Intrusive thoughts are a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a mental health condition in which a person experiences involuntary obsessions and compulsions that may cause distress.

Intrusive thoughts about harm to yourself or others can be a type of OCD known as harm OCD. Therapies like exposure and response prevention (ERP) can help you learn how to cope with this disorder.

Obsessions and compulsions in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) vary between people and may focus on one or more themes. The term “taboo OCD” refers to OCD themes that center around socially ...

What if I kissed this stranger? What if I just stopped turning up for work? While intrusive thoughts like these can pop into your mind, they are common and usually easy to brush off for what they are ...

Although anger is not a core symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), it is a common experience in people with OCD. OCD involves intrusive thoughts and feelings, and a person uses compulsive ...

You may have noticed a lot more chatter on TikTok these days about intrusive thoughts. While some people use the term to describe their random impulses to, say, open and close their fridge door ...

Haupt is a health and wellness editor at TIME. Haupt is a health and wellness editor at TIME. On average, people have about 6,200 thoughts each day. Inevitably, some will be unwanted, alarming, or ...

The term “intrusive thoughts” has become common parlance from mental health creators on social media such as TikTok, and people have resonated with it. In psychiatry, we don’t usually talk about ...