Danielle Jhiani explains exposure and response prevention for anxiety and OCD. ERP causes initial discomfort but reduces anxiety over time with consistent practice. Avoidance reinforces hypervigilance and intrusive thoughts, while resisting compulsions is what breaks the cycle.
Do you avoid starting or doing exposure and response prevention work because you're afraid it's going to make your anxiety worse? I want you to know that I remember that feeling I used to avoid and resist doing exposure because either I was afraid it was going to make anxiety worse, or once I learned how to do it, I was avoidant because it was uncomfortable. Avoiding at the time just seemed easier than actually doing the work to get better. I want you to comment below and let me know if you've done any of these things and you in your recovery journey, or maybe you're doing them right now. But if you'll stick with me through this video, you're going to see exactly why you have to stop this pattern. You see the whole reason you were struggling with anxiety or OCD in the first place is because you're running away from uncomfortable feelings. What this does in your brain is it teaches your brain that you can't handle it, that there is something wrong. And your brain becomes more hyper vigilant, scanning for danger in your environment, giving you more anxiety and more intrusive thoughts to protect you. And then the anxiety and the discomfort gets worse and worse over your life. If you haven't already noticed, when you expose yourself to things that are uncomfortable, whether it's starting a new job that you're just nervous about or it's something that causes a lot of anxiety in your body, yes you're going to feel discomfort, but oftentimes it's no worse than the discomfort that you're already feeling. Most of you are walking around on a daily basis feeling, feeling uneasy or anxious almost all of the time. Now if you're not, that's a great thing. That means you're naturally or consciously practicing some exposure and response prevention. And so there may be times where it's not bothering you, where you feel better. And then when you're engaging with the obsession or the fear or the doubt, then it's going to feel worse at that time. Now for some triggers, anxiety may increase some when you do the exposure. But what will happen over time, either through the current exposure that you're doing, or the more you do the exposures on a consistent basis, that discomfort is going to lower. You're going to build comfort with whatever that topic is that you're doing the exposure on. But the longer you avoid or try to run away from it or push it away, the worse OCD and anxiety is going to get. So the way that you get to where you want to be, letting go of those short term coping mechanisms and start practicing the more difficult long term coping mechanisms that are going to make you feel better in the long term. And the good news about this is the more you do it, the more comfort you're going to build. That thing isn't going to be as uncomfortable in the near future and it will get more and more comfortable and you're going to build more and more confidence with moving towards your fears and doubts versus running away. I promise you it does get a lot easier with type. Now, if you've struggled with exposure, you've learned it and you've had troubles with it somehow, I'd love for you to let me know in the comments and I can help you troubleshoot because it always works when it's done properly. It's usually a compulsion that's getting involved that is keeping it from working. So once we can determine that, we can make a quick fix and it will start working for you pretty quickly. We once you know what that compulsion is and you stop doing it. My number one tip for people who want to get better is to learn exposure and response prevention with the other recovery techniques. ERP is a big part of OCD recovery, but there are other techniques that are really important to go with that to get you to that lifetime recovery stage. So when I'm working with a client, they experience relief pretty quickly and, and that's because they're starting to react to those thoughts and feelings differently. And if that's the case, you should start feeling at least small moments of relief fairly quickly and consistently the more you do the work. If you aren't noticing any relief, you may not be doing the right type of treatment for your ocd or maybe you're not learning the right tools or there's other things getting in the way. My clients usually start to feel a glimpse of relief and start to feel a difference in their mindset, in their feelings, in their anxiety pretty quickly. And as they're consistent with the work, they will continue to see results. So if you're not seeing results, either you're not getting the right treatment or there's more to it that you need to learn it. Also, if you let your brain notice the results instead of noticing all the negatives to so this is what you should be experiencing and I just want you to know to move towards that discomfort. It's uncomfortable, you're going to experience resistance. I wasn't always perfect at it, but I continued to put one foot in front of the other. I continued to try, I continued to keep going. And those moments of resistance would fade into the past and more and more OCD faded from my life and no longer is a struggle for me. If you want help reaching a lifetime recovery stage for your OCD subset, check out the link in the description below. And make sure you subscribe to this channel to get notification of new videos and like this one, we'll talk to you really soon.
