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Is there really a cure?


Guest Bethx

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Guest Bethx

Hi guys

My ocd is worse than usual just now and finding it so hard to ignore the thoughts and not spend every second trying to push them out or carry out a physical compulsion which is exhausting. How can anyone beat this? I know they say you have to ignore but does anyone have advice on how to ignore and not react or carry out compulsion to something so horrible and there's no way you can ignore it! I hate it I can't take not carry out a compulsion

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Guest silverlight

Not supposed to ignore it but rather let it be. Someone once said imagine a river and you see an ugly stick coming, you see it, know it's coming, it passes by you, and then the ugly stick keeps going down the river. Intrusive thoughts are the ugly sticks in the rivers of our mind. There is no cure, because OCD is disordered thinking. You just have to learn to reroute your ways of thinking and perceiving things.

Edited by silverlight
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Guest It'sOnlyNatural

I agree with the above post (good analogy!)

I would also add that there is very effective treatment - CBT would help to "train your brain" to have these thoughts and not respond to them, until eventually the thought weakens in strength because you are no longer responding to the anxiety. It is difficult at first but the idea is that it is get easier each time you expose yourself to a thought/fear and then resist engaging in that thought.

It's not a cure exactly (like siverlight said, it's a disorder so no 'cure' as such) but CBT can be really effective in the long term. Maybe think of it like diabetes - there's no cure, but with some medication and diet changes you can live a normal life :)

Hope that helped x

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There is no cure, because OCD is disordered thinking. You just have to learn to reroute your ways of thinking and perceiving things.

I am not sure I agree with the first part of this, partly because at the moment we still believe OCD is not physical and just disordered thinking, which means that with the right support and treatment some people can learn to unravel that and reroute their thinking to change disorder to 'order'... which for some people will mean recovery, no anxiety or compulsions to the occasional obsession which = 'cure'.

Remember, the definition of cure is 'to restore health'... and I stand firm in my belief that is achievable when it comes to OCD. The main hurdle being not everyone can access the right treatment to make that a reality for everyone.

Technically I don't have anxiety or compulsions for days at a time, so for days at a time I am OCD free, but I still have one main stumbling block which is why I say I still have OCD. But I will 'cure myself' of that too :)

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I agree and slightly disagee at the same time.....

My opinion is that I think it depends on what you mean by 'cure'. Some seem to think that stopping thoughts is a cure. You can't stop your thoughts, they happen when they happen. But as Silverlight and It'sOnlyNatural say, you can train yourself to react to the thought in a different way, which is what people without OCD do.

In my opinion, that's recovery. May not work 100% of the time, but if you can get to the point where it happens from time to time and you're ok in between, I would consider that revovered with the odd lapse.

Just my opinion :)

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Guest Ichigo

With today tech no cure.

To cure it the defective organs in the brain needs to be *cured*.

Cbt doesn't do that, once you stop cbt, defective organs work in abnormal way again

Even when applying cbt, organs work in defective say, why do you apply it in first place?

Edited by Ichigo
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Guest Ichigo

You're not meant to stop the CBT, you keep at it until what you learn in CBT is your first reaction to a situation.

Yes, but the fact that we have to apply it the whole time as not to fall prey to ocd means certain parts in the brain are working in an abnormal way.

Normal people without ocd, don't have that so they don't have to apply cbt in the first place

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With today tech no cure.

To cure it the defective organs in the brain needs to be *cured*.

Cbt doesn't do that, once you stop cbt, defective organs work in abnormal way again

Even when applying cbt, organs work in defective say, why do you apply it in first place?

Lots of assumptions there.

We don't know if OCD is due to defective organs (if you mean physical), I would hazard a guess it is not (which is why brain surgery is not appearing to get rid of OCD). And if CBT is done correctly, the cognitive part is about addressing the 'faulty thinking patterns', so if done correctly the brain is no longer questioning.

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Yes, but the fact that we have to apply it the whole time as not to fall prey to ocd means certain parts in the brain are working in an abnormal way.

Normal people without ocd, don't have that so they don't have to apply cbt in the first place

CBT is only applied until it becomes the new 'normal'... For example, I did my toilet exercise for about 3 weeks, after that it was the new norm and no more exercises were needed.

As for so called 'normal' people (which we are all normal) they do have unwanted thoughts all the time, every single day, for the most part they don't stick but even for people without OCD they do have sticking unwanted thoughts for days and weeks at a time... .'I am going to lose my job', 'I will lose my license, I must always drive 10mph under the limit', 'My partner is ******** someone else, I must check on them'.

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Guest dukkha

I agree with Ashley. For me, "being cured" wasn't synonymous with "never having an upsetting thought again" but rather with "being able to do live my life without constantly being in pain". Because of OCD, some of my thoughts used to keep me in constant pain. In recovery, I have learned to handle the disorder and feel much better. I still have bad days and I've had to accept that certain patterns of thought that have to do or reinforce OCD (such as perfectionism) are still something that I have to work on, they may even be something I will have to work on for the rest of my life. But I've gained back so much quality of life after so many points of total despair that I do believe myself almost "cured" or at least, in recovery.

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Guest Ichigo

CBT is only applied until it becomes the new 'normal'... For example, I did my toilet exercise for about 3 weeks, after that it was the new norm and no more exercises were needed.

As for so called 'normal' people (which we are all normal) they do have unwanted thoughts all the time, every single day, for the most part they don't stick but even for people without OCD they do have sticking unwanted thoughts for days and weeks at a time... .'I am going to lose my job', 'I will lose my license, I must always drive 10mph under the limit', 'My partner is ******** someone else, I must check on them'.

Yeah, but even when it becomes the new "normal" let's say for 6 months... if you lose your guard, OCD can pick it up again, or something else entirely... it will always try to pick on stuff and blow it out of proportion. so we have to continue doing CBT.

it's true that people without OCD have the thoughts like you mentioned, but still, that is not OCD, I would do anything to trade my OCD for having those "normal" thoughts.

The faulty thinking pattern we have, it must come from somewhere inside the brain, it doesn't matter if we call it by names such as chemicalyl or psychological thing. the OCD pattern we have must have a neurological abnormal activity in the brain. so let's say "a certain part of the brain" sends wrong signals to another part of the brain... which makes us experience OCD thoughts... now the question would be, why is that part of the brain sending wrong signals? there must be something wrong with it... of course it must be more complicated than that, but just for the sake of my point

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it will always try to pick on stuff and blow it out of proportion. so we have to continue doing CBT.

I don't, not for the stuff I have resolved. No new things have taken their place over a couple of years now, the same issue is not an issue anymore and the only thing I need CBT for is the one remaining issue which I have not dealt with.

Stop asking 'why' and start 'doing'!

The fact is for some people it is absolutely 100% possible to overcome OCD and lead a life where OCD does not bother them at all, ever (and they don't need ongoing CBT).

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Guest Bethx

Thanks for your reply guys, I really appreciate it!

I don't know if there's a 'cure'. I have been on meds and done CBT but I'm now off both. So when people say 'you will never not get thoughts but you just learn to deal with them and ignore them' and that's when you are 'cured'...but these thought we get are more content and more intrusive than people without ocd so will that part ever go away? Them constantly being there?

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Intrusive thoughts get more persistent and more anxiety inducing the more you compulse over them. As you get better and stop compulsing the thoughts are less anxiety inducing meaning you pay them less attention. This leads to them coming less frequently to the point where they don't come at all and if they do, you just don't care.

Edited by Gemma7
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Guest It'sOnlyNatural

I agree that it depends what you mean by "cured".

Technically speaking, a cure can be anything that means you can carry on with your normal life without being hindered, so I guess in that sense OCD can very much be "cured", if you apply the terminology in that way.

The point is, you cannot say "yes OCD can be cured" or "no it can't". As far as I understand, the nature of a disorder of any kind often means it can be recurring, especially if it has developed over a length of time. So whilst it may be "cured" in the short/mid term, it may come back. Doesn't mean it has to come back, and doesn't mean that you weren't still "cured" previously, but it depends on your definition of a cure. To my mind, successful treatment does not equal a cure as such. CBT is a very successful treatment, but that doesn't mean it'll get rid of OCD forever.

Also, (and this is just my opinion), I think it's wrong to label any illness as exclusively "mental" or "physical". Almost always, contributing factors such as developmental experiences, genetic predispositions and hormonal/chemical imbalances work together and as such, mental health is as physical as any other illness. Chemical imbalances in the brain are still 'physical' matters, regardless of the fact that they can be influenced by thought processes/experiences. I know it is still speculation, but from my (limited) understanding, experiences and complex-conditioning, etc. cause neuron-pathways to form in the brain, which are then essentially used to form an appropriate response to a scenario based on past experience or learnt behaviour. So in this sense, a physical way of 'curing' OCD would be to alter these pathways and/or chemical imbalances, which at the moment is done (with varying success) with CBT and medication respectively.

That was a pretty convoluted way of saying: Yes, OCD can be very successfully treated. And it can be 'cured', in terms of being managed to the extent that everyday life can be resumed. But a 'cure' in the sense of getting rid of the condition entirely? Personally I don't think there is one. That's just my opinion though :p

Edited by It'sOnlyNatural
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But a 'cure' in the sense of getting rid of the condition entirely? Personally I don't think there is one.

So those people who are completely OCD free and living a normal life and have been for some years now are pretending to be cured? One of the people I am thinking about had contamination OCD and the other what we call Pure O. In both cases they did need specialist treatment, but both tell me they simply do not have OCD.

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Guest Ichigo

I don't, not for the stuff I have resolved. No new things have taken their place over a couple of years now, the same issue is not an issue anymore and the only thing I need CBT for is the one remaining issue which I have not dealt with.

Stop asking 'why' and start 'doing'!

The fact is for some people it is absolutely 100% possible to overcome OCD and lead a life where OCD does not bother them at all, ever (and they don't need ongoing CBT).

So are you saying, you don't feel ocd lingering behind the background, and since you cured your ocd you aren't applying the cbt technique anymore, and won't ever in your lifetime apply cbt again for anything related to ocd?

Because for me a real cure is not having a single track of ocd left in your lifetime. And when that happens there is no need for me to use the cbt technique ever again

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So are you saying, you don't feel ocd lingering behind the background, and since you cured your ocd you aren't applying the cbt technique anymore, and won't ever in your lifetime apply cbt again for anything related to ocd?

Because for me a real cure is not having a single track of ocd left in your lifetime. And when that happens there is no need for me to use the cbt technique ever again

I am still dealing with OCD, but on the things I once feared, I no longer fear. I can pick up sheep poo, I can lick the sole of my shoe, I can put my hand in toilet water. On those things I don't do them frequently, but I do them without batting an eyelid at events to show others it can be done. From that perspective my OCD is gone.

I have OCD in another area which I need to work on ,and once that's gone I hope to be 100% free.

As for my friend Mark, well he's living life without OCD and got the dream job since moving on from OCD.

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Guest doris

I am still dealing with OCD, but on the things I once feared, I no longer fear. I can pick up sheep poo, I can lick the sole of my shoe, I can put my hand in toilet water. On those things I don't do them frequently, but I do them without batting an eyelid at events to show others it can be done. From that perspective my OCD is gone.

I have OCD in another area which I need to work on ,and once that's gone I hope to be 100% free.

As for my friend Mark, well he's living life without OCD and got the dream job since moving on from OCD.

wow! that is impressive and inspiring! you can lick your shoe--I can't even imagine!!

I have so much trouble taking exposures to those kind of extremes. I always aim for the 'normal' range and then fall short of that.

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Guest Bethx

I mean it as in can it be possible to be completely ocd free, no thoughts, no being able to deal with them, no more applying CBT techniques, just totally 'normal' :(

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