copyright 2000
Okay, so you have these bad thoughts. Maybe they are blasphemous thoughts. That's bad, right? A sin, right? Well, let's think about it for a minute. OCD means having unwanted, intrusive thoughts. They just pop into your head, unwelcome and uninvited. How can that be a sin? How can you have guilt for something for which you have no control?
If you are like many people with obsessive thoughts, you fight these unwanted thoughts. Try not to think about them. But when you try not to think of something, it grows bigger and bigger until it takes over your mind, your entire day, thinking about what you don't want to think about and trying not to think about it.
So trying not to think the bad thoughts doesn't work. Penance, prayer, making up for the supposed sin, confessing the sinful thoughts to someone else - do these things help? Probably for a while. But the OCD brain isn't satisfied. It will never be satisfied with any ritual. When the thoughts return, you say another prayer, confess your thoughts again. It takes longer this time, but eventually the thoughts leave. But even quicker this time, they're back. And this time the thoughts are stronger, more horrifying because you know they won't be so easily dismissed this time.
So what is the answer? The solution makes no sense to most people. Let the thoughts remain in the recesses of your mind. The problem is the entertaining of bad thoughts, not in having them. There can be no guilt when we have no control over something. Paying attention to them, trying to get rid of them, doing rituals to rid our minds of them - all of these fall into the category of "entertaining thoughts." When we recognize the thoughts as OCD and unimportant and we allow them to just remain in the recesses of our minds, we take away their significance. We admit they are meaningless. Brain noise, I like to call these thoughts. We cease to entertain the thoughts.
It's not easy. One of the keys is to remind yourself that these thoughts are just OCD. We cannot control the thoughts that pop into our heads and God will not punish us for them. And doing penance for thoughts you have no control over is entertaining them.
Think of an obsessive thought as a train passing by. You can't stop the rumble and sound, you have no control over it. The train will go by no matter what you do. People that live near trains get used to them. If they hear them, they might say something like "There goes that train again." But they don't go out and try to stop it. They recognize it, then ignore it.
