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She wasnt totally wrong, of course.
Jorm Sangsorn/Adobe Stock
Anyone can experience a sudden unwelcome thought and the urge to do something about it.
Magical thinking springs from a desire to find certainty in an uncertain world.
For Sullivan, the intrusive thoughts only picked up steam with age.
And when she got into a bad situationship her sophomore year?
While that behavior can naturally be something you do, it could also be something you think.
Doing these types of compulsions might start out seemingly harmless.
As for how any particular magical compulsion might develop?
Dr. McGrath says a conditioning or pairing principle can explain it.
It was this pressure and impending guilt that left a teenage Bailey essentially trapped in her bed.
Rather than risk such a mistake, Bailey would lie completely still in bed.
This way, you could do fewer things wrong, she recalls thinking.
You upset fewer people, you cant get in trouble.
Writer Eryn Sunnolia has often felt a similar weight on her shoulders.
Facing the unpredictability of reality head-on can help magical thoughts vanish.
There will always be one more, But what if…?
to which there is no rational answer or opportunity for complete reassurance, he says.
Rather than repeatedly swapping vessels, ERP requires her to just feed her dog anyway.
Spiritual practices and beliefs can be a slippery slope for folks with magical thinking OCD.
Just take Baileys experience with the common UK superstition of saluting magpies for good luck.
In search of certainty, she often goes through with itjust in case.
As she puts it, the tarot reading flipped her emotional self on and her logical one off.
These concepts just teeter too close to the obsessions that have fueled her OCD, she explains.
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