OCD consists of three things. Just three. You can practice identifying each of these in your own experience.
1. Intrusive thoughts (also called "obsessions"): These are disturbing thoughts that pop into your head automatically and cause you to freak out.
2. Compulsions: These are any activities you do to try to resolve the discomfort that comes with intrusive thoughts. This includes mental compulsions such as rumination, mental checking, mental reassurance, or thinking certain thoughts in order to control the intrusive thoughts.
*Many people lump intrusive thoughts and mental compulsions together, thinking they are the same thing. The important distinction is that intrusive thoughts come up spontaneously, like an eruption. Whereas mental compulsions are something you do actively.
3. Feelings: These are sensations in your body, which are connected to the intrusive thoughts. We could also call them emotions, such as anxiety and fear. In Chinese medicine, emotions are understood to be movements of energy in the body. And every emotion includes physical sensations, whether you are aware of them or not.
Anatomy of OCD: the Somatic Approach
In a healthy system, an emotion serves its function and then resolves itself by completing its movement. But in OCD and other disorders, emotions can get stuck. We are terrified of feeling them fully. So OCD functions to keep us in our head, pushing away the feelings as much as possible.
In OCD, these three things - intrusive thoughts, compulsions, and feelings - become tangled up into one confusing nightmare. But they are actually distinct processes which interact to produce the OCD experience.
A person in the OCD trance tends to focus on the intrusive thoughts and compulsions. But the feelings are actually the life blood of OCD. As the feelings are digested, the OCD trance begins to fall apart.