OCD is a formidable opponent. It’s the sharpest prosecutor, the meanest bully, the dirtiest thug. Arguing, appeasing, or getting into a fight with it won’t work. You’ll lose.

If you suffer from repugnant mental intrusions, you may believe your thoughts are the problem. You’ve probably spent hours, days, or, quite possibly, years trying to reason with them or push them away. One obsession may resolve only to have another one surface. It’s exhausting and demoralizing.

Surprising as it may seem, your thoughts are not the problem. Everyone has thoughts, even bad ones. In a seminal 1978 experiment, psychologists Stanley Rachman and Padmal de Silva found that nearly 90% of the “ordinary” people (that is, a non-clinical population) they sampled admitted to having had occasional thoughts about committing violent crimes, engaging in taboo sexual acts (with children, family members, or animals), blurting out obscenities or racial slurs in public, harming themselves or loved ones, or doing something inappropriate (such as laughing at a funeral). The main differences between these so-called “non-clinical” obsessions and the “clinical” ones of someone with OCD are the frequency of the thoughts, the distress they cause, and the efforts expended (ie, the compulsions) to get rid of them.

British writer David Adam has recently published an excellent memoir, interspersed with fascinating historical accounts of the disorder, about his struggles with OCD, The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought.

Here is some cutting-edge advice in Adam’s book on how to cope with obsessional thoughts:

“Grit your teeth in the face of your thoughts and for God’s sake be more obstinate, head strong and wilful [sic] than the most stubborn peasant or shrew. Indeed, be harder than an anvil . . .If necessary speak coarsely and disrespectfully like this: Dear devil, if you can’t do better than that, kiss my toe.”

The statement embodies all we’ve learned from evidence-based treatment. It’s exactly the type of approach psychologist Reid Wilson advocates when he talks about “chasing the bogeyman” (I attended a workshop he gave on this treatment method just a few weeks ago).

An up-to-the-minute strategy for dealing with intrusive thoughts. From the 16th century, courtesy of the theologian–and OCD sufferer–Martin Luther.