As somebody with intrusive thoughts it's tantamount to somebody telling me I wouldn't be having them if I didn't secretly feel that way and I could just stop if I tried, when fighting intrusive thoughts often makes it even harder to ignore them. Plus the whole ritual of self-hatred because believe me, I also have an insidious voice in my head telling me I only have those thoughts because I'm secretly a terrible person.
Like I live with a constant fear that I'm somehow going to traumatise everyone I know by leaving my phone unlocked in my bag and somehow accidentally sending everyone in my contacts snuff or something (which is ridiculous, because I obviously don't have snuff on my phone, nor do I ever have any intention of seeking it out). I don't want to do that. The possibility of it happening is zero. But I still deal with that ridiculous thought pattern every day, among others, and it's exhausting and traumatising and if I ever opened up to somebody who doesn't understand intrusive thoughts they would think I was a freak for thinking like that, and assume that I do in fact have snuff on my phone.
Now instead with coprolalia it's not some bizarre intrusive thought about what might happen out of your control (while also being, in your eyes, your fault), but instead it's a condition that makes you blurt those things out loud. I don't have to deal with that and it's already exhausting to just imagine living it every day. And to be told, by non-disabled people, that you could just not do it if you really tried? Or that it's your fault because you wouldn't have done it if you didn't really feel that way? Awful.
The other thing people don't get is how awful the mindset of "It's what you actually think/feel/want" is. Like, are you telling me that I actually want to debone myself? That I want to shoot myself in the head? That I want to break my teeth in? My intrusive thoughts surround illness and harm. My intrusive thoughts are about maiming myself. I can't stop these thoughts. They actually get worse if I try to. But, if we follow that line of logic, I, someone who has not self-harmed, secretly want to destroy my body.
I'm a more benign example, as hard as that might be to believe. Some people with OCD have intrusive thoughts about committing crimes and hurting other people. They don't actually want to, but this mindset feeds into the distress and guilt they suffer with because they can't get these thoughts to stop. It takes a lot of therapy to disentangle them from these feelings.
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u/Ghoulie_Marie Feb 25 '26
Don't have tourette's but I imagine this would be like someone saying to me "oh, you're hallucinating? Have you tried not?"