Mar 17, 2026
ðŸ’What Causes OCD Thoughts To Stick? – with Psychotherapist Jessica Hayes
There are three things that tend to make thoughts stick in OCD:
1. When there is an emotion associated with the thought
2. What you believe the thought says about you
3. How you respond to the thought
If an intrusive thought is associated with an intense emotion, your brain views it as important.
If you believe the thought says something about your character, such as worries about being a ‘bad person’ or harming others, the thought is likely to stick.
If you begin responding to the thought through compulsions or avoidance, your brain receives the feedback that this thought must be true, causing it to stick.
Jess Hayes is a BABCP registered psychotherapist, specialised in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. She is especially interested in working with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and perinatal mental health. Her approach as a therapist is goal-focused, working with what individuals bring to sessions and guiding them toward the life they are hoping to build. With great passion about her work, she is determined to help in the best way possible.
According to Jess, treatment for OCD focuses on a couple of things:
- Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): changing how you respond to a thought
- Managing distress: being able to tolerate the emotions that come up
- Background beliefs: working on the pre-existing beliefs one has about themselves, such as low self-esteem.
By working on this, the overall aim is to make sure the thoughts do not stick around as much.
