about being hurt. The mind and subconscious are very powerful, and although you might not think about all the hurts form previous relationships, your subconscious still remembers and doesn't want to deal with that kind of pain. I know I don't.

I know that I've totally avoided certain situations becuase I don't want my OCD to start acting up again, but in most cases, no matter how much my OCD flares up, I expose myself to the situation more and more. The key is to slowly expose yourself and not bite off more than you can chew.

Don't forget, there are over 4 million of us in the US that have OCD, so you're never alone in your fight. None of us are crazy, none of us are abnormal, we're normal, sensitive people. :D