There is a known form of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) that takes compulsions and obsessions internally. Unlike the basic OCD, pure obsessional OCD makes the sufferer unaware of what is happening around as they experience the condition in the mind. The sad thing is that not everybody understands the symptoms. In fact, patients are often misdiagnosed or mistreated by professionals. Consequently, the person suffering from pure obsessional OCD will feel that he or she is flawed internally, psychotic, and evil. Moreover, the isolation and terror they often experience is somewhat compounded.
Basically, a person can general bizarre and nonsensical thoughts even those not suffering from OCD. In a study conducted in 1978, it was found that college students were reported to have thoughts with themes common to OCD. These thoughts can include forbidden sexual acts, violence, and urges to perform inappropriate deeds in public. The only difference with them is that when those without OCD experience negativity about their desires, nature, self-image and values, their brain tend to respond in a different way.
Symptoms that a Person is Experiencing Mental Compulsions
1. Compulsive Prayer
Sufferers sometimes recite prayers or special words mentally to eliminate unwanted thoughts. If there are intrusions that come into play, he or she keeps on praying until such intrusions will go away.
2. Mental Review
At some point, a patient will try to review his or her thoughts in order to acquire certainty about past events. For instance, the patient will try to think about a moment when he or she held a child and acquired a memory of touching this child in an inappropriate way. So the more attempt at gaining certainty about that thought, the more that patient will gain memory of distrust.
3. Mental Reassurance
A person might attempt to give reassurance that thoughts or consequences will not occur. Thus, he or she may examine if having thoughts of inflicting harm to others will mean he or she is bad or evil, provided that that person actually doesn’t fear if the thought will be acted upon or not.
4. Overt Compulsions
People with pure obsessional OCD symptoms often engage in observable compulsions other than the mental compulsions they already have. These include avoidance, reassurance seeking, and repeating behaviors so that they can neutralize the thoughts. For example, a person having a bad thought while starting his vehicle will try restart to match a good thought that might come up.
Pure obsessional OCD symptoms can be both learned and genetic in nature. Structures that are not enabled in the brain of the OCD will create sensitivity to uncertainty as well as decline in the ability of one to feel complete. Consequently, this will lead to more value on the incoming thoughts and the persistence of overreacting compulsions.
This type of disorder can be treated by helping clients identify that their distorted patterns of thinking will be helpful in the treatment process. Reframing and recognizing cognitive distortions as part of the cognitive restructuring will be able to help clients create more logical choices on how they need to respond to their own thoughts.