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I Am Happy To Report That....


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It is some 22 months now since I have been badly affected by OCD. 

This is a wonderful indictment of the value of CBT in recovery, the benefits of believing what we are told by specialists and informed people (and not the OCD) doing the hard work to change my thinking and behaviours. 

But also game-changing thanks to adding mindfulness and love kindness meditation to the mix as well as CBT, in addition to The Four Steps treatment method which is contained in the book "Brainless" by Jeffrey Schwartz. 

I am indebted to OCD-UK for the lead into reading "Brainlock"  and for introducing me to the private therapy practice who showed me how to use mindfulness in addition to the core therapy of CBT. 

Also to the members of OCD-UK who worked with me to find the methodology I needed to ease out of repetitive thought patterns. 

I try and spend some time each day on the forum, looking to see if I can make a real difference by entering a thread, utilising what I have learned on my own therapy journey. 

Be strong everyone. Believe the learned fellow sufferers and therapists and not the OCD. 

And chip away at the necessary homework including not believing or connecting with intrusions, ERP and resisting compulsions that we must all do in order to recover. 

We can't resolve all the layers of our OCD and its restrictions in a major battle - there would be only one winner and it wouldn't be us. 

Softly softly catchee monkey is the way to do it - gradually building gains, refusing to slip back. 

All the very best everyone 

Roy 

Edited by taurean
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That is really fantastic news Roy, I'm very happy to hear that! I have a question for you - did you ever have doubts about CBT as you were doing it? I've written about this in a different post but may as well ask directly here too. I'm working on harm OCD and have been doing exposure with knives, and it's honestly making the anxiety go much higher, even outside of sessions. I'm just scared whether I'm doing the right thing with this therapy and I know that is probably just OCD speaking but it would be really good to know if people who have done CBT and found it helpful have also have the same fears/doubts during the process?

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Well my theme is harm OCD too and I have needed to do exposure with knives. 

Originally I wanted to hide them (avoidance compulsion)  but I was advised that we can never conquer our OCD fears without correctly working exposure and response prevention. 

Anxiety will increase during such exposure until we accept that the thoughts and urges are OCD at work, not our own wishes. 

It really helped me to be told in therapy that with such themes as harm, paedophile, relationship, sexual preference the OCD targets our true core character values such as love, care, liking, faithfulness and alleges the opposite to be true, or possible. 

Knowing this was a real ? lightbulb :Lighten: moment for me - a true gamechanger in my therapy. 

Best wishes malina 

Roy 

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6 minutes ago, taurean said:

Well my theme is harm OCD too and I have needed to do exposure with knives. 

Originally I wanted to hide them (avoidance compulsion)  but I was advised that we can never conquer our OCD fears without correctly working exposure and response prevention. 

Anxiety will increase during such exposure until we accept that the thoughts and urges are OCD at work, not our own wishes. 

It really helped me to be told in therapy that with such themes as harm, paedophile, relationship, sexual preference the OCD targets our true core character values such as love, care, liking, faithfulness and alleges the opposite to be true, or possible. 

Knowing this was a real ? lightbulb :Lighten: moment for me - a true gamechanger in my therapy. 

Best wishes malina 

Roy 

Thanks a lot for your response, Roy. I guess I'm completely on board with some aspects of the exposure. I am doing the best I can to use knives and not avoid them. I am just a bit concerned because my therapist is really challenging me during sessions and for the last 3 sessions he has encouraged me to do things like hold a knife to my wrist (lightly of course), to see what it feels like etc. with the goal of showing me that we can do this type of thing without acting out on our fears. I completely get that and I have been doing as he suggests. I think it's just that after the session, I am even more anxious than I previously was. If this is what is supposed to happen, I am more than willing to continue. I guess I'm just afraid of pushing myself to hard and worried that it'll end up making me feel worse. 

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