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Why do our brains default back?


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Hi all,

This is a question I've wandered about after my recent relapse. After doing all the hard work of becoming accepting of intrusive thoughts and doing the CBT, you'd think the brain has become accustomed to it's new state. Is it always an external source from life that rewires our brain back to default? In my case, I was going out with a girl and decided we were probably not best for each other, even though I liked her a lot. I've moved on since, but not from anxiety just yet. Just curious as to what people think.

Edited by Imhotep
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I think the thoughts come back, but to a lesser extent than they previously did and that is a direct result of the work we did. I have recently been going through a complete relapse, I had self harm obsessions 10 years ago (never did anything like that though!), went through CBT and got better. I am now facing similar thoughts and it feels awful...but they are nowhere near as bad as they were in the past. Maybe this current relapse will teach me new skills and I’ll become even stronger. I think that these feelings are so strong sometimes that the brain can’t simoly get rid of them, even with hard work they can come back, but you just have to keep working and look at the progress you made even if you haven’t completely gotten rid of them.

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11 hours ago, Imhotep said:

Hi all,

This is a question I've wandered about after my recent relapse. After doing all the hard work of becoming accepting of intrusive thoughts and doing the CBT, you'd think the brain has become accustomed to it's new state. Is it always an external source from life that rewires our brain back to default? In my case, I was going out with a girl and decided we were probably not best for each other, even though I liked her a lot. I've moved on since, but not from anxiety just yet. Just curious as to what people think.

I think you're right. Hence we need to keep pruning the thorns and being aware of their growth. Emotionally upsetting or stressful life events will cause quicker more frequent growth in the short term. So  put extra CBT into practise to counteract this especially now. In times of fragility, take time to be compassionate to yourself rather than a taskmaster. 

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12 hours ago, Imhotep said:

This is a question I've wandered about after my recent relapse. After doing all the hard work of becoming accepting of intrusive thoughts and doing the CBT, you'd think the brain has become accustomed to it's new state.

In one sense we are fortunate, we live at a time when OCD is far better understood and accepted than past generations, an age where effective treatment options are available, such as CBT and SSRI's.  Unfortunately there is still so much we don't know about our bodies, our minds, and how mental illnesses like OCD work.  So we can treat OCD, but we can't yet cure OCD completely.  Relapses can happen for many reasons, some of which we can understand, and some which we don't.  Times of high stress or illness tend to make OCD symptoms worse for example.  In my own experience the simple human trait of laziness kicks in too.  I've had more than one relapse which happened because I started getting lazy with my treatment, I stopped putting much effort in to handling intrusive thoughts the right way with CBT and slowly the old behaviors would creep back in, ruminating, analyzing, etc.  For the most part its been a down hill battle, over time things get better and better and flareups become easier to manage.  

In other words, setbacks happen.  While it can be useful to see if you can notice a pattern to help you avoid future problems, its also important to understand that sometimes you won't be able to see why, and spending too much time looking for the why is just another compulsion.  The first thing to do is focus on getting things back under control, doing the CBT and continue retraining your brain.  

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6 hours ago, Orwell1984 said:

I think you're right. Hence we need to keep pruning the thorns and being aware of their growth. Emotionally upsetting or stressful life events will cause quicker more frequent growth in the short term. So  put extra CBT into practise to counteract this especially now. In times of fragility, take time to be compassionate to yourself rather than a taskmaster. 

Great post. 

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I think OCD can be beaten but as with many past habits, the neural pathways still lie in dormant.  I have been reading about this recently, and how certain pathways in our brains become cemented by myelin (matter which surrounds the pathway to ensure efficient connections) if they fire repeatedly enough.  This happens regardless of what the action is - whether it is an OCD compulsion, or something positive such as learning to ride a bike.  But once that myelin is in place, it can't be undone.  it can fade over time and become dormant as other pathways take over, but it will never be as if it never was.  (I think this is why many addicts can never consume moderately - because that addiction pathway is just waiting to roar back to life.)

So although we can beat OCD,  there is the possibility of relapse if we respond to thoughts in that old, habitual way which the brain remembers and thinks "aha, this seems familiar" - that pathway is waiting to be ignited and it can become active again.  The key is to learn new responses so thoroughly that they become the habitual, go-to responses, always - and it becomes easier and easier to resist getting pulled into that compulsive response.  

Edited by gingerbreadgirl
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57 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I have been reading about this recently, and how certain pathways in our brains become cemented by myelin (matter which surrounds the pathway to ensure efficient connections) if they fire repeatedly enough. 

Thats fascinating!  It explains why things you haven't done in years, like riding a bike, can come back to you so quickly.  I also wonder if the part of the brain responsible for that feeling of being "ok", the caudate nucleus still being kinda busted means we always remain vulnerable too.  We work around it with CBT and forging new behaviors but the underlying problem is still there.  Its kinda like patching torn pants.  Yes you can use them now and stay warm, but the hole is still there if the patch starts to unravel a bit.

 

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All very interesting answers, as has been mentioned treatment from OCD is like tending to a garden. You may have pruned and cut and slashed away all the overgrowth and tidied the garden up, but it still will require maintenance to maintain the garden over time. When I was not overtly OCD, it felt like I could throw my notes away, glad I didn't! 

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On 27/11/2018 at 12:39, Imhotep said:

All very interesting answers, as has been mentioned treatment from OCD is like tending to a garden. You may have pruned and cut and slashed away all the overgrowth and tidied the garden up, but it still will require maintenance to maintain the garden over time. When I was not overtly OCD, it felt like I could throw my notes away, glad I didn't! 

That is a really nice way of putting it. I guess it's like any skill in life, if you don't keep practicing, you will become rusty and you need to start again. I find that, even if things temporarily get worse, I have still learned so much and it's never as bad as when I first got diagnosed and started treatement. 

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That's exactly how I feel about it now and the other times I've relapsed, it's never been as bad as when I first went to the doctor to get a diagnosis. Back then I genuinely thought I'd lost my mind, and was so hopeless about whether I'd get back to normal. At least now I can go "Oh not this again, right back to my notes and work on what is effective." 

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