General OCD Recovery Tips
For this week’s blog post, I was reflecting on some general advice and guidance that I had learned (or was taught to me) during my own recovery journey, and which might be useful to share with readers of my blog who are struggling with OCD. Without further ado (and in no particular order), here they are:
Trust is an Action (not a feeling)
OCD is often called the “Doubting Disorder” because it makes us doubt literally everything relating to our obsessions. Did I hit someone while driving my car? Did I leave my house door unlocked? Did I say something awful to that one person? Am I really a good person at heart? The list is practically endless and is only limited by the number of obsessions your brain can think up!
For people suffering from OCD, it can often feel like you can’t “trust” your brain or trust its own version of events. For example, something I struggled with greatly was the idea of false memories, where I would ruminate endlessly on something that may or may not have happened in the past. One of my worst anxiety attacks (that lasted literally weeks) happened after I went out drinking one night with a couple friends. The next morning, I woke up and my brain attacked me with horrible thoughts: “What if you did something terrible while drunk? What if you said something offensive and now your friends hate you?” I spiraled into the classic OCD cycle of getting upset by the obsession, ruminating endlessly and trying to replay the previous night’s events in my mind (compulsions) to “prove” that I had done nothing wrong, and ironically the more I tried to “figure it out,” the less certain I became and the more convinced my brain was that I had done or said something awful. I could not trust my own memory or trust my brain’s recollection of how the events actually played out.
A lot of people might say: “It’s OK. Trust yourself and trust that it’s only OCD.” For me (and I imagine for many OCD sufferers as well), this “advice” is not very helpful, because when someone tells you to “trust” that it’s OCD, you immediately start trying to figure out all sorts of ways to “prove” that your fears and obsessions are OCD and not actually you. So this advice is not very helpful and can get us stuck even further in the obsession-compulsion cycle.
What helped me instead was understanding that Trust is an Action. What I mean is that even when you are struggling enormously with feelings of anxiety, guilt, fear, and uncertainty, you can still do things that you value and which add value to your life. You don’t need to put your life on hold to “figure it out,” you can learn to accept all the uncertainty and intrusive thoughts but realize it can’t stop you from living and acting in accordance to your values in the present moment. So for example: let’s say you have an obsessive fear of killing your baby. You get intrusive thoughts and are plagued with this terrifying fear that you are a horrible monster, that one day you might snap and kill your child, etc… You might say: “I can’t be trusted around my baby, because I don’t know if I’ll accidentally harm it!” The problem here is that you are putting your thoughts in control of your life. You are obsessively worrying about these irrational thoughts and ruminating on them, trying to figure out ways to “prove” you love your baby and would never harm it. You spend so much of your time living in your head and fighting your thoughts that you can’t even focus on being in the present moment.
Instead, show that you trust yourself by acting in accordance to your values. Show your love and care for your baby by feeding it, nurturing it, marveling at this tiny little human who looks up to you as the brightest star in its life. You can do all of these things even while having terrible intrusive thoughts. You might have horrible thoughts of killing your baby, but can that physically stop you from caring for your baby? NO! Because ultimately, you are in control of your actions and you can CHOOSE to act in accordance to what you truly value, independent of how much anxiety you are feeling or what you are thinking. ACTIONS are what matter in OCD recovery, not thoughts or feelings, and every time we make the conscious choice to act in accordance to our values, we are demonstrating that we trust ourselves over our thoughts.
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
This is something that I stress repeatedly on my blog, but it bears repeating again, because it is so important: in order to recover from OCD, you need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Trying to avoid or chase away anxiety is the root of the problem, because fundamentally those behaviors are compulsions that our brain tricks us into performing in order to gain a sense of relief.
I won’t beat around the bush: in order to recover from OCD, you will have to learn to accept uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, fear, doubt, and guilt. There is no “pain free” way to beat this disorder, and the sooner you can accept that, the faster you will progress on your recovery journey. What helped me greatly, and which I articulate in more detail in this blog post, is learning to welcome these uncomfortable feelings and even look forward to experiencing them.
You might feel anxious or scared from an intrusive thought or obsession, but so what? Does that uncomfortable feeling actually prevent you from living your life? Does it actually represent that there is an immediate threat or danger? Of course not - it’s a conditioned response that we’ve taught our brains after years of performing OCD compulsions. Instead, we can choose to REFUSE compulsions and instead ACCEPT feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, guilt, and fear. As a matter of fact - we can learn to welcome those uncomfortable sensations and feelings and even get excited by them, because they represent new opportunities for us to practice our ERP/ACT skills and continue to grow and develop our mental health and fitness.
Lifting weights at the gym and getting stronger is an uncomfortable, sweaty process. But if you’re a gym rat, you look forward to those tough sessions because even though they might be unpleasant in the moment, the long-term payoff of getting stronger and fitter is well worth it. OCD recovery is the same - the more you can accept those uncomfortable feelings without trying to avoid them or chase them away, the fitter and stronger you will become mentally. Experiencing uncomfortable feelings are opportunities for improvement, not things to hide from!
Giving In is not the same as Giving Up
Something that gets us stuck in a rut when going through OCD recovery is fighting our intrusive thoughts and obsessions. I must admit that I had this mentality when I first started my recovery journey - I believed that I had to fight my worst fears, I had to prove my intrusive thoughts and obsessions weren’t actually reflective of me, I had to actively challenge and refuse these thoughts whenever they popped up in my head.
The problem is - this process and mindset is entirely counterproductive to OCD recovery, because all of those behaviors I was doing were classic compulsions in response to the obsessions. I was inadvertently strengthening OCD and making it even tougher for me! Trying to fight OCD obsessions is about as effective as trying to fight quicksand - and the more you struggle, the harder it gets to free yourself.
Instead, you must learn that you can give in to the thoughts and obsessions. You can accept them and observe their presence, without trying to fight them or chase them away. For example, you might get a thought such as: “What if I left my door unlocked and someone comes and robs my house?” You might be tempted immediately to ruminate and try to convince yourself that you did indeed lock the door, but this compulsion only reinforces the OCD cycle. Instead, learn to observe and accept the thought. Tell yourself: “OK. Maybe I did leave my door unlocked and I will come home to an empty house. I will deal with that situation when I go home, because right now, there’s nothing I can do about it.” And then go about with your day and stay mindfully focused on the present moment, not on what may or may not happen in the future.
Or if you have a terrible thought like: “You are an evil person who would happily stab their own mother.” Instead of fighting the thought and trying to convince yourself you would never do that, instead you can observe the thought but recognize that its presence doesn’t have any affect on you. Does the thought prevent you from living your life right now? Does putting your life on hold to try and ruminate on it add any value? Of course not. Observe and accept the thoughts like you might observe clouds passing in the sky - they might float around and some of them might be interesting, but ultimately, you can carry on with your day without having to put them in charge of your actions.
Accepting your OCD thoughts and obsessions doesn’t mean you like them, or even want them; it simply means you recognize that they are present, but just like the clouds, that they don’t control your life and can’t stop you from doing things you value. Acceptance doesn’t mean you are “giving up” the fight against OCD - rather, it means you have learned that the best way to beat OCD is to walk away from the fight entirely.
Trying to Eliminate Anxiety is the Problem
Many OCD sufferers get stuck in recovery because they believe that full recovery means they will never experience anxiety or uncomfortable feelings ever again, and then they get frustrated when they keep feeling anxious. But as I’ve explained already (and also go into more detail here), that is the wrong mindset to have when going through the recovery process. I will go ahead and quote myself below:
If your goal in OCD recovery is to remove the feelings of anxiety and intrusive thoughts, you will never achieve that goal. Think about this simple exercise: someone tells you not to think of an elephant. So naturally what do you do? You think of an elephant. The more you try to prevent yourself from thinking of an elephant, the more and more that image pops up in your head. Actively trying to suppress thoughts actually makes them occur more frequently. That is why avoidance and thought suppression are not effective OCD recovery techniques. They are actually compulsions and only worsen the disorder.
The short answer is that by trying to eliminate anxiety (whether by performing compulsions or avoiding triggers), you are only worsening OCD. Instead, you must learn to stop reacting to your thoughts and obsessions via the skills you gain from ERP/ACT, and learn to accept these uncomfortable feelings and uncertainties. Once you make peace with the idea that you can still live a happy, fulfilling life even while experiencing uncomfortable sensations like anxiety, you really start to make significant progress in the OCD recovery journey.
If you can learn to accept anxiety and even welcome experiencing it as an opportunity to build your mental health and fitness, OCD loses its hold over you. But trying to chase away anxiety or make it disappear will only strengthen OCD.
The Door to the Prison is Open - the only one keeping you there is Yourself!
To wrap up all of my points, I want to state that YOU have the keys and all the necessary skills needed to recover from OCD. YOU are the one who is choosing to perform compulsions and rumination, which is keeping you trapped in the OCD cycle. But the good news is that YOU can instead choose NOT to do compulsions. YOU can choose to accept uncomfortable feelings, take valued action, and adopt a recovery mindset. And once you start choosing to do the right thing, you will find that there is no secret to OCD recovery. The door to the prison was open the entire time - all you had to do was choose to walk out.
I hope this week’s blog post is helpful and provides some good insight into OCD recovery, as well as providing some good, practical tips. These learnings were helpful in my own personal recovery journey, and I have no doubt that they can provide great value to some of my blog readers as well.
As always, I’m happy to talk if you want to reach out - and I wish you a happy and fulfilling weekend of building your mental health and fitness!
Eric