Is it common for people with ADHD to have obsessive thoughts and obsessions without it being OCD?
Yes, it’s pretty common. What seems to happen (at least, it happens to me) is that we tend toward “negative rumination,” which is a fancy way of saying that we have obsessive thoughts about how horrible we are at [whatever] and how we shouldn’t have said that thing two years ago and so on.
ADHD obsessions are slightly different and seem to be connected to hyperfocus. We’ll get intensely interested in a particular activity or subject and learn as much as we possibly can or do it as often as possible, basically until we get burnt out on the topic or activity. This is vastly different from OCD compulsions, though sometimes we may have compulsive behaviours as well. The reasons might be different, and they usually aren’t as difficult to deal with as OCD compulsions are. (In other words, we may feel compelled to do a thing, but unless our impulsivity takes over we can probably avoid doing it without feeling really uncomfortable; that’s incredibly different from OCD compulsions.)
-J
