YouTube video by Danielle Thornton (anxiety & OCD recovery coach) discussing how Law of Attraction/manifesting beliefs can interact harmfully with OCD. The speaker identifies four common misconceptions: (1) that one must never have negative thoughts or they will come true; (2) repeating negative statements aloud increases their likelihood; (3) having negative feelings causes negative manifestations; and (4) one can manifest a perfect life by doing things perfectly. Thornton counters each misconception with pragmatic points: negative thoughts/feelings are normal and cannot be eliminated; exposure exercises (repeating fears) do not make feared outcomes happen; striving for constant positivity or perfection fuels OCD and frustration; instead she recommends acceptance, realistic goal-setting, letting go of rigid timelines, and using exposure/habituation to reduce distress. The video ends with a call to subscribe and links to recovery programs.
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Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, helping others reach the lifetime recovery stage for any OCD subset like I have, so you can live a happy life and have happy, healthy relationships. Today we're going to talk about the topic of manifesting an ocd. And I'm going to give you four common misconceptions that can come from learning about the Law of Attraction, manifesting that will negatively impact your OCD and how to work through these. So I myself was very much into Law of Attraction and manifesting, and I actually still believe in it to an extent. But this can become compulsive for a lot of people. The need for certainty and perfection, which is what OCD wants, can really grasp at a lot of the concepts and manifesting in the Law of Attraction. So let's talk about four misconceptions. Number one, I can't think negative thoughts, otherwise they'll come true or I will attract negativity to my life. I want you to understand that, yes, the more we engage with positive thoughts, the more positive we feel. The more we engage with negative thoughts. We're going to feel negative, right? But getting rid of negative thoughts should never, ever be your goal because it's completely impossible. We all get strange, negative, neutral, weird, and positive thoughts. I want you to stop looking at your thoughts as good and bad, okay? And I want you to just start recognizing we all get thoughts that feel good, that feel bad, that feel scary, that feel weird and strange, okay? If you're always trying to get rid of negative thoughts or not think negative thoughts, you're actually going to become very frustrated with yourself. You're going to become very frustrated with your brain. And thinking that you can control all of this is going to cause a lot of inner turmoil, because you can't. We all get negative thoughts. There are things that we can do to help with dealing with negative thoughts, dealing with ocd, dealing with depression, but we can't get rid of negative thoughts. And you're going to get them. So don't think that you can just get rid of negative thoughts and have all these positive thoughts and all of a sudden that your life is going to be wonderful because it's not that black and white.
Number two, if I say negative things out loud over and over again, it's more likely to happen or come true again. False. I've done a lot of exposures in my life, repeating the things that caused me discomfort or responding to my intrusive thoughts with imaginal exposure for Years, none of it's ever happened. Okay? So again, a lot of times you hear with the law of Attraction or manifesting that what you speak is what comes into it, into existence. And I want you to think about all of the things that you have spoken about that have never actually happened. Okay? Again, in general, the more positive we are, the more positive we're going to feel and that we put that energy out there and we're going to get that kind of good stuff back from other people because people reciprocate what we're giving. Right? But just because you say something out loud does not mean it's going to happen. Believe me, I repeated wanting to win $1 million. A lot of times it's never happened to me. So again, the law of Attraction manifesting, it's not that black and white. You can do exposure exercises without those things actually happening. The way that exposure works is to habituate your brain to the thoughts to reduce the discomfort, and then you let it go. Number three, if I have negative feelings, I'm going to be manifesting negativity into my life. Again, untrue. I remember when I was trying to create a lot of positive feelings, and I actually did get a lot of positive feelings, but almost went overboard to where I felt like I always had to feel good. And then when I didn't feel good, I was extremely disappointed and it was causing a lot of harm in my life because again, OCD was attaching to the Law of Attraction. Okay, so we're all going to have negative feelings in life. In fact, in, in any given day, we all typically have some good feelings, some bad feelings, and a lot of neutral. That's what it's like to be a human being. So trying to create positive feelings all the time and get rid of negative feelings is just going to come up with frustration for yourself because this isn't something you can get rid of. If you've noticed. When you just accept what is and accept negative feelings and stop giving it all so much attention, we actually feel better. And so this is a great way to look at it from a Law of Attraction perspective is negativity is part of life. But we don't want to hyper focus on it and give it so much attention because it will grow. Right? This is how the human brain and the human body works. When we stay stuck in negative thoughts in our head, mentally, we're going to feel the negativity of that, right? We can let go of that. We can allow ourselves to have a bad day, to have something not Working perfectly in life and let it go. And with that acceptance allows the world to react in a way that, yeah, bad things happen, but then they go away and then good things happen. Number four, I can manifest the perfect life and everything I've wanted if I just do things right. Again, perfection is not possible. Okay, I'm not saying that having dreams and goals is a bad thing. It's not. I am very much a dreamer, and I very much always am thinking about the things that I want to create in my life, the things that I want to do, and I'll never stop doing that. But the idea of this perfect life without anything bad happening and always getting exactly what we want is extremely unrealistic. And if we continue to think that we can do that, then you're going to be highly disappointed when it doesn't happen. When we can let go of it. Right? Just like the law of Attraction teaches you, nothing wrong with knowing what you want and setting goals for things that you want in your life. Let go. Right? And that's a big part of this. We have to let go of the timeline of the outcome and let it happen when it happens. And so if you want to look at the obsession as not being able to let it go and trying to make it happen on your timeline, which, as you know, doesn't work very well, we have to let go of that. So essentially, I want you to let go of the obsession with it, the perfection, needing certainty about it. Right. And when you can do that, you can practice manifesting in a very healthy way where you know what you want, you go after what you want. But at the same time, we're not obsessing over it and trying to create perfection. And you can allow positive things and negative things in your life because knowing no one is going to get through life without good and bad, it's part of life for being a human being. So I hope that was really helpful for you if you had this question. I know I did years ago when I was struggling with OCD and learning the law of attraction. Hope this was helpful. Subscribe to this channel like comment? Let me know what you think about this video and if you want help, make sure to check out the description. The link there will take you to recovery programs that can help you further with your ocd. We'll talk to you soon.
