Mental Compulsions:  Special thoughts, sayings, prayers, numbers, images, and other strategies that you perform entirely, or almost entirely in your mind, as opposed to outward behavior, for the sole purpose of counteracting, dismissing, or preventing obsessional thoughts and anxiety.  

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Types of Mental Compulsions: 

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1. Mental avoidance/thought suppression:  attempts to suppress a thought you deem not right/wrong (don’t think of the white bear….). Accepting the presence of thoughts is an important part of recovery.  Letting go of thinking is not the same as actively making the thought go away or pushing it away.

2. Thought neutralizing: trying to counter a negative/uncomfortable/undesired/feared thought or event with something that you think will offset how horrible/terrifying/despicable/uncomfortable/wrong/inappropriate you perceive the original thought or behavior to be.  Example: you had a random flash/picture/thought of pedophilia or hurting someone. You think this is so horrific (because it is contrary to who you are), that you then engage in compulsive praying, confessions, etc. 

3. Counting:  Where one feels the need to count to keep something bad from happening, or it can be used as a form of compulsive avoidance, such as when one counts to distract oneself from the presence of other unwanted thoughts.  The compulsion is done in the hope that the obsession/intrusive thought or urge were not going on, rather than accept that the obsession/intrusive thought or urge is occurring. 

4. Tracing/Tracking (like in contamination ocd; you track someone walking into your house with their shoes to keep track of all of the dirt/contamination)

5. Mental review: Playing a scenario, event, conversation, etc in your mind, over and over again to check if you did/said something just right, did something wrong, hurt someone, did something inappropriate, etc. 

6. Emotional checking : checking for confirmation that you love your partner, particularly preset in relationship OCD. 

7. Self-or Other Reassurance:  Seeking reassurance from self, others, the internet, etc, to elicit commentary that you are safe, that you would never act on the obsessions/thoughts. 

8. Excessive Checking: Checking of self or others to ensure you did not act on an obsession, or that the obsession came true.  

9. Confessing: Confessing thoughts, urges, or perceived impulses to harm self or others. Confessing to others your obsessions, because they are intolerable to you, to make sure you don't act on obsessions, etc. 

10. Mental Analysis: Analyzing why you would never act on the obsessions or urges

11. Rumination/worry:  Engaging in a repetitive negative thought process that loops continuously in the mind without end or completion. The pattern can be distressing, difficult to stop, and usually involves repeating a negative thought or trying to solve an evasive problem. It can look like worrying about a future event, replaying a past scenario or trying to predict how something will play out. Sometimes it’s just turning the same thought in circles without much variation. Rumination often consumes a lot of time and emotional energy.  People who ruminate will often report that they do not realize they are doing so until a considerable amount of time has passed, and they are uncomfortably far down the rabbit’s hole.

12. Mental rehearsal:  Involves replaying invented visions of the future, in an attempt to check for the likelihood of catastrophe.  This can also be referred to reverse ruminating, where the focus is entirely on the future, such as an upcoming performance, encounter, interview, or other event that could go terribly wrong. This often is confused with preparing, but is better described as compulsively going over and over something that has yet to happen, in an attempt to relieve discomfort about what could happen. The hope here, is that an individual engaging in this compulsion will achieve certainty that the future event goes precisely as desired, rather than accepting that the future may bring any number of things to the present to be dealt with.  

13. Memory hoarding: To over-attend to the details of an event, person, or object in an attempt to mentally store it for safekeeping.  The person engaging in this compulsion likely believes that there is special significance to an event/person/object, and therefore, must be recalled/remembered EXACTLY AS IS at a later date. The uncertainty surrounding whether or not he/she/they will be able to adequately reflect upon and evaluate the significance of specific events/people/objects, cause discomfort, which is likely avoided at all cost. 

14. Compulsive prayer: Saying prayers over and over in your head or out-loud a certain number of times or in a special way. Or saying prayers to "clean" your mind from your "bad" thoughts/obsessions. 

15. Scenario twisting: Also known as Theorizing or hypothesizing combines reviewing and checking by first replaying an event that did take place and then adding a hypothetical element of the event that could have happened, but did not take place.  Afterwards, an individual may then proceed to analyze how he/she/they would have responded/behaved if the feared scenario had taken place.  The hope is that one will experience certainty that the obsession/urges are not acted upon. 

16. Mental Rituals: Rituals that include trying  to figure out with certainty if you did, could, or would act on the obsession.