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.

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 ...

Lindsay Curtis is a health & medical writer in South Florida. She worked as a communications professional for health nonprofits and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of ...

Ever had a scary or weird thought pop into your head that you just can’t shake? These are called intrusive thoughts, and almost everyone gets them sometimes. They can feel scary or make you worry ...

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 ...

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 ...

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OCD can sometimes involve distressing, intrusive thoughts about suicide, typically distinct from genuine suicidal ideation. Treatment like exposure therapy can help individuals heal from harmful ...

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 ...