Here Are Some Of My Favourite Tips From CBT

[taurean]

I was diagnosed as actually having OCD when I was fifty. 

Before then I knew I had weird intrusive thoughts but - typical of sufferers - I was scared to open up about them. 

A kind female doctor on a company healthscreen encouraged me to do this, and she it was that gave the diagnosis. 

This started me on a voyage of cognitive behavioural therapy discovery with private therapists, initially funded by health insurance and then, when the benefit limit was reached, I was fortunate enough to be able to pay myself. 

It was only a couple of years ago that, thanks to help here, I was able to find the missing methodology to shut down constantly-repeating intrusions in my mental chatter - CBT alone hadn't done that. 

But it was needed as the core therapy, and I was privileged to have had two psychiatrists and 3 clinical psychologists over a number of years - and thus have been able, on reflection, to pick out the best things from all of these. 

Here are some of them. 

We tend to think our OCD is different, perhaps worse, than others' - because we are ourselves suffering so much. 

But others have it just as bad - it's a vicious mental illness. 

And we can obsess, then carry out compulsions to seek to remove disorder, about literally anything. 

But the CBT methodology will be the same, whatever the theme. Though with themes like harm, paedophile, sexual preference the OCD is targeting one or more of our true character values, alleging the opposite is, or could be, true. 

To others our obsessive thoughts will just be worthless nonsense which they instantly dismiss. So our aim in CBT is to be able to see them that way too. 

In CBT we learn how the OCD creates a core belief which is false exaggerated or revulsive, and creates triggers linked to that to cause the threat /fear that cause the D - disorder. 

Until we are able to defuse that core belief, we will still respond to it in an unhelpful behavioural way, giving it belief, connecting with it. 

So we need to uncover, then challenge, what that core belief is saying. 

Exposure and response prevention is a necessary part of CBT, but won't work unless we are first able to understand and accept the cognitive side of how OCD works, so we see why we react as we do. 

Trying to remove an intrusive thought by neutralising it with an opposing thought only makes it stronger. 

The compulsions OCD cons us into carrying out don't provide anything more than a minimal better feeling followed by rendering intrusions stronger and more powerful, causing more disorder. They harm and hinder recovery. 

Keeping busy, and learning to refocus away from intrusions into a beneficial distraction is a great technique, and used in conjunction with ERP can aid us to set up new ways of thinking to overcome the power frequency and strength of OCD intrusions. 

OCD demands certainty of us to prove we are suffering from it not a real threat. 

We cannot have certainty, but we can have probability that it's all only OCD. We need to take that leap of faith. 

And if it seems like OCD it probably is. 

Relaxation techniques, including meditation, yoga, and similar - coupled with aerobic exercise to burn off stress chemicals - are beneficial. 

Mindfulness added to CBT can help us focus our thinking in the present in the moment with a calm mind, away from obsessing and compulsing. 

I hope this summary of beneficial things I myself learned in therapy will help others. 

[malina]

This is a really helpful summary Roy. It's been almost 12 years since I got diagnosed with OCD, I had therapy then for a few years and, as you know, am back in therapy again now for a relapse. Even though I've been dealing with this for so long, I feel like I'm still learning so much. One thing that I'm learning is that, in order to recover, you truly need to take a leap of faith. I was so scared of the ERP I am doing with my current therapist, I thought it was too extreme and that it would make me worse, not better. Yet I decided to trust his process and, as if by magic, it started to get better. Sometimes the things we have to do seem really counterintuitive but we have to go against this and just believe that it'll work... because it will. 

I think this is where I see a lot of people struggle. They seem stuck in the OCD cycle and can't take that leap of faith, they end up believing the OCD over what CBT teaches them. This seems to be a really big barrier for people to overcome. 

[taurean]

9 minutes ago, malina said:

I think this is where I see a lot of people struggle. They seem stuck in the OCD cycle and can't take that leap of faith, they end up believing the OCD over what CBT teaches them. This seems to be a really big barrier for people to overcome. 

Exactly

 

[felix4]

6 minutes ago, malina said:

I was so scared of the ERP I am doing with my current therapist, I thought it was too extreme and that it would make me worse, not better. Yet I decided to trust his process and, as if by magic, it started to get better.

This reminds me of when I last did group CBT.

On the first session our therapist told us about something she had done in her past (I wont say what), and I remember the group looking at each other, as if she were the one in need of treatment & quite mad, but by about session 7 & after the CBT part, she only had us all carrying out the exact same thing she had done herself! 

It was really good actually, because sessions 7 to 12, they would send us out, either as a group or on our own doing ERP missions around our local town, which was far more proactive than any of the many CBT sessions I had done before!

[malina]

7 hours ago, felix4 said:

On the first session our therapist told us about something she had done in her past (I wont say what), and I remember the group looking at each other, as if she were the one in need of treatment & quite mad

 

Haha yes! I sometimes think this way about my therapist too

[taurean]

Some therapists are recoverees themselves. My second one had harm OCD so knew exactly what I was going through. 

[felix4]

5 hours ago, taurean said:

Some therapists are recoverees themselves. My second one had harm OCD so knew exactly what I was going through. 

Ours never had OCD. We just thought that pre CBT she were mad and tempting fate by writing a precise comment on a piece of paper, which none of us would ever dare do! However, post CBT she had us all writing the same thing quite comfortably without any real concern at all, having now seen things from a slightly different perspective, which is when we started doing the ERP.

 

 

[taurean]

I was taught to seek to capture the high ground and look down on the OCD. 

One way to do this is to be dismissive. When an intrusion comes in, just think "oh that's just my silly obsession" and refocus away. 

Soon we automatically just observe an intrusion, but refocus. And gradually they will occur less frequently, less powerfully.