OCD can make people feel like monsters. That doesn’t mean they are.
I was struck by a recent BBC story about people living with OCD.
Not the stereotype.
Not neatness.
Not colour-coded cupboards.
Not being “a bit particular”.
But intrusive thoughts so disturbing, shame-laden, and relentless that people can end up believing they are dangerous, disgusting, mad, or morally broken. The article includes mothers terrified by harm images about their children, people tormented by paedophile-themed OCD (POCD), and people who do not even realise what they are suffering from is OCD.
This matters.
Because one of the cruellest things about OCD is that it often attacks what a person cares about most.
Their children
Their morality
Their sexuality
Their safety
Their capacity to be a good human being
And because the thoughts feel so alien and abhorrent, people often do not say them out loud.
They hide
They ruminate
They check
They avoid
They seek reassurance
They perform mental rituals
And every one of those moves can accidentally strengthen the loop.
In my work, one way of understanding this is that OCD is not just “bad thoughts”.
It’s often a catastrophic relationship to inner experience.
A thought appears.
The body reacts with alarm.
The person interprets the thought as dangerous or revealing.
Then they do something to get certainty or relief.
That may bring short-term relief.
But it teaches the system that the thought really was a threat.
So the cycle returns, often stronger.
This is one reason OCD can feel so unbearable.
Not only because of the thought itself, but because the person often lacks the underlying skills needed to:
notice what is happening internally,
tolerate anxiety,
interpret the intrusion accurately,
resist compulsive neutralising,
and stay anchored in reality without collapsing into shame.
That is also why this isn’t helped by “just think positively” or “stop worrying”.
The issue is procedural.
What matters is not only what thought appears, but what the person has learned to do when it appears.
Can they tolerate uncertainty?
Can they refrain from the ritual?
Can they stay in contact with the fact that a thought is not the same as an intention, identity, or action?
That is where real work often begins.
The good news is that evidence-based treatment exists.
But alongside that, I think we need a wider developmental conversation about the capacities involved:
self-regulation under stress
somatic attunement
adaptive emotional processing
reality appraisal
shame resilience
and resisting compulsive action when anxiety is high.
Because for many people, the symptom is the signal.
And the signal is pointing to missing skills that can be built.
Because I have worked clinically with clients who struggle in exactly this way, if there is enough interest, I may record a fuller video on:
how OCD works,
why taboo intrusive thoughts do not mean what sufferers fear they mean, and what skills need to be built to weaken the cycle.