How can getting NO REASSURANCE help recovery??

[Guest lucylia]

I understand the logic but as I just read .... It's a slow process. And if someone broke their leg and need physical therapy, they would not be told to practise so much themselves every day. If they for just to dam tired then the pt wld finish for the day and I'm sure the patient would be helped. So what's so different for us??? We try and try to resist and then we get tired to. Don't we deserve a little reassurance just sometimes?????

Lucy xxx

[Ascend]

Why would you want to do something that's detrimental to recovery?

[gingerbreadgirl]

I think a little bit of occasional reassurance can sometimes help, especially in the beginning, but when reassurance is given over and over it becomes highly counterproductive, stoking the fires of OCD. An alcoholic may desperately want a vodka to get through the day but it's not going to do them any good in the long run. I see it as a similar principle x

[gingerbreadgirl]

With the example you give of a broken leg, if that person then tried to go for a jog on their broken leg it would massively hamper their recovery, even if that's what they really wanted to do. Reassurance is more like that x

[Guest legend]

Like any other compulsion , reduction = a recovery

[Caramoole]

They'd be given appropriate therapy that was particular to the type of fracture and know to be the right method for such a fracture. Sames true with OCD.

[Guest lucylia]

I don't think I purposefully WANT to deter my recovery. Of course I'd rather be well. I just think that when people talk about how it doesn't happen over night an takes practise and time etc etc .... That it should be likely to be expected that occasionally a reassurance slip up is inevitable. No a drink would not help an alcoholic in the long run, but a doctor will still tell them and family and friends of alcoholics that slip ups are a high probability for most x

Lucy xxx

[gingerbreadgirl]

Yes absolutely they have slip ups and so do people with OCD but they don't help with recovery which I think is what you were asking x

[Caramoole]

No a drink would not help an alcoholic in the long run, but a doctor will still tell them and family and friends of alcoholics that slip ups are a high probability for most x

No Doctor would recommend a friend/relative to give them a quick drink to get them through a rough patch!

Reassurance is okay in the early days,people do need reassuring about the condition, how it works, what's happening to them etc. Sometimes further explanation is necessary on occasion (and that happens). Repeated reassurance is counter-productive and something most of us won't offer. Even when well-intentioned there is already too much reassurance given in many replies

[Guest PaulM]

It's a complex topic to answer.

I don't think someone with a broken leg should be told to suck it up and put on their own cast once they figure out the instructions how to make one.

There is a difference in recovery between graduated exposure and flooding. When the latter happens, I think sometimes people need help. This is where it gets tricky. Simply offering reassurance every time something happens - big or small - isn't solving the issue. For certain we know that's true. But sometimes there is a fine line between what we see as an exposure and traumatic experience for the sufferer.

Everybody is different. But from my own experience, simply sitting with the thoughts and going on with exposures didn't help without some guidance. In some cases it did harm. I can't tell you all how much I wish I'd had the therapists I have now when I was younger. The compassion they showed help me trust them. They helped me see what is going on from a cognitive perspective. That has been life changing. Had they said on day one I had to jump in the deep end and traumatize myself, I would still be where I was or maybe even worse.

Before meeting them and having the experience, I was terrified of CBT and ERP. I actually thought ERP was barbaric. Taking the small and manageable steps, and realizing I don't even want reassurance for those steps, has gone a long way.

I hope some of this helps.

Edited October 23, 2014 by PaulM

[Guest PaulM]

No Doctor would recommend a friend/relative to give them a quick drink to get them through a rough patch!

Reassurance is okay in the early days,people do need reassuring about the condition, how it works, what's happening to them etc. Sometimes further explanation is necessary on occasion (and that happens). Repeated reassurance is counter-productive and something most of us won't offer. Even when well-intentioned there is already too much reassurance given in many replies

Agreed.

[Ascend]

Guidance and support doesn't equal reassurance.

[Guest PaulM]

True. But guidance and support can lead to figuring out how to take on challenges and resist the need for reassurance.

[Ascend]

Yes, guidance and support are a positive thing. Reassuring people once they know about OCD is counter productive.

I believe there's a big difference between the two.

[Guest PaulM]

Taking away alcohol from an alcoholic doesn't stop them from wanting a drink. They have to want to stop. At some point, that "moment of clarity" as they call in in AA, puts that desire in them to stop. No matter how much they want one.

[Caramoole]

Which is what Ascend is saying I think, and we do offer guidance and support.

It is also very clear on the forums to see when reassurance is damaging and how and when someone is craving it in a way that is proving detrimental their recovery.

[Guest lucylia]

But how do you guide and support someone who is in such distress by simply trying to distract them when all they want and need to calm them down if they are terrified, is just a helping hand in telling them what they are thinking and feeling is not wrong?? All I seem to get is "practise the 4 steps" or "district yourself" .... Tasks that can sometimes seem not only difficult but impossible on bad days??!!

Lucy xxx

[Ascend]

OCD isn't an addiction like alcoholism.

Sure, during recovery sufferers might gradually cut down on compulsions which is normal, 'flooding' as you say is too much for some people.

Actively offering sufferers reassurance is quite damaging long term, there's no need for it. We can be supportive and help them find their own path without doing it.

[Guest nervous]

Hi, seeking reassurance is a compulsion and just like any compulsions you can't just stop all of them right away, I have contamination ocd and I do compulsions all day long I used to do 300-400 things a day that ocd tells me to do, now I am down to 200-300 a day and each week it is better than the week before. But you can't expect the people on the board to offer you reassurance when it will only slow down your recovery. Instead we can try and offer you advice on how to resist these compulsions and help to see them for what they are because often we can't see it. Try reading threads of people with a different ocd theme then your own it can help because I believe we can see through others ocd even when we can't see through our own.

[Guest PaulM]

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that OCD is an addiction.

I'm having difficulty getting my point across. I'll think I'll step out of the conversation because I don't want to cause confusion. But I'll leave the thought that the "moment of clarity" I mentioned above is somewhat analogous to realizing reassurance in OCD itself doesn't help.

Some of us just needed help to see the reason for it. It's just my opinion.

I'm a bit of an odd duck and don't subscribe to "tough love" either. I'll leave it at that.

[Guest fiatver]

But how do you guide and support someone who is in such distress by simply trying to distract them when all they want and need to calm them down if they are terrified, is just a helping hand in telling them what they are thinking and feeling is not wrong?? All I seem to get is "practise the 4 steps" or "district yourself" .... Tasks that can sometimes seem not only difficult but impossible on bad days??!!

I may something that will sound a bit strange and unreasonable, but my best moments of breakthrough in OCD were when I was in distress. Refusing to perform a compulsion when it would be so easy ("just try to remember that thing you read some time ago and you will feel better!") and enduring extreme anxiety was so disconcerting, so weird, it really felt like the worst possible thing I could do... and at the same time, it was quite cool. It's a bit like when you go to the gym and do beat your best record. Ok, you feel rubbish, but you did it!

Sometimes I would feel like I am really going to die if I don't perform the compulsion, my life would be over, finished. In those moments, I would normally have run away and perform a compulsion. Instead, I wanted to see what happens. I mean, I've been running away from destruction, from the end of my life, for such a long time, I would like to see how it's like. I feel like I am going to die if I don't do this compulsion. I will die then. I want to see how death looks like.

Of course I didn't die and after not long I saw progress. My recovery was fast but really really intense. Sometimes I thought stuff like "why are you doing this to yourself! you are really going to destroy yourself!" I knew they were thoughts and although my whole body and mind wanted them to go away, I let them be there. Ok, maybe I am doing the wrong thing, maybe I will destroy my life... Sometimes it felt impossible, I thought it impossible, in those moments accept those thoughts as well, they are part of the disorder.

This is just my personal perspective and I don't mean to say that it will be like this for every person, but at the same time, I believe that if you really do push yourself, you will get strength from were you didn't expect any.

Edited October 23, 2014 by fiatver

[Guest imalright]

Hi

I think an initial bit of reassurance is good...but it got to the stage with me where I couldn't possibly get any more reassurance and had to accept it was part of OCD.

Hey - I even video myself to make sure i have not been contaminated and even when i am watching myself on that video and have the evidence right in front of my eyes - I still have doubts and try and seek more reassurance. LOL :-) so I had to put it down to a part of OCD that wasn't working no matter what I did. It's a part of the condition that keeps the cycle going x

I think the point of it is....we need to get to a stage where we don't need to ask for it and we can get it from within. Not as a compulsion of any kind....more like a 'no - that's an OCD thought. I know that nothing bad is gonna happen if I do eat that. I'm safe.'

[Guest jayjay89]

Reassurance is a slippery slope, because you can never be reassured enough - you might get an immediate fix and feel better for half an hour, but then 4 hours later when the same thought/worry occurs to you you need more of it and that initial reassurance, if repeated, isn't enough.

It's the same as checking compulsions (IMO). Because you can check the door is locked 10 times, you can replay locking the door in your mind, but as the anxiety builds all you want to do is check that door again, so you do. Then you go off and do something and minutes or hours later a thought occurs to you - 'did I lock th my door?' And the cycle continues. You replay it in your mind, you reassure yourself, but then you need to check th door, to be certain. Then as you walk away from the door you have to run back and check again because the doubt has grown.

Does that make sense?

Initially some reassurance can be required - even just reassurance that it's ocd and this is the way to treat it. But the more reassurance you get, the more doubt your ocd can grab onto and th harder treatment becomes.

Good luck

[dksea]

I think part of the problem in discussions like this is that people have a somewhat varying definition when it comes to reassurance. To some people it means specifically answering a sufferers repeated questions about a specific obsessive worry, others use it more broadly to include supportive comments and positive reinforcement.

I think lost would agree that the latter is necessary, it's the whole point of this forum after all. Where people tend to dig in more is the former, when it comes to offering answers to the sufferers OCD questions. There are some who advocate that this type of reassurance should be avoided completely for recovery, and I understand where they are coming from, but I think an absolute ban is not realistic. The problem, after all is not really reassurance, it's excessive, repeated reassurance. I believe it might be helpful here to compare compulsive reassurance to another compulsive behavior: hand washing.

For a person with say, contamination fears, a common compulsive behavior can be excessive hand washing. Safe to say that we can all agree that excessive hand washing is a detrimental behavior when it becomes a compulsion. No one needs to wash their hands 50, 25, 10, or even 5 times after using the bathroom for example. So it's important that the OCD sufferer stop engaging the compulsion, both because it feeds the OCD and it causes them literal physical damage. But no one would say that such a person should stop washing their hands completely! That wouldn't be sanitary at all. And, it's probably not reasonable to expect the sufferer to go from 50 handwashings to 1 in a single day. Now their may be some incredibly strong willed folks who can handle resisting the urge to give in to the compulsion quickly, but many people will take a gradual approach, tapering their compulsive behavior over time. ERP in general most often follows this same graduated approach as well.

Why then are we expected to stop a different compulsive behavior, reassurance seeking, immediately? Why when we recognize their is a necessary positive value to the underlying behavior (like handwashing), do we assume a person can forgo it completely? Just as we need to wash our hands from time to time, I believe we as human beings need reassurance as well. And, when given properly that reassurance can help us overcome our struggles. Of course it can go too far and it is critically important as part of OCD recovery to stop the COMPULSIVE part of any behavior, but doing so does not require abandoning the behavior completely, nor does it even require stopping the behavior all at once. In an ideal situation, yes that's best, much the same way it's ideal for someone to just stop smoking. its better that a person be given a gradual path that they can succeed at than a steep one which leaves them feeling completely hopeless.

As I said, it's vital that compulsive behaviors are confronted and the sufferer works at reducing them, but we also need to recognize people can only take so much at a time. A person with a broken leg requires physical therapy and pushing through some pain, but it would be detrimental to go too fast and risk making things worse. The same is true of OCD. The pace at which one person proceeds may differ from another's and its important to recognize that. I applaud those who are able to confront their OCD aggressively and quickly. I'm envious of the fact that they will see speedier recovery, but I know that it's ok that some of us need to take a little more time and be a little less aggressive. The important part is to do our best to keep moving forward.

[PolarBear]

While I understand where you are coming from, dksea, I think reassurance seeking is a different kind of compulsion that requires a different kind of response.

When a newbie comes on the forum and has no clue if they have OCD or not, we offer assurance. It's the first time they've heard from others that what they are dealing with is OCD and that there is help available. It's crucial I think to explain to newbies how their symptoms match the broad definition of OCD. To me that is offering assurance, not reassurance.

There is another group of people who have gone beyond needing to know the basics to constantly asking for reassurance. Now we're covering old ground over and over. We know that offering reassurance does no good. We can offer the best possible advice and assurance, but we know the person is just going to come back in a few days and ask for more reassurance. It can become an almost endless cycle. In the end, we end up participating in the person's compulsion. It does absolutely no good.

Furthermore, spending time on reassurance seeking (which almost always is connected to analyzing, ruminating, trying to work things out), takes away energy from working to get better. If a person is stuck in a loop of doubt/reassurance seeking, he or she is not working toward wellness. They're stuck in a loop that will produce no positive effect for the sufferer.

There are times where someone is working toward overcoming OCD who has a little slip and asks for reassurance. It goes back and forth a bit, they get back on track and everything is fine. I have no problem with a little reassurance in a case like that. But there are far too many examples where a person gets suck in the doubt/reassurance cycle. They spin their wheels and they get nowhere. I have no problem in cases like that of cutting off the reassurance and pointing them down the path to wellness. Someone has to make the choice to stop feeding their doubt.