Danielle Thornton, an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, explains how people with OCD get stuck trying to determine whether a thought/event is ‘OCD’ or a real problem and why that checking/rumination is itself a compulsion. She emphasizes that OCD seeks certainty and perfection, describes how intrusive thoughts can be partly true but exaggerated by OCD, and repeatedly recommends exposure and response prevention (ERP): accept uncertainty, avoid mental or behavioral compulsions (analyzing, checking, replaying memories), and allow normal life-risk/ambivalence rather than seeking impossible certainty. Thornton gives concrete examples across subtypes (harm, relationship, contamination, scrupulosity) to illustrate how OCD magnifies ordinary events or feelings.
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Welcome. My name is Danielle Thornton. I am an anxiety and OCD recovery coach and I help people get long term results for recovery from ocd, all subsets, including relationship ocd. So today I want to talk about a common compulsion. And, and it is trying to figure out if the thought is OCD or if the thoughts and feelings are coming from ocd, or whether it's a real event or something that they need to be worried about that's really happened. Now, there is some importance in knowing when OCD is showing up because you do need to know what to do with it. So I often say that recovery requires knowing when OCD shows up and using erp. So working with a specialist like myself to learn both of those things is very important. But I want to talk today about a common compulsion that people get stuck in of trying to figure out, is this OCD or is it something I really need to pay attention to? Okay, now you've heard me say before that OCD wants certainty and perfection. And someone without OCD or anxiety might have a thought that causes uncertainty. Like, you know, I wonder if this thing is really true, if I need to worry about it. And what they're going to do is they're going to make a decision, they're going to move forward whichever way they go, right? They're either not going to worry about it or they're going to address it and they're going to move forward. They're not going to spend the hours and days and months obsessing and ruminating about it like you would with ocd. The problem with this type of compulsion of rumination, so you're either in analyzing it, trying to figure it out, you're spending a lot of time thinking about it, is that there is no certainty. You know, we can, I can tell you in one moment that it's OCD or it's not. But if you're in the OCD cycle, which means you're doing compulsions, your brain is going to continue to give you these thoughts and create uncertainty. So that's why we have to learn what to do with the ocd. So a lot of people very commonly get stuck in, especially with recovery, right? They're basically trying to do recovery perfectly and OCD is attaching to each and every thought that they have. Is it OCD or is it not so that they can know what to do with it? But OCD can attack anything, anything that you feel uncertain about. So when you find yourself spending any amount of time other than a few minutes worrying about whether the thought is an intrusive thought or not, whether it's OCD or not, whether it's true or not. What you need to do is the same thing that I teach you to do with every single other intrusive thought or thought that's causing uncertainty or discomfort, and that is exposure and response prevention. Again, the response prevention is not doing anything about it, essentially not doing compulsions, whether that be mental health or behavioral. So not analyzing it, not trying to figure it out, not trying to think back on past memories of whether or not what's happened in the past, not analyzing or checking anything in the present moment. And the exposure is exposing yourself to maybe it's true, right? Maybe it's ocd, maybe it's not. Maybe it's an intrusive thought, maybe it's not. When you do that, you release OCD's hold on it, you accept uncertainty, and you're able to move forward. Now, some people might ask, well, isn't it normal to kind of analyze things and, you know, try to figure it out so that I can know what to do with it? And the answer is, yes, it's normal. But like I said before, someone without OCD is going to think about it for a few minutes, and then they're either going to accept it as a real event and move on with whatever action they decide to move on with, or they're going to accept that, you know, maybe it's just anxiety and they're going to move on with their life as well. They're not going to spend their time in the OCD cycle doing compulsions, trying to figure it out. Because again, OCD wants two things. It wants certainty and it wants perfection. And this is an example of your brain wanting certainty before you move forward. But the reality is, is there's. There's no answer for you here. Right? I know that's difficult to hear when you have ocd, but a lot of times our intrusive thoughts are partially true, right? That may be triggering for some of you, but that's okay. Triggers are not a bad thing. So when we get fears and intrusive thoughts, sometimes OCD can just create things out of the blue and really exaggerate things. So, for example, with harm ocd, your brain might be telling you what ifs, like, what if I end up hurting my child? What if I just hurt somebody else earlier today? Right? A lot of those are coming out of the blue, and there's really no merit to them except for, you know, maybe some frustration with your child and a thought or an image popping in your head about maybe hitting them. Right? Those things do not mean you're going to do that. But OCD is latching on to that. Examples with relationship, OCD is you might get in an argument with your partner, your partner might be distant one day, or you might wake up and you don't have those in love feelings. All of those are very real events. But OCD is taking those events and latching on to them and making them much bigger than they really are. Right? It's very normal to not always feel in love. It's very normal to not always be very physically attracted to your partner. It's very normal to have a fight and experience discomfort and disconnection. But OCD is going to latch onto those events and make them seem much bigger than they really are. So these are situations where there might be some truth to it. Maybe you're not feeling love in that moment. Nothing wrong with that, right? But OCD latches on and wants perfection. It wants you to feel love all the time, or it wants certainty. It wants to know that you do love your partner the way that you should. Which, who can answer that question of how we should love somebody, right? There's no certainty there and perfection is completely impossible. The example of contamination ocd, where, yeah, there's a real risk of getting sick if we're around people are sick, if we're touching things that have germs on them. But again, the risk is so minute. Getting sick is a normal part of life. But OCD latches onto that and makes it much bigger and requires that we're perfect so that we never get sick. Right? That perfection, at some point, it takes a small risk, which there's risk in everything. There's risk of getting hurt in relationships, there's risk of accidentally hurting somebody emotionally or physically. There is risk everywhere in life. It's just part of life, ups and downs, things like scrupulosity. OCD will take all kinds of abstract ideas like religion and philosophy, and it will create all kinds of rigidity or, you know, having to be a certain way otherwise something is wrong, or having to act a certain way otherwise something is wrong. Or it'll take these standards that some people are taught in religion and create perfection, perfectionism out of that, where you have to be perfect in order to, you know, fill in the blank, whatever that is.
So again, trying to figure out if it's OCD or not when you get stuck in this pattern, it's a compulsion. Remember, compulsions feel urgent or they at least feel like there's a pull to do them to some extent. Okay. If.
You'Re wondering whether this is a compulsion for you, you just ask yourself, could I let this go right now? Could I not figure it out and move forward with uncertainty? And if the answer is easily yes, then it's not a compulsion and you know you can move forward. If the answer is no, I feel like I have to know. It feels urgent. I feel told to know or to do something about it, then it's a compulsion and you need to practice ERP now. Again, the reason why it's so important to be working with somebody that can teach you ERP is you can learn some tips here in my videos and other videos that you're going to find. But there's a lot of intricacies with ocd. The guidance, education and support by working with somebody who understands OCD and who can help guide you through it are so, so important. So if you want more help with any OCD subset, please click on the link in the description. I have two very effective options for you. One is called the path. It's a very cost effective option for OCD recovery. The other is one on one coaching with me. Both are extremely effective and I teach people how to get to the recovery stage of OCD and stay there so you're not yo yoing back and forth and you will get there as long as you use the tool consistently. And when OCD shows up, you are going, it's going to fade away every time. It works every single time with everybody I work with, including myself. I have been there. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Please like this video, comment or subscribe. That really helps me to continue to keep doing material for you and keep putting out videos and it helps me know which videos you like and are helping you so that I can continue to get that feedback. Thank you so much and have a great day.
