YouTube video by Danielle Jhiani (an anxiety, OCD, and relationship coach) explaining how meditation can help with OCD when used correctly and describing two common pitfalls to avoid: (1) using meditation as a compulsion to try to remove symptoms, and (2) engaging in rumination or overanalysis during practice. The video lists specific techniques recommended for OCD recovery—mindfulness meditation, acceptance-based practice, breath awareness, body scan, and guided meditations by OCD specialists—and emphasizes using meditation to build tolerance for discomfort rather than to seek immediate relief.
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Welcome back. My name is Danielle Gianni. I'm an anxiety, OCD and relationship coach. Helping people overcome challenges in these areas long term, just like I have today, we're going to talk about meditation and ocd. Meditation can be a great tool for those struggling with anxiety and ocd. It can also become a compulsion. So we're going to talk more about this today.
First, let's talk about how meditation can be really helpful if you're doing it correctly. First, meditation can reduce the reactivity that you have to intrusive thoughts. OCD thrives on fear and urgency. A good guided meditation helps you observe the thoughts and the feelings without reacting to them, essentially reducing the power they have over you. Next, meditation encourages acceptance. Instead of fighting the thoughts or trying to push them away, which actually fuels ocd, meditation actually helps you allow the thoughts to come and go without reacting to them in unhealthy ways that make things worse. Meditation can actually lower anxiety and stress. While OCD creates a hyper awareness and sensitivity to thoughts and feelings. Meditation can actually activate the relaxation response, teaching your nervous system how to calm down more. Long term meditation increases mindfulness and presence. When we're in the present moment, we're not up here, which is usually a really good thing. Meditation helps bring you back into the present moment, reducing the need for compulsions. Meditation can be a great form of exposure, just like ERP in the real method, you need to train your brain to allow discomfort, sit with it and resist the compulsive responses. So let's talk about two meditation pitfalls for OCD that you want to avoid the first pitfall, and the biggest one is meditation becoming a compulsion in itself. So if you're doing meditation to get rid of ocd, get rid of the thoughts or get rid of the feelings, then it's actually not going to be helpful. It's going to feed OCD and it's going to cause things to be worse. Number two, when you're doing the meditation, if you're engaging in rumination, analyzing or overthinking, then you're feeding ocd. You're feeding those intrusive thoughts and obsessions and you're actually going to feel worse. Now I'm going to tell you some meditation techniques that you can use to make it effective for your OCD recovery. Practice mindfulness meditation. This means that you're essentially observing the thoughts without judgment. Next is acceptance based meditation. With this type of meditation, you're going to allow the thoughts to come, even maybe invite them in and let them go as they naturally would as you're not giving them any meaning or attention. Next is breath awareness. Allow yourself to bring your attention to your breath as a way to disconnect from any thoughts or feelings. Something to actually focus on to disconnect. Stay grounded in the present moment. Next is a body scan meditation. You're shifting your attention away from the thoughts and refocusing on present moment and any physical sensations that you feel in your body, which can be an exposure in itself. And lastly, guided meditations for OCD done by an OCD specialist. I have a lot of these here on my YouTube channel, so if you want to check these out, which do include all of the previous techniques, you can do that by clicking the link in the description. Guided meditation done by somebody who understands anxiety and OCD is going to guide you through the meditation in the right way, not as a way to get rid of the thoughts, get rid of the feelings, or just focus on comfort and relief. Meditation is a great tool for anxiety and OCD recovery as long as you're doing it for the right reasons and you're not listening to meditations that are helping you try to get rid of the discomfort. The key is to observe the thoughts and feelings, not to try to control them or get rid of them. So use meditation as a way to build resilience and not escape discomfort. I know this can feel really counterintuitive, but as somebody who has recovered from multiple OCD subsets, you're going to feel so much better in the long run as you practice these techniques. Talk to you soon.
