YouTube video by Danielle Jhiani, an OCD recovery coach, explaining a common recovery mistake: expecting rapid elimination of OCD/anxiety. She emphasizes that OCD patterns develop over years, recovery is gradual and requires learning and practicing ERP (exposure and response prevention) skills, managing expectations, and using strategies regularly to make sustainable change rather than expecting complete eradication of anxiety.
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Welcome back. My name is Danielle and I'm a zeiting OCD recovery coach who has recovered from several subsets of OCD and helps others do the same. So today I want to talk about one of the biggest mistakes that people make in the recovery process, and that is expecting big shifts and expecting things to just go away. That is not how our brain works. The reason being is that OCD or anxiety has been something that you've probably had since you were little, or at least the anxiety tendencies or the tendencies to avoid discomfort, whether that be emotions or other discomfort, has been there for a very, very long time. It has built up over time. Some of you may not have experienced OCD until adulthood, but this is a brain pattern that's been there for a very long time. And your brain can only change so much. It's no different than a weight loss journey. When we expect to lose two pounds a week or even more and we're not getting there, we're extremely disappointed. But that type of weight loss is not very realistic. True, sustainable weight loss is slow and steady and it takes work. And the recovery process from OCD is exactly the same because your brain cannot change that quickly. And when we have anxiety or ocd, we're probably always going to lean a little anxious. So the recovery process requires that we learn what to do with uncertainty and doubt, imperfection, and what to do when anxiety or OCD shows up. But anxiety and uncertainty are part of life in today's world. So the recovery process is learning what to do when it shows up so that it shows up a lot less. But that doesn't mean that you're never going to have anxiety or uncertainty again in your life or that you're not going to be triggered. If you have a certain theme that has really taken hold, then the recovery process is learning how to manage that. When you learn exposure and response prevention for ocd, you're going to know what to do when it shows up. You're going to have the control that you need to be able to get it to fade away. That might be within seconds, minutes, hours, or days. We don't know. And it's different for everybody, but you will have the skills to do that. What we have to understand is that it's not just going to completely go away. We're not going to erase uncertainty and anxiety from our lives because everybody has it. What we have to learn is how to manage it. And what this looks like for me is that when my brain wants to focus on something that's uncertain or Imperfect. I don't let it. And it fades away within seconds. Once in a blue moon, I might have a really big trigger that takes a little bit more, but most of the time it fades away very quickly. But my brain does tend to want to worry and so I manage it. I use my ERP skills every single day and I don't expect it to go away, because when I expect it to go away, which is completely unrealistic, then I'm going to be disappointed. So managing our expectations is really, really important. The recovery process is you learning how to rewire your brain. You can do this and you can make amazing, sustainable changes, but you have to understand how it works and you have to know that your brain is going to change and it's going to go back to old patterns off and on. But the more you use the skills, the more you practice it and give your brain time to rewire and change and then let go of the process and just use the skills whenever you need them. Essentially most of every day you're going to be practicing it, but it's going to be very quick and easy. But using them more when you need them, you're going to stay in the recovery stage. It is possible, but we have to understand the process and we have to be realistic about it. Make sure that you're managing that perfection that OCD wants, that you're getting the right help with the recovery process, learning the skills properly and, and knowing how to use them, and then asking for support when you need them. If you need help with this to get to the recovery stage. I have been doing this for years. I've been through it myself and I know what it takes. So check out the link in the description below and there are a couple of different options for you to help you get to the recovery stage. We'll talk to you next time.
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