Why Do They Keep Saying It?” – Repetitive Thoughts in Anxious Teens

“He knows it’s not true. We’ve explained it. But he keeps asking anyway.”

It’s one of the most exhausting parts of supporting a child with OCD or high anxiety. You answer the same question over and over. You offer reassurance. You help them think it through. And for a moment, it works. Then five minutes later:

“But what if I did?”

“Are you sure it’s not bad?”

“What if I was lying and didn’t mean to?”

Parents can end up trapped in a repetitive loop just as much as the young person. It can feel maddening, irrational—and also deeply worrying.

So why do they keep saying it?

When Thinking Doesn’t Work

From a logical point of view, it doesn’t make sense. Your child already knows the answer. They may even tell you so—“I know it’s stupid”—but they still have to say it. It’s not because they haven’t heard you. It’s because the part of them that’s speaking doesn’t feel heard by thinking.

And that’s the key.

Psychoanalytic theory offers a different way to listen. It tells us that not all parts of the mind are organised in neat sentences and rational thoughts. When emotion becomes overwhelming—when guilt, fear, shame, or confusion exceed what the mind can hold—thinking breaks down. The thought detaches from its emotional roots and begins to spin.

A Mask for What’s Unbearable

Wilfred Bion described this as a breakdown in alpha function—the mind’s ability to metabolise raw emotional experience into something thinkable. When this function fails, emotion gets split off from meaning. It can’t be digested. The mind panics and tries to solve the problem by repeating it.

That’s what repetitive intrusive thoughts often are: not rational worries, but fragments of undigested emotion. The mind keeps repeating them in the hope that someone—anyone—might finally be able to make them safe, make them known, make them bearable.

Think of the thought not as a question, but as a cry.

Not “Did I do something wrong?”

But “Am I still good even if I feel this bad inside?”

Why Reassurance Fails

When we answer with logic, we’re speaking to the rational mind. But the part of the adolescent that’s truly in distress isn’t operating on that level. It’s more primitive, more bodily, more emotionally raw. It isn’t soothed by words alone.

This is why reassurance often feels like it “doesn’t go in.” The child may even become more distressed after receiving it—because it highlights the gap between what they know and what they feel.

Instead of arguing with the thought, try listening to the feeling underneath it.

What Parents Can Say

You don’t need to agree with the thought to acknowledge the pain it carries. Try these kinds of responses:

“I think this is the scary part of your mind asking again. Let’s listen to it together.”

“You already know the answer. But it’s so uncomfortable, it keeps sneaking back in.”

“I wonder if this thought is standing in for a bigger feeling that we haven’t got words for yet.”

“You’re not bad. You’re scared. Let’s stay with it.”

You’re Not Reinforcing It—You’re Translating It

Parents sometimes worry that by “not shutting it down,” they’re making it worse. But the real work isn’t in dismissing the thought—it’s in helping the child relate to it differently. To hear it not as a threat, but as an echo of something human, painful, and able to be thought about.

Over time, this changes the texture of the thought. It becomes less urgent. Less dangerous. Less central. Because it has been heard.

The Thought Isn’t the Problem

The thought will come and go. The real question is: Can the child tolerate their internal world? Can they feel frightening emotions without being overtaken by them?

That’s what healing looks like.

And that’s what your presence supports. Not by solving the thought—but by standing alongside it.