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If We Change Our Belief And Response We Can Change Our Lives


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We stay stuck in OCD if we keep believing what it tells us, and respond by carrying out compulsions. 

One sentence, but that sentence sums things up pretty much. 

Those that recover completely or to a good extent are likely to have:

Learned how OCD, and their own version of it, works. 

Accepted that, and determined to stop believing, and responding to, it. 

Left intrusions be and practised a default to refocus, until that becomes a norm and the intrusions fade in power and frequency. 

Learned the correct way to practice exposure and response prevention. 

Easy, no, possible - very much so. 

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We can meantime ease our anxiety response by aerobic exercise - burning off the stress chemicals, hormones cortisol and adrenaline - learning some easy relaxation skills, and how to practice simple meditation (such as the meditation of the breath). 

Edited by taurean
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Thanks Taurean. I will try to support my recovery by establishing aerobic exercises. I can absolutely relate to the meditation part. I recommend some simple anxiety meditations, available apps can be found on any app store. For beginners a voice guided meditation will help to reach the state of complete relaxation. 

 

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1 hour ago, badsidejoe said:

Thanks Taurean. I will try to support my recovery by establishing aerobic exercises. I can absolutely relate to the meditation part. I recommend some simple anxiety meditations, available apps can be found on any app store. For beginners a voice guided meditation will help to reach the state of complete relaxation. 

 

I love guided meditations. My favourite, on a CD, is the album "Mini meditations for stress-free living" by Australian psychologist Simonette Vaja. This is downloadable from Amazon and maybe other streaming services. 

There are 7 10-minute meditations with Simonette's beautiful voice leading us into supreme peaceful scenes. 

On the main OCD-UK website can be found the charity's view of some other therapies beyond CBT. 

I tried hypnotherapy through some musicassettes. I came to the conclusion that it was potentially beneficial for relaxing, as an addition to CBT - rather like meditation - but nothing more than that. 

I also looked into hypnosis and bought a book and accompanying CD by Paul Mckenna. I again took the view that it might be beneficial to help people learn to relax, but nothing more re OCD. 

I had a particular problem with my own OCD. For me it ran in episodes, and the OCD maintained an episode by trapping me into a perpetuating loop of constantly-repeating intrusions in my mental chatter, on my OCD theme of harm. 

I found no way to curtail this with CBT, but eventually thanks to help from a clinical psychologist and some friends here I found the answer in Mindfulness. 

We absolutely, in my opinion, need to use CBT to learn to recover from OCD for the reasons given at the top of my topic. 

But what mindfulness can add now, in a modern version of CBT therapy, is a way to curtail our ongoing obsessing and compulsing, ease resultant anxiety and at the same time show us how to anchor our thinking into the present in the moment. 

My mindfulness-based CBT for OCD therapist said it is because we do all our obsessing and compulsing in the part of our brain she calls the active "doing" part, where we seek answers to issues. 

But when we switch our thinking into the benign, just "being", part of the brain, we can learn to stop that mental chatter, and obtain a calm and peaceful state, in the present in the moment. 

I learned how to enter - and exit - this mindfulness state and apply it in addition to my CBT. My blood pressure, increased by those repetitive intrusions, fell and has stayed down. 

And I no longer suffer those repeating intrusions in my mental chatter - so adding mindfulness, for me, was game-changing. And the episodes of OCD have stayed away. 

 

 

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What particular mix of therapy that works for some may not work for others. 

So we need to play some trial and error - accordingly having various ideas in our treatment "toolbox" may prove to produce the best result. 

Then, when we find the right mix, use it and keep the therapy up to date, without avoidance and other compulsions and keeping exposure and response prevention up to date. 

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