OCD Action

Red_Mike
Member

If you are trying to overcome ocd by ignoring the relieving compulsions to your obsessive thoughts, but it's causing you more anxiety than if you acted out the compulsion - are you best to act out the compulsion to relieve the stress or are you best to continue to try and ignore it?

I want to be rid of OCD forever. If I just be strong and try to ignore the feeling to follow out my compulsions, will they go away?

Tue Mar 9 2010 13:10:02 #
mama
Member

following out compulsions will make the obsessive thoughts worse. You want to NOT do the compulsions...and just feel the anxiety till it goes away naturally...when you try and make it go away through compulsions it reinforces the idea that a compulsion was necessary...does that make sense?

Tue Mar 9 2010 13:12:55 #
Unregistered

I agree with mama

This is what I am doing all the time now. It is hard and takes a long time for the thoughts to slowly vanish - but it is certainly working for me. After two months of practice the thoughts are at last fading and I have freed up hours of time to do other things.

Tue Mar 9 2010 13:17:48 #
Truddles
Member

Hi Red_Mike,

Welcome to the forum.
I agree with Mama, by doing the compulsions we are continually reinforcing the need to do them (great advice from the Queen of Compulsions, that is me) Though I am trying hard to not do the compulsions, more importantly not to replace one compulsion with another

Trudy

Tue Mar 9 2010 13:18:54 #
Blueskies
Member

Hi there Red_Mike,

Great Advice already given. I will also add, because the urge to do the complusion can be very hard to avoid as you all already know. A tip is to learn an acceptable level of stress by reducing the complusions in a small way each day if you can ,so that the symptoms do not become overwhelming as they would potentionally do if you stopped all together.

Your thoughts and your feelings will also change, but at first you may not notice it, so your body will also learn in time an acceptable level of anxiousness as you continue to reduce, and the thoughts could be something like, 'I can accept this, it's ok to feel some stress, but I can cope with this level for now'.

The process and the symptoms is like someone trying to stop smoking, they get some uncomfortable withdrawal side affects, but stick to it until the anxiousness and the compulsion the urge to smoke,is greatly reduced until for many they actually become non smokers, I am one of them

what this means in the long term, is that your training your mind, to think and to accept both the postive and negative, with emphasis on the positive as you continue to reduce. I often talk about finding the balance, as many recovering anxiety sufferers will often think in negative terms re-enforcing the negative that has been mentioned already and if you think of it, if the mind has been trained by constantly worrying, to aid our compulsions, then training our thoughts to be flexible accepting both the positive and the negative, will in due course considerably reduce the anxiousness to a level were you hardly have the complusions.

Pam

Tue Mar 9 2010 16:00:32 #
aishah
Member

Hi Red Mike,You must always try to avoid the compulsion however much it causes anxiety. The reason for this is that by doing the compulsion it keeps the OCD going.
It is very hard to do but it can be done, with perceverance it will pay off in the long run.

Good Luck
Bridget

Tue Mar 9 2010 16:21:39 #
freddy
Member

Hi Red_Mike,

Welcome to the forum, the guys on here are really helpful and friendly and I can see that you have been given some great advice so far. I agree with what's already been said.

Keep posting,

Regards,
freddy

Tue Mar 9 2010 17:02:22 #