3 Steps When OCD Is Triggered

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Welcome. My name is Danielle Thornton. I am an anxiety and OCD recovery coach. And today I'm going to teach you what to do when you get triggered or an intrusive thought that gives you a lot of anxiety. So when it comes to intrusive thoughts, sometimes they feel extremely intrusive and sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's a real life trigger and, and not necessarily an intrusive thought that really kind of comes out of nowhere. It depends on what sort of OCD or anxiety that you are struggling with. But there are triggers everywhere, okay? Whether you're experiencing anxiety, OCD or something is just a fearful moment, right? Because anxiety and OCD just boil down to it. It's just fear. Your brain is sending you some sort of fear response. As a lot of you know, this fear response is really kind of a false alarm or a faulty alarm. Your brain is sending you unnecessary levels of anxiety and fear attached to that particular thought or the certain life event that is going on. And so what a lot of people do is they start to avoid these triggers. They avoid the things that are really triggering them and making them uncomfortable and giving them the anxiety. They're. The problem is, is that that is just reinforcing the fear response in the brain. It's reinforcing this pattern of false alarm compulsion, which is essentially what avoidance is. If you have ocd, if you have anxiety, it's a coping mechanism. The fear gets reinforced and then that pattern in your brain is rewarded and it's going to give you more false alarm bells because you avoided that thing. And that's really what that part brain, the fear response, wants you to do. Now, for a lot of my clients, once we start going through my nine week program, the actual anxiety starts to go away and then they just start to feel different sorts of feelings. So this can be true if you are experiencing anxiety, doubt, uncertainty, confusion. Any of those feelings around fear or uncertainty can signal that the anxiety or OCD is active. And when this happens, then you can start to use your ERP or your act acceptance and commitment therapy skills in order to rewire your brain to no longer give you these intrusive thoughts and false alarms. So this is kind of ERP one on one. I'm going to give you three steps to start practicing when you do get any sort of intrusive thought or anxiety. Again, you can use this for any type of fear, whether you experience ocd, anxiety, ptsd, all kinds of fear responses. This can be very, very helpful. For step one is to recognize if you have ocd. Recognize that it's just OCD if you have anxiety. Recognize it as just fear if you. And for ocd too, because it is all just fear. So recognizing it as fear is your first step. Step two is to remind yourself not to avoid or do any other sort of compulsion, such as ruminating and analyzing, checking something, avoiding. These are kind of the top three compulsions that people tend to do. If you do struggle with ocd, there can be all kinds of other compulsions that you're doing. So it's important to understand what those are and. And then refrain from doing those. And then step three is learning to sit with the discomfort or sit with the anxiety that you're feeling. When you're working with somebody like myself, ERP specialist or OCD specialist, they're actually gonna help you to lean into further that fear or uncertainty. And I know that seems really scary at first, because if you haven't gotten help for your OCD yet, then you're probably used to avoiding and getting reassurance or any other type of compulsion that actually may help in the short term, but it makes OCD or anxiety worse in the long term because you're just reinforcing that fear center in your brain. So what you want to do is just sit with the uncertainty. Don't give yourself any sort of statements that things are going to work out perfectly depending on what that intrusive thought is. Sit with the uncertainty. That thing may or may not happen. That, that thing may or may not be true. Okay? And you're going to feel the anxiety, and that's okay. That's very, very normal. What you're going to do is you're going to sit with this until that anxiety eases and it passes. And it will, especially as long as you're not doing any compulsions. If you do any sort of compulsion, then likely the anxiety will go down, but then it will come back fairly quickly later. If you use this exposure response, the anxiety is going to come down and it's not going to come back as quickly. What you're doing in these moments is you are actually sitting with that uncertainty and you're habituating your brain to that fear or that particular uncertainty that you're going through. And the reason why that's so important is because until you start to get comfortable with uncertainty, then your brain is going to stop giving you these false alarms and these intrusive thoughts that are coming at you, because your body and your brain is going to learn, number one, that you can handle the anxiety. Number two, that it goes away. And then number three, most of the time, that fear never ends up coming true. Okay? So until you're able to do this and your brain is able to see that you're actually okay, your brain will continue to give you these false alarms and these intrusive thoughts. Now, it's interesting that these types of techniques work for any sort of compulsive behavior. So when we're talking about overeating, you know, drugs, alcohol, and not that you don't need additional support other than this tool for some of those things, but any sort of compulsion or thing that you feel the need to do right away to cope, this is an excellent tool to start to use to just sit with that uncertainty, sit with the discomfort. Sometimes it doesn't feel like anxiety. Sometimes it just feels like discomfort or unease. Learning to sit with that and see that it actually passes again, you're literally rewiring your brain to behave differently. And your anxiety and your intrusive thoughts are going to slow down. They're not going to come back as often the more that you do this. Now, don't be discouraged if this isn't easy or that it takes more than one time to do it, okay? This is something that takes a lot of practice because if you think about it, you've been struggling with anxiety for a very, very, very long time, and you've created certain coping mechanisms to deal with that anxiety that you've dealt for long, dealt with for a long time. So it's going to take time to practice and learn this new skill for it to become easier, for it to become a little bit more automatic. You're not going to go from A to Z in a month, okay? This stuff takes time. Don't get discouraged with it. Keep practicing it. But also don't get discouraged if you need some extra help, okay? A lot of people do need extra support with their anxiety and OCD to be able to get to that recovery stage. So don't be discouraged if that's the case. I know I wasn't able to do it on my own. And again, a lot of people make really great progress on their own, and that's great, But a lot of people don't. So don't get discouraged. And do not feel bad about yourself for reaching out for help. Remember, these triggers are your teachers. I know that they're not fun to deal with. I know they're uncomfortable and difficult, but they are your teachers. They're the things that are going to actually get you to the recovery stage for your ocd. Or feeling better with your anxiety. Lastly, while you're practicing this technique, please make sure you continue to be compassionate with yourself. That's really really huge. A lot of us with anxiety and OCD can be really hard on ourselves. Especially ocd. The perfectionism comes in. Make sure you're always practicing self compassion which means pay attention to the way that you're talking to yourself. Take some time for yourself. Practice self care. That's a really really important piece. And if you need some additional support for your anxiety or ocd, please check out the description below. I have courses, I have coaching programs to help you get to the recovery stage of OCD or help eliminate your anxiety that you're going through. Whether that be in relationships, whether that's harm, ocd, pocd, sexual orientation, ocd, it does not matter. I've treated all forms of oc know that it is possible to get to the recovery stage of ocd. It just takes the right tools and the right kind of support and lots and lots of practice.