My Treatment Plan

[taurean]

I would like to share with you the plan I created, with help from my therapist, to tackle the lack of resilience which leads to me encountering relapses and new episodes of OCD.

It's working OK at the moment, and I am sticking to these guidelines.

Hopefully others will find elements here that they too can find beneficial. 

 

Build bodily health and wellbeing

Take sensible exercise.

Try and float along above the surface of life, don't let it pull you down deeply.Use the " helicopter view" - imagine you are looking down from above, detached from whatever upset is trying to waylaid you. Mindfulness is also  a brilliant tool to use to help us do this, and disconnect from triggers, since we focus in mindfulness purely on what is with and around us, in the here and now only.

Use deep breathing exercises to calm us down when we get agitated.

Eat sensibly, with plenty of fruit  vegetables, chicken and fish, rice and cereal/ brown bread.

Top up with a multivitamin and mineral tablet daily. 

Good mental housekeeping

Learn to say no to burdens, without feeling guilty.

Avoid overconfidence. Be on the watch for triggers, and - apart from periods of necessary exposure and response prevention - be ready to quickly refocus away from them without connecting. Gradually this combination of ERP and refocus will enable you to take on triggers without connecting with them and just move through them and away.

Build and focus on positives, diminish the importance of any negatives. Gradually the negatives will ease off and the positives proliferate.

Daily Mental Health

Develop your connection with love and kindness, and don't hate yourself - build self-love and self-confidence.

Learn simple meditation skills, and practice them for a short period at the start, and end, of your day.

Don't give in to OCD Visualise yourself using these techniques to overcome, and minimise, it.

Breaking repetitive thinking loops

Insert positive words and phrases into a repetitive chain of thinking, Gradually focusing more onto these.

Play music you like and focus into the sounds and words.

Make appointment times to consider any worries or triggers. Refuse to deal with them until the appointed time and keep refocusing away.

Stand up to, and don't accept, any mental connections to distress which OCD wants to make.

This combination of tools helps us to focus on the good and the present, find mental peace and build and maintain resilience.

What also helps myself, and my wife, is to build a framework for the week ahead, and fill items in on a weekly planner.

This gives structure, interest, and focus - taking time away that OCD would want to fill.

My hobbies and interests play an important role here.

 

 

[determination987]

This is really helpful. Thank you  

[taurean]

  

[LauraOCDUK]

Thank you for sharing this Taurean 

[taurean]

I think it is so so important that those of us fortunate enough to obtain good therapy share what we learn for the benefit of others, especially those less fortunate in getting therapy. 

[Garfield]

Very useful and sensible, thankyou 

[LouiseP]

Really helpful advice. Thank you

[dbro7789]

On 01/06/2023 at 15:48, taurean said:

I think it is so so important that those of us fortunate enough to obtain good therapy share what we learn for the benefit of others, especially those less fortunate in getting therapy. 

Brilliant! Thanks a lot - good stuff there. The 'helicopter perspective' was of particular interest - it's something I'd heard of before and liked the idea of.

I've always struggled with letting go of the past, probably because it provides some comfort. The downside is I spend so much time and effort hoarding stuff that I run out of time to do anything enjoyable (during intense hoarding bouts).

Edited April 5 by dbro7789