Taurean Simple Guide To Key Elements of CBT For OCD

[taurean]

I wrote this in response to a topic today, and it seems to me a lot of sufferers need something simple to summarise what happens in OCD and how to tackle it. 

So I am repeating it here for the benefit of others. 

Remember it's easy to highlight copy and save text from parts of topics you find helpful. I saved this to a keep notes app in my phone, but could have saved onto a word document. 

OK we have said it before but here is a short summary. 

I am not sure whether you got to see this brilliant British situation comedy, but the girl leading the French resistance in the TV show "'Allo, Allo" would whisper to Rene the cafe owner :

"listen very carefully, I will say this only once". 

So why not copy and paste this little piece, and use it as a guide? It's based on my own experiences as a sufferer and what I have picked up here, from OCD-UK, therapists and self-help books and workbooks. 

Our OCD forms core beliefs per theme based on falsehood, exaggeration or revulsion. 

These core beliefs spawn obsessive (O) intrusive thoughts on a theme which cause an adverse behavioural reaction : an alarm alert to the "threat" the OCD suggests, distress (Disorder), and the urge to carry out compulsions to "fix" the distress (C). 

Quickly the alert leads to more distress andcatastrophic thinking - we fall into a continuing circle of distress - and the compulsions only result in us giving belief to, connecting with, the intrusions (and thus the underlying OCD core belief) making the OCD more powerful and the intrusive thoughts more frequent. 

This will show you how only trying to ignore thethoughts will not be successful. We need to "take aleap of faith", believe what we learn about how the OCD works (and briefly summarised above) is the real truth, not what the OCD is saying to us. 

And that whatever type of OCD we may have, the OCD core belief will appear to non-sufferers as"worthless irrational irrelevant nonsense" - everyone gets such thoughts, but they laugh at them and ease them away, forget them. 

So, believe what is going on in this cognitive side of CBT. 

Schedule ERP in short, structured sessions - working up a hierarchy of intrusions from least anxiety provoking. 

Move on to the next one when, after necessary repeats, the anxiety has died down. 

Concurrent to this, and outside of ERP, work on resisting compulsions. When an intrusion comes just think "oh that's just my silly obsession" then gently, but firmly, refocus your thinking away elsewhere. Keep on regularly doing this until refocusing becomes automatic and the power and frequency of the intrusion fades. 

So there you are. Looked at with any complexity stripped away recovery looks one whole lot easier doesn't it?

But the hard work has to be done by the sufferer themselves, though a significant other can be veryhelpful - especially as a marker for what is a normal reaction rather than an OCD one. 

I have enjoyed writing this piece (I am in the coffee lounge at my health club after a gym and swim) and am myself going to copy it as I suspect I can use it to help others too. 

Roy 

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2019 by taurean

[worriedjohn]

Very good post Roy.

[taurean]

Thanks John. 

How I wish someone had given me something like this twenty years ago, when I was beginning to struggle with my OCD when episodes were getting longer. 

So if it can help people here to have a tool to hand that I dearly wished I had had, then my efforts here will prove worthwhile 

 

[bruces]

I wished I'd implemented this years ago 

[taurean]

So do I, but I didn't know it then. 

[bruces]

Me neither