I was sitting and got the random intrusive thought "Go smear soap all over your TV and yourself." It was a thought. It's my understanding that we aren't supposed to do anything with intrusive thoughts.
My therapist, who works with OCD, said "In the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't matter whether you smeared soap all over your TV or yourself."
I don't understand what they meant by that. I thought the whole point was to allow the random, weird, intrusive thought to be there without doing compulsions. I'm not sure what the purpose of digging into the content is. With OCD out of the picture, it'd still bother me, as Aaron, to smear soap everywhere. Actually leaving a lot of soap on a screen would damage it.
Basically why did my therapist say "In the grand scheme of things."? It's causing me a lot of distress and throwing me off in what I'm supposed to be doing & trying to do therapy wise.
I reached out to my therapist to let her know this was bothering me. I said this:
"I've been struggling with something that's come up since we met this morning. It's similar to the noise that's already in my head, but it's taken a slightly new twist. When we talked about how it wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things if there was soap smeared on the TV or myself, my mind quickly started thoughts up like "Well see, if it's not that important, expose yourself to it. Smear soap across your TV and on your body, leave it until you habituate." I've been trying to dismiss this thought as another worry trick. However, I get particularly stuck because smearing soap across my TV would bother me aside from OCD, and I get anxious about what that means about myself."
And she responded with this:
"Good questions. It does sound to me like these are still the same types of thought traps we discussed earlier today, so while I know it is difficult to do- my recommendation would be to not engage/participate in the "what should I do about this thought/urge" line of thinking at all.
Instead, any time that comes up for you, use it as your cue to get out of your head and instead work on trying to be more present in the here/now. Keep working on getting out of the house, walking, seeing your friend, and doing things that are meaningful that you enjoy. Each time your mind wanders back to the unhelpful thoughts, bring your attention back to your surroundings, your 5 senses, or whatever you are doing in the moment.
In other words, drop the rope and find something else to do."
Do you think her reply means she didn't actually want me to smear my TV in soap when she said "in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't matter"?