Psychotherapists and psychologists have been my most difficult clients. Why? Ya can't get 'em outta their fucking head!
They're so used to mentally analyzing the shit out of every single emotion they encounter, it takes an act of Congress to connect 'em to their feelings and body senses. They've done this since they were around 2 years old, so it's a hardwired, automatic reflex.
One of the central reasons this happens to folks, is they're trying to make sense of anomalous, non-sensical behaviors they observe in the people surrounding them as children. They have a deep, pressing need to understand WHY life feels so odd or unstable to 'em, because it causes them painful confusion. When we can fully understand something, it ceases to feel frightening or dangerous to us. There's a familiarity for us about it, which makes it less threatening or disturbing.
Example: When you're a kid and you have scary fantasies about monsters hiding under your bed at night, if a parent patiently helps you look under there, and actually see for yourself there are no evil and terrifying beings that are going to snatch and eat you in your sleep, aren't you going to feel comforted?? Of course you are!
Children are naturally curious creatures. Ever been around a 2 - 3 year old, who incessantly asks "WHY" to your statements?? Their little brains are learning at such a rapid pace, they can barely keep up with that phase of their development.
The primary reason obsessive-compulsive thinking begins this early in life, is it's comforting to a child. Some kids construct imaginary friends to sidestep their daunting loneliness as a DEFENSE against feeling depression, which issues forth from not being able to feel a sense of belonging and connection with others in their home.
Hyper-analyzing one's pain in the simplest of terms, gives children a sense of having someone to TALK WITH about the inconsistencies and oddities they routinely observe at home. Mental preoccupation with these confounding events DISTRACTS from the emotional pain they experience in their body, and temporarily eases their discomfort.
It's WHY people enlist "psychotherapy" that spans the course of decades, often since childhood or adolescence! NOW, there's someone else (like a surrogate imaginary friend if you will) who DELIGHTS in taking that lifelong, habitual mental journey with 'em, and they no longer have to do it ALL ALONE. This is why thousands of people think of their therapist as their "best friend." At long-last, they have an actual 'sounding board' (rather than the virtual one they've depended on lifelong) to bounce their inner-most, endless mind-meanderings off of. Does this sound about right to you??
We all wanna be intimately understood~ but if we can't connect in a genuine and concrete way to ALL the feelings in our emotional repertoire because many of those sensations feel dangerous or distasteful to us, can we ever actually KNOW OURSELVES?? Aren't there parts of us we will forever continue to harshly judge and reject, if we're never taught they're human and normal, by someone who IS?
Obsessive-Compulsive thinking is a direct byproduct of DEPRESSION and core sensations of emptiness, we refuse to let ourselves experience~ because growing up, there was NO ROOM in our home environment to entertain or express those types of emotions! Henceforth, we endlessly talked to ourselves in our head about our pain, instead of building the exceptional courage it takes to face it head-on, and actually shrink and purge it from our body's cellular structure.
This practice incidentally, is the nature and true definition of Healing Work, which seems completely counterintuitive to most people~ including MILLIONS who enter and work in a "helping profession."