Thinking about thinking

I think it might have been Jud Brewer who said “you are not your brain.” There was a really good book called Brain Lock. I can’t remember who the author was.  But in any case, it basically answers your question. You’re not conjuring thoughts. Your brain just does stuff. We don’t control our thoughts just like how we can’t control our feelings. We can only control our reaction to a thought or our reaction to a feeling.  It’s like if you’ve ever tried to meditate, your mind starts to wander. The longer you sit there, you start having weird thoughts that just come out of nowhere. You play out conversations in your head or run through scenarios of things that might never happen. It’s a lot like having dreams. We don’t control what we dream about.  I really like acceptance and commitment therapy. Russ Harris wrote a book called the happiness trap. When I have an unhelpful thought, I label it as stupid or silly and I laugh at it. I think to myself “thanks, brain.” My brain is constantly offering useless thoughts. “Don’t go to the doctor! What if you really are sick?” And I just shake my head and laugh about it. I don’t think anyone understands why our brain does the things that it does. That’s something science still hasn’t figured out yet. 

In my personal opinion, yes you have to accept that you’ll never completely understand how your brain works and nobody does. What you think isn’t who you are, thoughts are more like water, you can try and dictate where it flows but you can’t stop it from flowing. It helps to give attention to what we’d prefer to think about and draw attention away from what we don’t enjoy thinking about, but with OCD, that autonomy of attention is compromised by anxiety and urgency, all parts of OCD’s arsenal against your peace of mind. It’s trying to protect you, but by performing surgery on your thoughts 24/7 you’re only going to cause more distress. It’s helpful to be insightful sometimes, but not to the point of obsession. At the end of the day, you are not your thoughts. Try and relax and go easy on yourself, it’s normal to have thoughts you don’t like, they are not here to stay, they don’t define who you are, and they don’t have to be acted on if you don’t want them to be. Hope this helps, I’m not a professional, just giving my personal opinion from experience and learning about OCD, so please take everything with a grain of salt. Wish u all the best.