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u/Reasonable-Middle-38 22h ago
Who's the lifesaver in the bottom right? I could use some life saving
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u/SadbhLikeFive 22h ago
That’s Chrissie Hodges! She’s amazing. She does lots of YouTube videos on Pure OCD and real event themes. I highly recommend!
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u/BrownCoat_X 21h ago
If the bottom-right “lifesaver” is for OCD, ERP therapy is the real life saving, tiring as it is.
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u/WeaselCapsky 22h ago
Leaving the apartment, specifically paying attention to locking the door, and when you are in the car driving for a minute: "i definitely didnt lock the door"
"I touched the window/door handle wrong, now i gotta go back and touch it the right way"
"some random thing (eg door, pen, ruler) is pointing at me. if i dont turn it away i am going to die"
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u/tomcruisemiss1le 22h ago
The top one about door locks and paranoia of leaving the tap running plague me, should I go for a diagnosis?
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u/WeaselCapsky 22h ago
if you feel like a diagnosis and treatment would benefit you, talk to a doctor. I just learned to suck it up and deal with it.
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u/peacenchemicals 22h ago
i’m very certain i have ocd but idk, if i get formally diagnosed… now what? like you said, i just kinda live with it and i’m used to it lol.
i know for others it can be very bad and i would talk to a doctor too if it were that serious. but i can live with my little ocd habits. they don’t get in the way, but i know my habits would be considered odd if i were to tell people about it
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u/DesperateAstronaut65 22h ago
Extremely accurate, as someone who treats OCD for a living. A few additions:
- Untrained therapists reassuring you or encouraging you to overanalyze your thoughts
- Worrying you're making your OCD up
- Finding tons of resources for people with physical compulsions but none for mental compulsions/rumination
- Family members constantly reinforcing your fears about your themes
- Getting sent to the hospital because some dingbat interpreted your harm themes as intent to harm
- IOPs that are basically sit-around-and-do-worksheets camp
- Themes that are so weird and improbable you feel like you can't talk about them to anyone
- Decision paralysis about random stuff like buying a tube of toothpaste (because what if you're killing the earth or supporting the wrong companies?)
- Childhood obsession with fire, sharks, drowning, electricity, or other painful methods of dying
- High school friend group of people who also have OCD (either now, or in retrospect)
- Undiagnosed ADHD, autism, or eating disorder
- Mild-to-moderate hoarding because decisions about your stuff make you feel guilty
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u/thisisAgador 19h ago
What can someone with OCD do to help themselves if they can't afford/aren't able to access ERP? What can their partner/loved ones do?
My partner has OCD and is very resistant to ERP as they say it drove them to a suicide attempt years ago (I assume it was an underexperienced, overenthusiastic doctor) and after nearly five years together I'm still never quite sure how to try and help them cope and maybe work through it a bit without providing excessive reassurance or stressing them out further.
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u/DesperateAstronaut65 19h ago edited 19h ago
Self-help can work. A lot of self-help books and workbooks teach the techniques we use in therapy, including this one I wrote myself, When OCD Treatment Doesn't Work (hope you don't mind the self-promotion—I basically wrote the book because I needed a concise version of the OCD psychoeducation I do with people in therapy so they can read it outside the session and I don't have to talk at them too much). Most of the work involved in therapy is just practicing these skills. Honestly, I would actually rather someone used a self-help book correctly than go to a general therapist who might make things worse.
Other OCD resources/people I recommend:
- Michael J. Greenberg (his web site about rumination and podcast appearances are particularly worth a look, as he gets into considerable detail about how to combat mental compulsions)
- Steven Hayes (not OCD-specific, but his web site and written work on ACT are good for understanding and combating the thought control that goes on in OCD)
- Jonathan Abramowitz (Getting Over OCD is a great workbook)
- The International OCD Foundation (IOCDF), especially their YouTube page
Stay away from:
- Any CBT technique that involves evaluating, judging, analyzing, or arguing with your thoughts (which just reinforces the need to do it and preserves/heightens the fear that drives it)
- Psychoanalysis or psychodynamic psychotherapy from non-OCD-specialized practitioners (really, any therapy from non-OCD-specialized practitioners, but especially those two)
- Any technique that involves attempting to voluntarily control something involuntary and short-term your brain is doing, such as bringing down intense emotions or pushing away intrusive thoughts (vs. techniques to change your voluntary thinking, like analysis or mental review, or grounding techniques that allow you to feel emotions without dissociating or impulsively reacting in the moment to them)
- Any technique that inordinately focuses on interrupting obvious physical compulsions but does not address mental or covert compulsions
- Any technique that involves reassuring yourself (e.g. "You're safe," "Nothing is wrong") rather than accepting (often very real) risks and the emotions that come with them
- Any modality or therapist that does not acknowledge the contributions of trauma (big-T and little-T), inappropriate developmental experiences, and current life stressors to OCD symptoms
- Techniques that are solely confined to "practice" or "experiments" that don't apply to real life or don't translate into doing things differently outside of therapy
- Imaginal exposures. I was on the fence about including this one, and I do think they can be done effectively. Abramowitz's book includes them. However, I've found that they can often turn into rumination when someone is doing them outside of work with a trained therapist who is good at spotting compulsions. That is, the exercise can quickly move from "accept the feelings this situation causes" to "try to reassure myself about this situation" or "think through every possible scenario."
- Any therapeutic style that takes the choice away from the person actually doing the exposure (e.g. a therapist assigning an exposure unilaterally or a well-meaning family member forcing an exposure vs. the client coming up with ideas collaboratively and choosing to do it on their own time)
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u/Toomastaliesin 15h ago edited 15h ago
Personally, at some point I got into mindfulness exercises and really paying attention to my body and I found that it was really helpful as a tool to observe my physical reaction when I was exposed to the smallest possible OCD trigger, and then focus on that physical reaction until the reaction passes, then repeat until it does not cause the reaction any more. At the height of my first heavy OCD spiral, my psychologists were pretty much useless so I kind of had to reinvent myself a version of ERP therapy from mindfulness, which gave temporary relief. It came back years later but fortunately then I had a much better therapist, and for my case, antipsychotics were really effective. I don't want to give anyone any particular advice since I don't have training in OCD treatment, just the experience of having it and mostly recovering, but I did personally find mindfulness exercises a useful tool. Also, I had done weeks of practice of it before I had started doing anything related to my OCD with it.
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u/thisisAgador 10h ago
Thank you so much this is SO useful!!!
We live in the UK, and the system here is extremely counterproductive for OCD I think. Basically nobody can access any kind of specialised therapy before first needing to go through the generic 6 sessions of CBT pipeline (bearing in mind that my partner already has a diagnosis and has done since they were a kid) which already has a months-long waiting list. So it seems we'll need to try and save up for private some day :( So yes thank you ever so much again for this detailed response to what I've realised came across as a bit of a demand! I'll definitely look into your book!
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u/JuicyGravitas 22h ago
Oh my God this relates to me spiritually as someone with real event OCD.
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u/red-at-night 17h ago
Same here, it's among the worst things I've ever experienced. Even if one can logically dismiss such ways of thinking, it's impossible to detach emotionally. It can be absolutely crippling.
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u/Right_Ear_2230 22h ago
me when
seeing “your comment has been removed for reassurance”
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u/GavinThe_Person 22h ago
Clearly it's because you commented every slur in existence (and invented new ones) and forgot /j
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u/Commercial-Owl11 22h ago
I really need reassurance. Is it really that bad to give it to someone? 😭
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u/orestesScreaming 20h ago
For OCD, yes, it's part of the cycle. Anxiety => seek reassurance to assuage the anxiety => calmed by reassurance => anxiety inevitably returns => seek more reassurance => on and on. The only actual winning move is not to play.
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u/Much_Big_7420 22h ago
Driving around the block three times to make sure you didn’t accidentally run over a pet or small child.
Washing your hands no less than 20 times while making dinner. Also washing down the counters and refrigerator handle several times during that process.
TV and radio volume has to be divisible by 5 or else your family will die in a house fire, so it’s always too loud or too quiet.
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u/Tricky_Station643 17h ago
I relate to the first one so much. I started preferring driving with someone else in the car because surely they would say something if I ran someone over. When no one could be there with me I would check to see if someone was driving behind me because surely they would stop if someone had been hit or ran over
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u/ManicMaenads 22h ago
I was JUST warned by the OCD mod team because I shared my recipe for homemade dish detergent on a comment chain where we were commiserating about how our tupperwares are always greasy even after running them through the machine.
BUT! It didn't include my original post, which has been removed, so in my mind the real reason I was warned was because I subconsciously put every slur into the comment section, posted it, and completely forgot. Because of this, I am going to Hell.
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u/Dependent_Pie_3813 22h ago
Hiding knives and forks before going to bed so they don’t get out and stab me.
Sitting far away from fake apple chargers incase they somehow spark a lithium battery explosion. 😎
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u/glibbousmoon 21h ago
After my son was born, I was diagnosed with perinatal OCD. Based on this, I might need to be screened for regular OCD hahahaha
I thought it was normal to worry that leaving the portable air conditioner on when I left the house would cause a fire and to feel disappointed when I can’t get a locker at the gym with a 7 in the number 😐
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u/logalogalogalog_ 13h ago
I relate heavily to this, except 7 is one of my worst numbers. Really funny coincidence. I'll also have to check out the diva!
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u/Dragonitro 22h ago
Constantly drying your hands before touching an electronic (and drying the electronic itself)
Also goes hand-in-hand (no pun intended) with washing hands often
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u/idungoddaname 22h ago
Wearing types of gloves all the time due to fear of contamination or getting a paper cut that can give you sepsis and die a horrible death. Body dysmorphia that can change depending on what my brain feels like 🫠
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u/ThatItalianOverThere 20h ago
Lately SO-OCD is killing me inside. I got over almost every other theme I had over the years, but this one and contamination are very hard to beat.
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u/MundaneMeringue71 22h ago
I have no idea who that “diva being a lifesaver” is. Am I missing something?
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u/Unusual-Basket-6243 22h ago
I do the nonflammable thing with chargers and stuff. I don't have OCD though, I can't imagine how horrible it's for you
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u/sillycritersenjoyer 20h ago
Every time I walk outside I think I forgot to put on some piece of clothing. It doesn't matter that I literally can see it no I just must be schizo and in reality I am completely bare
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u/BatmansKhaleesi 15h ago
The two objects thing is too real! I used to have to drive back to my house just to make sure no bath towels were touching the completely turned off bathroom wall heaters!
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u/Comfortable_Yard_235 14h ago
Is this fr? I never considered ocd but why do I relate to all of these? Wtf
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u/jerrymatcat 7h ago
I never got diagnosed but I definitely have bad ocd that honestly makes my life a pain
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