Rewiring Our Thinking Patterns From Therapy/Four Steps - How Is It Going?

[taurean]

The core idea behind our treatment plans is usually geared towards weaning ourselves off rituals and rumination and exposing ourselves to our thoughts and fears so that over time they lose their impetus and reduce in frequency, and we can dismiss them easier .

I'm personally having a difficulty because of my looping thoughts and this, together with regular new intrusions, is holding me back - though on we go with the plan , but how are other people getting on with their objectives?

Regards

Roy

[Guest nervous]

I've have success with my erp lately but so far it requires constant risk taking all day and every new day it is never any easier ( I have hundreds of ocd thoughts a day). I assume that some day it will begin to sink in and "rewire" my brain but so far it is still an uphill battle

[worriedjohn]

Mine is going quite well for some days. Don't allowing me to fall even a moment into the loop. But I am still far away from saying I am recovered. Still fighting the battle. But doing it well.

[Guest HeadAboveWater]

Well.... I am doing better today than in the past few weeks, but I am struggling the same way as you, Roy. I have been doing good all day - really able to relabel and refocus - I have been able to see the OCD and the false messages. However, I just woke up from a nap and an image popped into my brain, ruminated and I got a groinal response. The groinal response always makes me think of new thoughts, questions and doubts. So, I'm trying to focus away from ruminating any further - now the image is looping but I am not giving in anymore. Hopefully, later on I will be able to see it clearly again.

[taurean]

It is such a challenge I agree when it - as it does - hits us when we are down.

Back in the summer I was - for 3 months - pretty well free of intrusions, and at the beginning of the year for 3 months that was also the case.this corresponded with a period when I was very fit and well - the mind body spirit effect of course.

So I know it does work - but then in my case something lowers (mental shields) that weakens my resilience and intrusions start up and break through and looping starts up.

If the brain were like this computer, it could be reset to a date and time before the last episode occurred. Yes, you can do that with the laptop!!!I had a problem after accepting a voluntary upgrade from a piece of software I had added. Removing the software didn't solve it, the boffins at the manufacturer couldn't , but my senior citizen's guide to laptops told me how to reset the laptop's clock to before the upgrade so that the upgrade never existed. It worked.

Perhaps there is an in vivo exposure we can do - imagine we are back at the date before a major trigger.took place, and we can ask ourselves to imagine the brain returning to how it was before the trigger, i.e. free of the response to the trigger?

I think not, but there might be something in the idea from the point of view just of reminding ourselves that we were fine before the trigger took place, and the meaning being given to the response is just OCD - mental chaff and we should simply ignore it.

[Guest ADD]

You can't unring a bell unfortunately and you can't erase knowledge and memory. Our minds are much more complex than a computer ever could be. You can change the meaning and association of something by overwriting it, though never by erasing any writing. Only overwrite. If you do it enough though then your mind can't access the old info and meaning clearly and it gets lost in the subconscious with the new default to access the new programming and associations.

Actually there is something in nlp they do with timelines and going back to before the start of a trauma memory and then expanding the timeline of it. As in, usually in the ptsd memory it is very condensed. You think about the start of the part that was emotional and upsetting and keep replaying that short frame of the timeline. So the exercise is to expand the memory to include a much longer sequence of events before and after it. Then you turn it inside out and run the frames backwards in your mind until you get to the start long before it and do it speeded up and in black and white. Supposedly it increases the perspective of the size and importance of it of being smaller and distorts the memory and loop of it so the mind can't access it the same way anymore. You have to do it very fast in the mind.