Every now and again, during the throes of passion, something horrifying will happen to me. I’ll be mid-shag and my dad’s face will pop into my mind uninvited. Obviously, this is a terrifying mood kill and an affliction I’ve long worried will have me carted off for psychiatric help if I ever admitted to it. Nobody wants to think about their parents in a sexual capacity. Ever. But this Freudian nightmare is actually more common than you might think. And no, it doesn’t mean you fancy your family members. Thank God.

Apparently, many of us are haunted by our family’s faces when we get down to it. This week, while scrolling my life away on TikTok, I came across a clip of former Made in Chelsea star Jamie Laing admitting to this very thing on his podcast, NewlyWeds, with wife Sophie Habboo.

While speaking about the mythical Greek king Oedipus, who slept with his mother without knowing it was her, Jamie said, ‘I had it for a period, it’s an OCD thing where I would suddenly go to my mum’s image in my head while I was having sex with you.’

So, why do our parent’s faces sometimes enter our minds at exactly the wrong time?
Jamie likened his mum appearing in his mind’s eye at the wrong moment to other intrusive thoughts many of us get at entirely inopportune times: Thinking ‘I could just jump’ when standing on the tube platform or, for a fleeting second, visualising ‘punching a baby’ if one starts crying in public.

Sex therapist Dr Holly Richmond explains that the basis for Jamie and I’s particular intrusive thoughts is anxiety. So, essentially, if we’re feeling anxious about being intimate with our partner for some reason, our brain will summon the most taboo image possible into our mind’s eye in order to yank us out of the moment and keep us safe in a different way.

‘I would ask, what’s going on with your partner?’ she says. ‘Is there resentment? Is there a lack of trust? Are you feeling too vulnerable? Any normal person would say they hate these intrusive thoughts. They want them to go away. Yet, we know clinically, they’re serving some purpose…They keep us not present because now we’re in this intrusive thought and we’re not in our body having sex.’

Of course, if your dad’s face appears in your head when you’re mid-shag, your first terrified question is: was Freud right all along? Do we all secretly have some twisted feelings for the opposite-sex parent? ‘There’s literally almost never something sexual there,’ reassures Dr Richmond. ‘It’s our body saying “here’s a distraction, because for some reason, it’s really hard for me to be present right now”’

Additionally, Richmond notes these thoughts don’t always present as dads for daughters and mums for sons. ‘Plenty of clients have had thoughts about their siblings,’ she explains, adding your brain is reaching for whichever family member would be ‘the worst’ for you to see at that moment. Whoever would repulse you the most, works best for your brain to pull you out of your body and into your head.

How can you stop intrusive thoughts like this from happening when you get intimate?
It almost goes without saying that me, Jamie Laing, and anyone else who has seen their parents, siblings, cousins or indeed grandparents faces during sex would really love for it to stop. Please, make the terror end. But, in order to be cured, Dr Richmond says we must first confront our anxiety head-on.

‘I would just ask, what is there going on in your life that you have to be anxious about?’ she says. ‘Instead of being in the rest and digest state, you’re in the fight of flight state – and fight or flight [when the body prepares for an incoming threat] is not conducive to having good sex.’

So, in order to move forward, Richmond recommends addressing the following questions: Is there a problem with your partner? Is there shame around sex? Is there a lack of deserving? Is there a lack of confidence that you don’t know how to be present to receive pleasure?

And onto the big question, should you tell your partner if you’re having these intrusive thoughts while sleeping with them? When I ask this of Dr Richmond, her immediate response surprises me: ‘No’.

Usually, sex therapists are very on board with sharing even the most embarrassing issues with your partner, so that you’re on the same page and have a mutual understanding. However, in this case, your confession could just lead to further confusion for the person you’re sleeping with.

‘This could really impact the relationship,’ says Dr Richmond. ‘So, I think, if you have the means to see a therapist – specifically, a sex therapist who specialises in anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder – I would talk to a professional first. What would be great to share with your partner is “I’m having a hard time staying present during sex right now” instead.’

She explains: ‘I would just worry that – let’s say it’s your brother or your dad that pops into your head – that for a partner who doesn’t understand psychology, they’re going to think “Oh my God, do you really want to have sex with your brother or your dad?”…They wouldn’t understand the complex nuance of the human psyche and that none of [those feelings] are going on.’

That certainly worked for me – but is there a point where you should be worried about these intrusive thoughts during sex? Dr Richmond notes that although having images of your family pop into your head when getting intimate isn’t ‘common’ it’s also certainly not ‘abnormal’.

The time to worry about this problem is when these intrusive thoughts enter the realm of rumination. Aka, focusing passively and repetitively on them every time you have sex. ‘Rumination is the top category for an obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis,’ says Dr Richmond. ‘Most people think OCD is behaviour based – washing your hands, checking the stove, checking you locked the door – but most of the time, it’s ruminating thoughts.’

‘If you’re thinking about this once every couple of months, just pay attention to it,’ she advises. ‘But, as soon as it starts negatively impacting your life, certainly that’s when you’re going to want to seek help.’