Recovery is an Action
A common question that I see from OCD sufferers is: “How long will it take before I achieve recovery? How long do I need to practice ERP/ACT before I consider myself recovered?”
My (somewhat cheeky) answer is: you can be recovered now! Recovery is a choice that we make; it is an action that we do. We can choose to do compulsions, or we can choose to spend our time and energy focused on value added actions. One choice takes us deeper into OCD, and the other choice towards the path to recovery.
I apologize if that response came off somewhat facetiously. Obviously, it is a vast oversimplification of the OCD recovery process and for someone who is just getting into ERP/ACT, it’s difficult to “just choose” to stop doing compulsions. It’s like telling a struggling alcoholic, “beating alcoholism is easy - just quit drinking!” It’s not quite that simple. However, the point that I am trying to make is that, although OCD recovery is extremely difficult - it is definitely achievable, and the full control to beat OCD lies entirely in your hands.
Ultimately, the “timeline” for OCD recovery depends entirely on you - and there is no right or wrong way to go about it. Some people may be able to power through ERP and ACT in a relatively short time period (<6 months). Others may need to take it slower, as jumping head first into a demanding ERP or ACT regimen may be too overwhelming to complete in a short period of time. Whether you “recover” from OCD in a month, 6 months, a year, or two years is completely up to you and how aggressively you want to tackle ERP/ACT… and again, I want to stress that there is no “right” timeline for recovery… it will be highly personal to each individual and the stressors they are going through in everyday life.
Regardless of how long it takes you, what matters is seeing consistent, steady progress. That’s a big reason why I charted my own recovery progress - so I could compare my progress and see how well I was doing with my ERP/ACT practice. Some days and weeks, you may run into temporary setbacks, but as long as the overall trend line is improving, you know you’re on the right path. I’ve also written previously that recovery is a mindset, rather than a state of existence. If this sounds confusing, think of it this way: with a traditional illness like the flu, you are either sick or you’re healthy. You either have the flu or you don’t. It’s a binary state of being; true or false, yes or no.
With a mental illness like OCD, some days you may struggle with compulsions, but other days you might be completely “normal.” Let’s say that when an obsessive urge comes up, you have a 50% chance to give into compulsions and rumination, and a 50% chance to ignore the urges/obsessions and carry on with your life. The key to OCD recovery, therefore, becomes adopting a mindset where more often than not, you choose to ignore the compulsions and obsessions. In that sense, recovery is an action , recovery is a choice, and recovery is something you can start implementing today.
To break it down simply: recovery is all about choosing how you want to spend your time and energy. Do you want to spend your time performing needless compulsions? Do you want to spend your energy dwelling on negative feelings and uncertainties? Wouldn’t it be better to focus your valuable time and energy on things which you actually want to do instead? The greatest illusion that OCD pulls over us is the idea that we have to perform the compulsions that our brain is telling us to do and that we have no control, when in reality, we can always choose to refuse those compulsions and do something more valuable with our time and energy instead. Through ERP and ACT, you can re-train your brain to learn how to refuse those compulsions and more consistently choose to focus your time and energy on valued action instead.
At the end of the day, I find that many people struggle with OCD because of a perceived lack of control. We fear the things we can’t control, we fear the things which we can’t be 100% certain of. Beating OCD is all about accepting uncertainty and accepting the fact that we cannot control everything. However, one thing we can always control, 100% of the time, is whether we choose to do a compulsion or whether we choose to do valued actions instead. It may be difficult to realize at first, but you will come to understand that the choice to refuse a compulsion is something you ALWAYS have control over. And once you realize that, recovery simply becomes a matter of making the right choice (refusing compulsions and focusing on valued action) whenever those obsessions and compulsive urges pop-up, and consistently making the right choice over and over until it becomes second-nature to you.
So when you are struggling with OCD, remind yourself: you have control of your recovery. You can choose to be recovered now; it’s just a matter of making the right choice.
I hope this blog post helps, and wherever you are reading this, I am wishing you well and wishing for your success on your OCD recovery journey. As a quick note - due to some personal appointments over the next two weekends, I will most likely not be writing my usual blog posts on Saturday March 6 or March 13. Most likely I’ll be back to my usual schedule at the end of March. But - even though I won’t be updating my blog the next couple of weekends, I’ll still be available by email if you have any questions or wanted to talk about anything.
Eric