The OCD you can’t see – Iona’s story

Iona explores her experience with a form of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) that manifests as distressing intrusive thoughts. She sheds light on the condition and her favourite coping strategies.

"You've got to get yourself together. You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it." I used to sing these lyrics - from Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of by U2 - quietly to myself whenever I was caught in an intrusive, looping thought. Like a scratched record that wouldn’t stop playing in my mind. It became a lifeline, something to cling onto whenever I felt trapped in a moment I couldn’t escape. A coping mechanism that defused the anxiety of what I later understood to be an OCD-cycle. 

I was high-functioning on the outside. Inside, I was in a constant sparring match with thoughts that no one could see. For years, I struggled silently, trying to make sense of an invisible battle. Only later, I discovered its name: OCD.

I use the term ‘Pure-O’, short for purely obsessional OCD, an online phrase describing a form of OCD that appears to only involve intrusive thoughts, without the visible compulsions and rituals.

At 8 years old, I had my first experience of it. After seeing the Crucifixion depicted in religious imagery at my Roman Catholic primary school, the images replayed in my mind. To cope, I’d avoid the cafeteria altogether. In hindsight, what felt like self-protection was my first experience of a compulsion. An avoidance to manage anxiety and child-like confusion. I genuinely believed that something was wrong with me.

As I matured, the theme changed but the pattern remained. I’ve always been deeply sensitive to human suffering. Witnessing imagery from the Holocaust and slavery profoundly affected me. Instead of processing these and simply moving on, my mind latched on. I began experiencing intrusive fears about harming others, despite being horrified by the idea.

Then came an even more distressing thought: what if my anxiety didn’t mean empathy at all? What if it meant something was wrong with my character? I questioned myself relentlessly, terrified that I might be cold or dangerous.

This is the mechanism of OCD: it attacks identity, targeting what matters the most. I went into a frenzy of analysing my reactions, mentally ‘checking’ what I felt. Needing reassurance and trying to gain certainty about who I was was exhausting.

Eventually, I sought professional help. A specialist explained that while ‘Pure-O’ is a commonly used term, what I was experiencing was simply OCD. Invisible obsessions and compulsions.

Instead of outward rituals, the struggle tends to involve intrusive thoughts followed by rumination (extreme rumination in my case), analysing and trying to mentally resolve the anxiety. 

These intrusive thoughts can attach themselves to the very things we hold dear: love, trust, and the security of relationships. From my own experience, I've experienced recurring, intrusive doubts, such as: "what if I don't really love this person?", "what if they leave me?". These thoughts can be very real and distressing despite being driven by anxiety, groundless fear—rather than genuine feelings. 

I was introduced to the Pink Elephant Problem. If you tell someone not to think of a pink elephant, they’ll almost certainly picture one. OCD operates in a similar way. The harder I tried to suppress or argue with a thought, the louder it became.  

I wasn’t weak or morally flawed. My brain was simply caught in a loop: obsession triggered by anxiety, anxiety triggered by a compulsion, compulsion temporarily soothed, and then reinforced the obsession all over again.

When I stopped fighting the urge, something shifted. The thoughts didn’t disappear altogether, but they began to lose their power. OCD hasn’t vanished completely from my life, but it no longer runs the show. Intrusive thoughts still appear. The difference is I don’t interrogate them anymore. I recognise them as mental events, not moral verdicts.

I am not my intrusive thoughts. I am a person who notices them and chooses how to respond. That internal shift has been life-changing.