Mental Compulsions are not seen by others but are performed in one’s own mind. Mental compulsions are mental reassurance, mental testing and mental analysis. That involves scenario checking, thought review, mental fact checking. Thought review, fact checking and scenario checking are dangerous to actually get into because when your anxiety goes up, which increases the chances that you’re going to have more anxiety provoking intrusions and uncertainty that is going to lead to more and more panic. The problem with all mental compulsions is that they may work in the short term, but in the long term, they actually create a more vicious cycle of anxiety which leads to more compulsions, which leads to more anxiety, and there really is no solution created; more of a problem, that’s actually created.

Mental Analysis (MA) MA occurs when a person attempts to analyze and/or make rational sense out of an irrational thoughts. This process leads to a repetitive cycle in which a person thinks about an intrusion over and over again with no end or relief in sight. That happens when a person gets intrusive thought and tries to analyze the intrusive thought for significance, importance, and tries to gain control over it by analyzing whether it’s important or not.

Mental Reassurance (MR) Mental reassurance is a process of where you review in your mind intrusive thoughts and try to get reassurance from past experiences or others that will decrease uncertainty and reduce your anxiety. MR is very similar to ‘physical reassurance’ in which a person asks for and seeks reassurance that their thoughts or images are ‘safe’ and not real. The only difference with MR is that the person is actually scanning his or her own mind for any events, thoughts, or instances that would give them a temporary short term relief of reassurance to combat their intrusion.

Mental Testing (MT) MT is the process in which a person tries to evaluate how anxious they are getting from their intrusion. This may be done in an attempt for the person to prove that they are anxious and do not ‘like’ the intrusion. Mental testing is when you get intrusive thought and you try to neutralize it by basically saying to yourself, “Is this really making me anxious? Is this not making me anxious?” and you try to neutralize thought and convince yourself that the thought is insignificant and unimportant * Agreeing with a thought does not mean that you are actually accepting the thought as being part of your belief system; rather it is a technique to be used in order to not perform a compulsion.