Danielle Thornton, an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, explains how OCD creates intrusive thoughts and distorted perceptions. She covers exposure and response prevention (ERP) as the key treatment for managing these symptoms.
Welcome. My name is Danielle Thornton. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach. And today I want to talk about whether or not OCD can cause delusions or cause us to see things that aren't really there. So the short answer is yes. OCD causes things called intrusive thoughts, intrusive images, or even intrusive memories. And what is happening in the brain is that OCD is coming from the fear center of your brain, okay? And it's trying to protect you. And it sees. It senses danger in places that aren't really there. It's very overactive, okay? And there's a lot of different OCD subsets, so I'm just going to give you a few examples in this video. But the way that OCD shows up for everybody is very different. There's a lot of commonalities, but it can be very different from person to person. I've worked with clients with all kinds of intrusive thoughts and images and things like that, but essentially it's all distorted, okay? Because OCD is taking something that it senses danger in, and it's highly exaggerating it. So whether that's a thought, a memory, an image, the way that you're perceiving the world that you're, the way you're perceiving another person, and even physical attributes of somebody. So OCD wants to keep you safe, and it's hyper focusing on things. So someone with contamination OCD might have a fear of eating something bad or contaminating themselves, so they might see germs in places that aren't there, or they might look at certain foods and hyper focus on things that might be wrong with it. Okay? I've worked with people with relationship OCD that have intrusive thoughts and perceptions about their partner that are highly exaggerated or even physical features, that someone can look at their partner and see a physical feature that's highly distorted. And so what's important to understand is that these are very intrusive, they're bothersome. And OCD is taking something, whether that's an event, a feature, a thought, a memory, and it's completely distorting it to try to scare you and get you to run away. And then it creates more intrusive thoughts and fears and negative thought spirals and memories. Ok? So the important thing here is not the thoughts that we're having, but essentially how we're reacting to them. That's what makes it worse. Because usually it starts very tiny and very small. So someone with contamination OCD might just start to worry A little bit more about whether they're going to get sick or whether their meat is cooked enough or whether the vegetables are washed enough. Someone with relationship OCD might just notice more of the incompatibilities or negatives in their relationship, and then it starts to exaggerate from there. But sometimes it comes completely out of the blue. I've seen where someone with OCD just all of a sudden has a really strong intrusive thought completely out of nowhere. So, again, it's very different for everybody. But the important thing to remember is not to exaggerate the fear, because your brain is exaggerating things out of fear. And what you don't want to do is make an even bigger deal about it, because essentially with OCD is when we're getting an intrusive thought, an intrusive memory, or an intrusive image. Essentially the quick and short answer, which it isn't quite this simple, but the quick and short answer is, if we cannot give it attention, it's going to fade away and it's not really going to happen anymore. It's the fact that we're giving it attention that is making it worse. Okay? So this brain pattern is giving you these intrusive thoughts and these things, and it wants you to engage. It wants you to engage. It wants you to stay safe. And when we engage in any way with things called compulsions or giving the thought attention, then what happens is it just gives this brain pattern the attention that it wants, and it keeps happening. So exposure and response prevention is what everybody else without OCD is doing when it comes to things that bother them. Intrusive thoughts, uncertainty, anxiety, they don't give it that much attention and it fades away. And that's exactly what ERP is teaching you to do. In fact, you're doing ERP all the time in other areas of your life where you might have uncertainty. You just move forward, make a decision, or you don't give those negative things the attention. And that is essentially what ERP is teaching you. And it's crucial. And it worked with me. It works with every single person I work with. It just takes some time to learn and practice, because your brain has been going essentially in this direction, and it gets worse or stays the way it is. And what we're teaching you to do is go in this direction. We're teaching you new ways of dealing with things. We're building new neural pathways in the brain, and the more you practice it, the more you use it, the easier it's going to get. It works every single time, as long as you use it, as long as you're consistent and you continue to get support and move forward in the recovery process. So hopefully that answers your question today. Please post your comments below. Like this video? Subscribe that helps me know what's helping, what you like, what you want more of. Okay, just let me know if you want recovery help. I am here to help you no matter what OCD subset that you struggle with. I have worked with everything from relationship OCD to harm to contamination. It's all ocd. Okay, so check out the comments section. Check out my links for the different options. Options. I have very cost effective options and one on one coaching options for you and I see people get to the recovery stage every day. So I hope you have a great day and take care.
