In this blog, we are going to consider thinking error 7. Thinking a thought is equivalent to committing the action and makes one a bad person. For example., we can see this pattern in religiosity OCD and harm OCD. Consider a scenario when Mr X, a 30-year-old devoutly religious person and a charitable, hard-working, law-abiding citizen, starts to feel distressed whenever he sits down to say his prayers. He starts getting blasphemous thoughts. These include swear words and unacceptable, distressing images when sitting down to pray. He also receives the constant thought, “I hate God, and I hate prayers”. This distresses him so much because he starts to feel very guilty that he has now become an evil person just by thinking about this thought or having an intrusive thought about God.
A persistent fear of being a bad person or being thought of as a bad person may not only lead to guilt but also cause a person to seek reassurance repeatedly. To neutralise those thoughts, he could perform more prayers and rituals. Sometimes, people think of positive thoughts in an attempt to overcome those thoughts. Believing that one is an evil or wrong person just because he got a thought that is unacceptable to him shows the overestimation of the value given to the thought. This thinking pattern can sometimes be seen in OCD. Consider Ms Y, a 35-year-old mother of two.
She has intrusive thoughts of harming her two children with knives. She feels highly distressed and has also thrown all the knives from the house. She starts to believe that she is an evil person and a terrible mother for having these thoughts that she has no control over. She catastrophises these symptoms and begins to question her morals and values. She seeks reassurance repeatedly and is highly distressed and drained out. However, the obsessive thoughts in OCD challenge the core of one’s beliefs and values, which is the reason this is so distressing to people.
Now let us see how you can challenge this thinking error where one might believe that “Just by having a thought or thinking a thought one might be a bad person”.
Reflect on the following
Is “thinking” the same as “doing” in the eyes of the law? If thinking a thought makes one a criminal, then the law must consider this an actual crime, right? Why is it not so?
Are you thinking these thoughts intentionally, or are these thoughts entering your mind without your control? How can you be responsible for a thought which enters your mind beyond your control?
Do you know what others are thinking? If thoughts were so obvious, then we must be able to know the thoughts of criminals around us, mustn’t we?
If people have no control over their thoughts, how would that make them bad people? OCD is a disorder, and the thoughts are symptoms. How can having an illness make you an evil person? Continue reading the blogs and take parts of what might be helpful for your particular treatment of OCD.
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