Anxiety and OCD Forum What is OCD?
What is OCD?4 Years AgoRead this very interesting piece on OCD:
One important thing to keep in mind with OCD is that it is "false messages" that come from the brain. No need to feel intimidated by these thoughts. Just let them pass and just briefly, go on to another behavior. Let the OCD thoughts go as they would in a train car. Observe them, and let them go. Of course, new behavior takes time. Retraining the brain does take time. For further help, check other online articles on OCD and if needed, talk to a mental health professional. Talking with a professional can be quite helpful. 5 Very Specific Ways to
Fix Your OCD
HANS VILLARICA
MAY 1, 2012
Lisovskaya
Natalia/Shutterstock
For a
certain one percent of the adult population, life isn't so enviable. All day
long, they worry if they locked the door, switched off the stove or really washed their
hands clean, and they waste at least an hour a day silencing these intrusive
thoughts. Simply put, they suffer from an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Thankfully,
recent research in Cognitive
and Behavioral Practice shows an alternative treatment for OCD
that gets to the possible root of this problem: a person's inflated sense of
responsibility. Instead of forcing patients to face their worst fears, the
standard therapy that many patients refuse to endure, Concordia University
psychologist Adam Radomsky recommends setting patients' faulty beliefs about
their safety and accountability straight to restore their self-confidence and
quell their guilt.
For Professional
Help, Radomsky spells out five strategies that sufferers of this
debilitating anxiety disorder should try and offers further proof that a
reality check can work wonders.
MORE STORIES
Re-examine
your responsibility. Many of the symptoms of OCD can be caused and/or exacerbated by increases in perceived responsibility. The more
responsible you feel, the more you are likely to check, wash, and/or think your
thoughts are especially important. Ask yourself how responsible you feel for
the parts of your life associated with your OCD, then take a step back from the
problem and write down all of the possible other causes. For example, someone
who would likely check their appliances repeatedly might feel completely
responsible to protect their family from a fire. If this person adopted a
broader perspective, they would realize that other family members, neighbors,
the weather, the electrician who installed the wiring in the home, the company
that built the appliances, and others should actually share in the
responsibility.
Repetitions
make you less sure
about what you've done. This is bizarre because we usually check
and/or ask questions repeatedly to be more confident
of what we've done. OCD researchers in the Netherlands and Canada, however,
have found that when repetition increases, this usually backfires and may lead
to very dramatic declines in our confidence in our memory. To fix this, try
conducting an experiment. On one day, force yourself to restrict your
repetition to just one time. Later that day, on a scale of 0-10, rate how
confident you are in your memory of what you've done. The next day, repeat the
same behavior but rate it a few more times throughout the day. Most people who
try this experiment find later that their urges to engage in compulsive
behavior decline because they learn that the more they repeat something, the
less sure they become.
Treat your
thoughts as just that -- thoughts. Intrusive thoughts are normal,
but they become obsessions when people give them too much importance. In fact,
cognitive theory states that obsessions are caused by the catastrophic
misinterpretation of the significance of one's own thoughts. The
metaphor we like to use for this is a very old radio, for which you would try
to find the best signal and try perhaps even harder to ignore the noise. Spend
a week making this distinction between your OCD thoughts (noise) and thoughts
associated with things you are actually doing or would like to be doing
(signal). See what happens.
Practice strategic disclosure. People
with OCD fear that if or when they disclose their unwanted intrusive
thoughts or compulsions, other people will judge them as harshly as
they judge themselves. This sadly often leaves the individual suffering alone
without knowing that more than nine in 10 people regularly experience unwanted,
upsetting thoughts, images, and impulses related to OCD themes as well.
Consider letting someone in your life who has been supportive during difficult
times know about the thoughts and actions you've been struggling with. Let them
know how upset you are with these and how they're inconsistent with what you
want in life. You might be pleasantly surprised by their response. If not, give
it one more try with someone else. We've found that it never takes more than
two tries.
Observe your
behavior and how it lines up with your character. Most
people struggling with OCD either view themselves as mad, bad and/or dangerous
or they fear that they will become such, so they often go to great lengths to
prevent bad things from happening to themselves or to their loved ones.
But ask yourself how an
observer might judge your values based on your actions. If you spend hours each
day trying to protect the people you love, are you really a bad person? If you
exert incredible amounts of time and effort to show how much you care, how
faithful you are, how you just want others to be safe and happy, maybe you're
not so bad or dangerous after all. And as for being crazy, there's nothing
senseless about OCD. People sometimes fail to understand how rational and
logical obsessions and compulsions can be. Remember, your values and behavior
are the best reflection of who you are, not those pesky unwanted noisy
thoughts.
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