Harm OCD - Intrusive Thoughts that I Might Hurt Someone
Therapy in a Nutshell
Therapy in a Nutshell -Emma McAdam
4.8 • 657 Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to another episode of the Therapy in a Nutshell podcast. I'm Emma McAdam and I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. |
| 0:07.0 | And this podcast is all about taking the life-changing, but usually kind of complicated topics of therapy and boiling them down into simple, easy-to-understand concepts that you can use in your daily life. |
| 0:19.0 | If you find today's episode as helpful to you, |
| 0:21.0 | please pass it on to someone else who could benefit from it as well. Each podcast episode |
| 0:24.8 | comes from a corresponding video you can find on the Therapy in a Nutshell YouTube channel. |
| 0:29.2 | Also, these podcasts are educational and don't replace the advice or direction you may be receiving |
| 0:34.1 | from a therapist or other health professionals. Now please enjoy the episode. |
| 0:38.9 | But what if my intrusive thoughts are dangerous? This is the question someone asked after I |
| 0:43.2 | published a video teaching a skill called cognitive diffusion. This is an important skill for dealing |
| 0:48.0 | with intrusive thoughts. You take these annoying, repetitive, unhelpful thoughts and you just |
| 0:53.9 | create a little space between |
| 0:55.4 | you and your brain. You can thank your brain for the thought or just say, oh, there's my word |
| 1:00.2 | machine, making words again. Now, that's a great strategy. I'm a good job. But what if those |
| 1:06.5 | thoughts are so threatening that you can't ignore them? Like, what if my thoughts tell me that I might |
| 1:12.1 | hurt myself or someone else or I might assault someone? I mean, sure, this person says, |
| 1:18.8 | maybe I could ignore a thought that says, I'm a bad person, but I can't ignore the thought that |
| 1:25.4 | says, what if someone comes in the kitchen while I'm making dinner |
| 1:28.6 | and I stab them with this knife? |
| 1:31.3 | Okay, I think a lot of people wonder this, |
| 1:33.8 | especially people with OCD, |
| 1:35.3 | what if my thoughts are different? |
| 1:37.2 | What of mine are actually dangerous? |
... |
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