Here's How to Get Out of Any OCD Spike
A first-person YouTube talk by anxiety and OCD recovery coach Danielle Thornton describing how she resolved a recent OCD spike. She explains core ERP (exposure and response prevention) principles and lists practical steps: do exposure exercises with guidance, accept uncertainty and imperfection, avoid sharing intrusive thought content (resist reassurance), recognize thoughts as just thoughts, perform avoided actions anyway, stop searching for evidence, and deliberately invite unwanted thoughts. She closes by offering coaching, a membership called "The Path," and scholarship resources.
Chapters
Foreign.
Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach who has recovered from OCD, several subsets of OCD, and been helping others do the same since 2018. Today, I want to talk about how I got out of my last OCD spike. So, as many of you know, I've struggled with several subsets, and OC really doesn't bother me much anymore. But from time to time, it will want to latch onto something, and I accept this. I expect it, and doing this will actually keep it from coming back very often at all. But life is full of uncertainty, right? Things happen. I've struggled with relationship ocd, and there's ups and downs in relationships, and sometimes OCD may want to attach to something. If you have other OCD subsets, then those can come up from time to time, too, because there are uncertainties in life and our brains are always going to lean. Anxious. So what I want to share with you today is how I got rid of my last OCD spike. And so what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to read you the notes that I have on my phone, because whenever I have one, I kind of jot down, okay, here's what I need to do. And then I jot down how I got out of it. So the next time I can just remind myself, now I know. I know what to do, I know how to do erp. But reminding myself the last time what it was about, what that does is it helps me go, okay, that was my trigger. And this can be really helpful because this time it was several different subsets that kind of showed up at the same time. So.
I jotted down what happened, and now I know that, okay, here's a topic that OCD wants to latch onto. And whenever life is imperfect in this area, then I know that OCD is trying to latch onto it. And I'm not going to let it. Not going to let it start to spiral, start to think about it. It really starts typically with, you know, thoughts, feelings, and then rumination about it, right? Starts with the mental compulsions typically turning into sometimes physical compulsions, sometimes not. So there's one big one that really got rid of it really fast.
But first I wrote down, do your exposure exercises, right? So what do those look like? I don't teach a lot of exposure on this channel because it's really important that it's not something that's really easy for me to just say. And then you do it, and then all of a sudden it works. It's really important that you learn it properly. You have somebody to talk to that can do it with you, teach you how your brain's going to want to trick you out of it and teach you the different ways to do it. And several sessions are usually necessary to learn it. Learn about how your OCD is working, work through the challenges, because OCD is going to try to get you to not do it. And from there, asking questions and continuing to increase. Lean in more, do more exposure. It's actually not that complicated, but I would say at least five sessions, four to five sessions minimum are necessary to really, really get it for most people. Some few people less, Few people more. So what I will say is the last spike that I had, I was having a really hard time leaning in all the way by telling myself, okay, yeah, maybe that thing will definitely happen. That. That one was really hard for me. So I didn't lean in all the way. Now, if I could have, it's going to be uncomfortable. Sometimes we can lean in all the way. So in the mornings, I was having anxiety and I couldn't lean in all the way. So I used the maybe, maybe not. You know, maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, or maybe it's going to happen, maybe it isn't. That's how I would respond to the thoughts. And then that's the exposure, by the way. And then I would practice response prevention by trying not to give it more attention. It's not that easy. You're not going to be perfect at it. You're just going to do your best. And then when the next thought comes, you're going to either not give it attention, which is also exposure and response prevention, or you're going to lean into the uncertainty of it. Okay. And you're going to keep doing that the best you can. When I was feeling better by doing all this in the evenings, then I could lean in a lot more, which was good. So accept imperfection, whether that is in your relationship and your food and your work.
And your thoughts and yourself, where whatever the OCD is latching onto, it's either wanting certainty, perfection, or both. So you have to accept that you're going to be imperfect. Life is going to be imperfect. There's risk everywhere. So if you're struggling with contamination, ocd. Yeah, Maybe we'll get sick, right? Or health, ocd. Things can happen. Right. But for the most part, we're usually doing a pretty good job of taking care of ourselves. OCD makes tiny things bigger. And that's exactly what I saw with this one.
Resist telling people about your thoughts. So I wanted so badly, like a lot of, you know, to.
Tell people what I was thinking, and I think I might have told one person that I was struggling, but I did not share the specific thoughts. So, you know, I let them know I was having some anxiety, but I did not tell them the specifics. Because as much as we want to say that we're not seeking reassurance, we just need support, your brain is going to convince you that it's not reassurance seeking, but it is. We're wanting people to tell us that it's okay. We're wanting to. People want. Wanting people to give us reassurance or certainty about that thing because it's causing discomfort. So by all means, tell people you're struggling with ocd, you're struggling with anxiety, but when they ask the content of the thoughts, let them know that, you know, it's not really important and it will actually make it worse. That is, unless you are speaking with myself or your, your ERP specialist or OCD specialist, know that you can handle discomfort. This is a big one. It feels really uncomfortable in the moment, right? But you have to be mentally strong and know you can handle it because your brain is going into negative thought patterns and it's going to tell you, I can't handle this, I can't do this. And the reality is you can. You just have to not let your brain go so negative because the more you do that, the more it spirals downwards into the. I can't do this to. Here's all the things that are going to happen to me if I can't do this.
Understand that thoughts are just thoughts and giving them any attention, meaning or trying to get rid of them makes it worse, right? So thoughts are just thoughts. They're not necessarily true, untrue, neutral. They're just thoughts that are happening right.
When we. It's when we give them meaning that creates the uncomfortable feelings, whether it's unconscious or conscious, that causes the problem.
Do the things you're afraid of anyway, right? So whatever's coming up for you, whatever thoughts are coming up for you, you're going to want to react by avoidance.
And it doesn't matter what that thing is. I want you to do it anyway. Actually, it does matter. Of course I'm not going to tell you to go walk up to a big bear or walk into the middle of traffic, but most of the time those aren't the intrusive thoughts. It's.
All kinds of stuff, right? There's a thousand different things that you could be avoiding because of the thoughts, go do it anyway. If you are experiencing health OCD and you know you're afraid that there's something wrong with you, and so you're avoiding exercise, go exercise or go to work. If you're experiencing contamination OCD and you're not eating meat because you're afraid it might be not cooked well enough, cook it and eat it. You're experiencing relationship OCD and you find yourself distancing from your partner, not wanting to go on a date, Go on the date. If you're experiencing scrupulosity OCD and you're avoiding, you know, church or other people, go be around them, right? Whatever the OCD subset it is, it doesn't matter. Avoidance is a compulsion. It's going to make it worse. So go do that thing anyway. Because by avoiding and listening to that fear, you're strengthening the fear. It's just giving that fear power.
Be stronger than your negative thoughts and feelings. So you have to know that there's a part of you and a part of your brain that can, that is stronger than these thoughts, right? So it goes back to that feeling of, I can't do it. Yes, you can do it. You can. You may have to do it over and over and over again. It may be uncomfortable, but you can. So you just have to know it and tell yourself over and over again, I am stronger than my thoughts.
Stop looking for evidence that the thoughts are true or not true. This is a big one. And I was doing a lot of this, so I had to recognize it and stop looking for evidence of truth or not truth. They're just thoughts. And the last one, which is the one that. That really shifted things extremely quickly this last time around, was letting the thoughts come. So I realized I was getting really strong intrusive thoughts. And, you know, I've had suicidal intrusive thoughts, by the way, so talk about uncomfortable. And I realized I was trying to get rid of them. I didn't want them, right? So I was trying to push them away. I was trying to get rid of them, and I was like, I know what I'm doing, right? And I know it's hard in the moment to recognize this because I do this for a living. I know this stuff very well, and I know what works. And I was like, I'm trying to push these away. So I started inviting them. I said, come on in, let's go. Bring it on. I said, come on, thoughts. And they quit coming. And I woke up the next day and I felt great. And you know, before I was feeling like, oh my gosh, I hate, you know, how you feel when you're in that OCD spike. So.
You know.
After the spike, I'm thankful for it because it'd been so long since I'd had one, I kind of forgot what it was like, you know, I managed, I managed my worry. You know, I think even when we're outside of those OCD spikes, we still have to manage our brain. So ERP is something I use almost every day.
A spike is a time where you have to use it a lot during the day and be really conscious of it. But for the most part, otherwise I just catch myself making sure I'm not ruminating and overthinking about anything. And we all know what our topics are, right? We all have different topics that OCD wants to latch onto in our lives. So once you know what your topics are.
Don'T allow yourself to engage with thoughts about that because you're going to start ruminating for a lot longer than you need to. And again, it starts small and it can build up. Okay? So know your subjects.
Use these techniques and reach out if you need help. Right? It is, you know, I didn't have to do that, but I would have, right? If I, if I would have needed support. It can be so helpful to just have that support and have someone remind you, okay, here's what to do, right? Because when you're in those moments, it's uncomfortable, it's scary, and it doesn't have to be right, but it is, let's be real. So reach out when you need for help. There's help out there. It's just a matter of getting the right help. Which is why I started doing this so many years ago because so many therapists just don't know how to treat this and don't know what to do with it. And so I am here for you. If you need that help. You can go to my website, which is listed below, or click the link in the description of this video. I do one on one coaching sessions and I also have a membership program called the Path, which is designed to be a really cost effective program for anybody struggling with any subset of ocd. And I wanted that to be cost effective for people to, for people to be able to get better no matter what. I offer scholarships from time to time with 50 to 70% off of the path memberships. So make sure that you join my Facebook groups either rocd, I'm ready to heal or ocd I'M ready to heal. And I offer scholarships through those every other month. So check those out. If you can't even afford the the low cost that's already there. And I am here to help recovery as possible. The skills work. We just have to know them and use them. We'll talk to you soon. Have a great day.
