Doing CBT myself

[NicoletteCB]

Hello friends, I have a question about doing CBT for myself. My OCD is not too severe rn, just a bit annoying.

I have been searching for a new cbt therapist and it has been extremely frustrating.  My insurance only covers a select group of therapists in my area, and a lot of them either are not accepting new clients or apparently don't know how to reply back to emails...  It's frustrating.

 

So anyway to hold myself over, I want to do some of my own CBT for negative thought patterns/ magical thinking/etc.  My only issue is how do you "test" and reason an intrusive thought out with CBT, without it becoming a compulsion? I don't want it to become a compulsion to have to compile a list of reasons why the thought is false everytime plus ocd thoughts sometimes will change themselves around to accomodate another worst case scenario.

 

thanks

[PolarBear]

You don't test the thoughts for anything. The last thing you want to do is sit there and try to out logic an illogical disorder. 

OCD lies, all the time. That's all you need to know. To that end, when you get an intrusive thought, you dismiss it ad irrelevant. You certainly dont sit there and try to figure out if it's true or not.

[NicoletteCB]

8 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

You don't test the thoughts for anything. The last thing you want to do is sit there and try to out logic an illogical disorder. 

OCD lies, all the time. That's all you need to know. To that end, when you get an intrusive thought, you dismiss it ad irrelevant. You certainly dont sit there and try to figure out if it's true or not.

But then what is the point of CBT therapy? I thought we get cbt for ocd to deal with the thought distortions.

[PolarBear]

CBT is a way to teach you to think and behave differently when you get intrusive thoughts. Such as, don't freak out when you get an intrusive thought, recognize it as OCD junk, dismiss it and don't do any compulsions. 

Analyzing a thought and coming up with reasons why it's false would be a compulsion and absolutely fruitless. You could come up with ten very good reasons why a thought is false, but OCD will come up with a reason why it's true and you'll remain stuck.

Edited June 6, 2017 by PolarBear