Jump to content

How to help myself???


Recommended Posts

I have an appointment with a gateway worker on 7th January. Can tell already this is going to be another 12 month wait to access therapy ? 

My question is, how do I help myself?? I've already had CBT twice and am aware of the principles of it but what I struggle with is how to adapt it to my current "theme". 

How do I make a hierarchy for example? I realise exposure is good however not in the forced instance I just experienced as it was followed by severe anxiety, rumination, reassurance etc etc. That is the second time now that OCD has had me question if I have done something wrong. I'm scared that this will increase in frequency and then I will avoid places like I did before because it was safer, easier.

I feel most, if not all, of my compulsions are covert so how do I work on those?? How do I push myself without making things worse? 

Thank you for any input ?

Link to comment

If you want an easy way out, you won't recover. Recovery involves bouts of anxiety and feeling uncomfortable. There is no way around that. The more you push yourself the faster you will get to a better place. That said, you can only do what you can do.

The idea is to start small and work up to more difficult exposures, always pushing yourself forward.

CBT involves three steps: cognitive eork, where you start to change how you think about obsessions, stopping compulsions, and exposure and response prevention.

Making a heirarchy for ERP involves analyzing and listing out your obsessions and sorting them from least problematic to most. This works for all themes.

That your compulsions are mostly covert is not a barrier to ERP. You list out your usual compulsions and you practice not doing them.

Link to comment

Hi Lisa

I'm sorry you're having such a rough time at the moment. I know the feeling you have right now is absolutely awful and it feels like you can't get a handle on it.  You *can* though, in time, bit by bit - but unfortunately as PB says it's a marathon not a sprint.

My compulsions are largely mental too (Although i bet you'll find you do things which are not mental, just maybe you haven't spotted them yet). It can be soooo difficult to stop ruminating.  It can feel like your brain is almost doing it against your will.  Sometimes you just have to absolutely brute force yourself into not ruminating even if just for two minutes - I find that if I can just break that cycle through force then it loses its power very slightly.  I think of my brain as like a dog I am trying to take for a walk, and the dog is determined to investigate something he's found on the path - I just have to keep tugging on that lead and gently nudging it along the path. 

There is no special way of stopping ruminating other than to just practise turning your attention away from it over and over again.  Practise leaving the question unanswered.  And do something else, put your attention elsewhere. Learning to do this was a huge part of my ocd improving.

In terms of exposure:  one day I sat down with a piece of paper and I wrote a HUGE list of ideas for things that scared me.  I didn't really censor myself or consider whether it was ridiculous or not.  I came up with loads of stupid ideas a few good ones. 

So - for me one of my fears was that I had committed a crime in the past which I couldn't remember.  One thing I was afraid of was the police would get hold of my laptop and would find the CBT I'd done/posts on this forum I'd written and throw me in jail (yeah sounds kinda stupid now...) So I used this to come up with an exposure - I wrote a "confession" and put it on my desktop on my computer and labelled it FOR THE POLICE (or something like that).  My anxiety went sky high but I made myself leave it there.  Eventually my anxiety came down and I could see how stupid the whole thing was.

That's just one example and I'd be happy to bore you with others if you felt that would help. 

Some things for you to think about:

- do you analyse/try to remember/try to pin down/try to gain certainty?

- do you look for reassurance - directly or indirectly - either from others, or e.g. online, or even just from yourself (e.g. by thinking it through?)

- do you google anything related to this subject?

- do you monitor your feelings or thoughts around this subject?

- what sort of situations trigger your anxiety the most? (e.g. being in situations which remind you of it, etc?) - these can form the basis of exposures. 

just a few things to start off with to pin down some of your compulsions and triggers. 

Link to comment
11 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

That your compulsions are mostly covert is not a barrier to ERP. You list out your usual compulsions and you practice not doing them.

Nice to talk to you again PB ? I hope you are doing well 

Thank you for your reply.

I guess I've got caught up with the fact OCD can make you believe you have done something when in reality, you haven't. It's a very scary thing to doubt yourself in such a way ?

I understand from past sessions the underlying reasoning for my thoughts, they stem around responsibility and I guess this is no different. 

I have something to try and work off so thank you ?

Link to comment

Lisa, just my take, and perhaps at odds with what you've been told by a therapist, but I suggest a focus on the 'reason' for your thoughts is at best irrelevant, at worst, counter productive. Since it ascribes 'significance' to the random, the inane. It certainly IMO has zero relevance as far as tackling the disorder. 

Incidentally, my OCD started primarily as so-called Pure O. No different from any other 'variation' of the disorder. 

Link to comment
1 minute ago, paradoxer said:

Lisa, just my take, and perhaps at odds with what you've been told by a therapist, but I suggest a focus on the 'reason' for your thoughts is at best irrelevant, at worst, counter productive. Since it ascribes 'significance' to the random, the inane. It certainly IMO has zero relevance as far as tackling the disorder. 

Incidentally, my OCD started primarily as so-called Pure O. No different from any other 'variation' of the disorder. 

I concur paradoxer. Oftentimes the what, irrespective of the why, is the most beneficial focus. If I developed arthritic ankles, I wouldn’t delve headlong into a protracted study of my heritage in the hope of identifying from which of my ancestors I’d inherited it. Nor would I bemoan every football I’d ever booted. I’d concentrate on amelioration in the here and now. In my opinion, OCD is most effectively treated in the same way.

Link to comment

Lisa davis - please don’t read my observation above as a criticism of how you manage your OCD. I’m genuinely just offering my take on paradoxer’s post. We each do our best. And I don’t claim to know any more about anything than anyone else!

Link to comment
16 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

So - for me one of my fears was that I had committed a crime in the past which I couldn't remember.  One thing I was afraid of was the police would get hold of my laptop and would find the CBT I'd done/posts on this forum I'd written and throw me in jail (yeah sounds kinda stupid now...) So I used this to come up with an exposure - I wrote a "confession" and put it on my desktop on my computer and labelled it FOR THE POLICE (or something like that).  My anxiety went sky high but I made myself leave it there.  Eventually my anxiety came down and I could see how stupid the whole thing was.

This is Genius!

I love it!

Link to comment
10 hours ago, Hopingtorecover said:

@PolarBear  could you please expand on this?

Well, the C in CBT stands for Cognitive Therapy, which is all about getting you to change the way you think. In the case of OCD, it's about changing the way you think about intrusive thoughts.

People with OCD put stock in their obsessions because they think they are real, represent danger or could be true. You can change that and start looking at obsessions as fake and a bunch of lies. If you thought that way, you'd have little reason to do compulsions.

There is much emphasis on ERP, which is great, but cognitive work should not be overlooked.

Link to comment
23 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I think of my brain as like a dog I am trying to take for a walk, and the dog is determined to investigate something he's found on the path - I just have to keep tugging on that lead and gently nudging it along the path. 

I love this analogy, thanks for sharing! 

23 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

me one of my fears was that I had committed a crime in the past which I couldn't remember.  One thing I was afraid of was the police would get hold of my laptop and would find the CBT I'd done/posts on this forum I'd written and throw me in jail (yeah sounds kinda stupid now...)

This is kinda what I'm going through at the moment in regards to committing a crime but it's the memory thing that is causing all the compulsions and anxiety. Although I know deep down I haven't done anything OCD makes it seem so real and then obviously you start to doubt yourself, and well, you know how it goes!! Your way of dealing with it though is a brilliant idea and maybe something I could adapt to make it more specific to me ?

 

23 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

what sort of situations trigger your anxiety the most? (e.g. being in situations which remind you of it, etc?) - these can form the basis of exposures. 

This exactly ?

It happened again yesterday, and I had this awful wave of fear come across me. And then I concluded that this is going to be my "theme" now, rather than as I had naively hoped, a one off. 

However, today i have tried to not let my ruminating spiral out of control and have had quite a good day so hopefully with guidance and support from you amazing people on here ? I can tackle this head on

Thanks for your kind words GBG and your in depth reply, I so appreciate it x

Link to comment
12 hours ago, paradoxer said:

Lisa, just my take, and perhaps at odds with what you've been told by a therapist, but I suggest a focus on the 'reason' for your thoughts is at best irrelevant, at worst, counter productive. Since it ascribes 'significance' to the random, the inane. It certainly IMO has zero relevance as far as tackling the disorder. 

Incidentally, my OCD started primarily as so-called Pure O. No different from any other 'variation' of the disorder. 

Thank you Paradoxer, wise words as always ?

I'm not sure as to why I saw relevance in the underlying causes of my OCD. It was discussed with my therapist but I agree that it may be more a hindrance pairing up cause and effect. After all, it doesn't matter why I have OCD, how manifests itself etc, it matters that I overcome this relapse 

Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it x

Link to comment
12 hours ago, Equinoxygen said:

I concur paradoxer. Oftentimes the what, irrespective of the why, is the most beneficial focus. If I developed arthritic ankles, I wouldn’t delve headlong into a protracted study of my heritage in the hope of identifying from which of my ancestors I’d inherited it. Nor would I bemoan every football I’d ever booted. I’d concentrate on amelioration in the here and now. In my opinion, OCD is most effectively treated in the same way.

Thank you for this Equinoxygen. I think I place too much emphasis on the why instead of the here and now. Trying to fully understand why I might have this disorder and why it manifests itself in such a way. There's always a need to know why things work the way they do!?! Ultimately though, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that I find myself again so im able to live life the best I can.

Thank you for the reminder of what is important ? x

Link to comment
13 hours ago, Equinoxygen said:

I concur paradoxer. Oftentimes the what, irrespective of the why, is the most beneficial focus. If I developed arthritic ankles, I wouldn’t delve headlong into a protracted study of my heritage in the hope of identifying from which of my ancestors I’d inherited it. Nor would I bemoan every football I’d ever booted. I’d concentrate on amelioration in the here and now. In my opinion, OCD is most effectively treated in the same way.

Yes ... and yes. Cheers.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Lisa davis said:

Thank you Paradoxer, wise words as always ?

I'm not sure as to why I saw relevance in the underlying causes of my OCD. It was discussed with my therapist but I agree that it may be more a hindrance pairing up cause and effect. After all, it doesn't matter why I have OCD, how manifests itself etc, it matters that I overcome this relapse 

Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it x

Lisa, many thanks for the kind words! We all soldier on, to beat this inane time-wasting disorder. 

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...