Worries or doubts about your identity. For example, having obsessions or compulsions about your sexuality or gender identity. Or having constant doubts about your beliefs or values. You might feel like you have to continue doing the compulsion until your distress or doubt goes away and things feel right again. You might know that it doesn't make sense to carry out a compulsion. But you still feel unable to resist doing it. Hatzigeorgiadis, A., N. Zourbanos, E. Galanis, and Y. Theodorakis. 2011. Self-talk and sorts performance: a Meta-analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6 (4): 348–356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611413136. Offers online information as well as helpline support to under-25s about anything that’s troubling them. But for those of us with OCD, our need for certainty can make our symptoms worse. It's very common for those of us with OCD to worry about whether we really have OCD. This is sometimes called 'meta OCD'.

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Note that I am not claiming that all structured thought is linguistic in nature. There might be structured thought that does not result from imposing syntactic structure on lexical items. Rules, for example, provide structure; structured thought thus only requires the application of a rule to more basic items, whatever these may be (as in a conditional—a common notion or ‘rule’ in neuropsychology; cf. Bunge and Wallis 2008). The distinction between (otherwise) structured thought and linguistically structured thought is important to keep in mind, especially if we assume an evolutionary perspective and aim to explain how complex thought might have evolved. Involve a number, such as feeling like you have to complete a compulsion a specific number of times without interruption We can help to guide our thoughts in the right direction when we follow detailed and intricate plans. Whatever it is that you want in life, as long as you do the proper amount of planning for it, you can achieve it over time. It just won’t happen overnight. But it’s the right plan that will take you from Point A to Point B. Without it, you’ll be left scratching your head and wondering why you’re not making the amount of progress you’re after. Step #6 — Effectively Manage Your Time Vygotsky, L. S. 1978. Mind in Society. The development of higher psychological processes, eds. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Machery, E. 2005. You don’t know how you think: Introspection and Language of Thought. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56: 469–485. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axi130.Some of us find it helpful to label our OCD in this way. It might make it easier to make sense of our OCD or to find others with similar experiences. Therefore: Entertaining a thought is either an instance of inner speaking or the thought entertained does not exhibit syntactic structure or invoke lexical concepts.

Pure thoughts: Is it even possible to keep my thoughts pure?

Chu, M., and S. Kita. 2016. Co-thought and co-speech gestures are generated by the same action generation process. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition 42 (2): 257–270. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000168. You may prefer to use the word 'themes' to describe the different topics of your obsessions and compulsions. You may have one theme, or lots of different ones. They may change or come and go over time. Some themes may bother you more than others. Buchsbaum, B. R., and M. D’Esposito. 2019. A sensorimotor view of verbal working memory. Cortex: 134–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.11.010. Smortchkova, J., K. Dolega, and T. Schlicht, eds. 2020. What are Mental Representations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martinez-Manrique, F., and A. Vicente. 2015. The activity view of inner speech. Frontiers in Psychology 6 (232): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00232.Vygotsky, L. S. 1999. Tool and sign in the development of the child. In The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky, eds. Scientific Legacy, ed. R. W., and Rieber, vol. 6, 2–68. New York and London: Plenum Press.