Meta OCD - OCD About OCD

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Welcome back. My name is Danielle Horton. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach who has gotten to and stayed in the recovery stage for multiple OCD subsets. And my goal is to help you get there and stay there, too. So today I want to talk about something that's been called meta ocd. Essentially, it's OCD about ocd, Right? I'm not a big fan of the titles and labels. OCD is ocd, bottom line. Right. And all of these titles and labels can get very confusing. Really, when we're talking about ocd, we're talking about obsessions and compulsions. We're talking about thoughts that cause discomfort, OCD needs, certainty and perfection. So, so the compulsions or the reactions to these thoughts are usually the brain's need for certainty or perfection in a certain area. So the topic of the thoughts, whether it's harm, relationships, contamination, OCD itself, religion, it doesn't matter. It's all about intrusive thoughts followed by compulsions. Okay, so I want to simplify it because it can get very confusing. People with OCD can fall under multiple OCD subsets. Your thoughts can attach to pretty much anything. And I don't know anybody yet who hasn't had OCD about multiple things. It's just that there happens to be these particular labels and categories called subsets that people out there have put names to. But I want to simplify it. Intrusive thoughts followed by compulsions. The content of these thoughts doesn't matter at all because the solution is always the same. Exposure and response prevention. Okay, and we're going to get into these specific meta type OCD thoughts in just a minute. But I want you to really understand this. Thoughts cause discomfort, sometimes anxiety, sometimes anger, disgust, avoidance, followed by compulsions. The need to decrease those feelings or get some sort of certainty and perfection, really to decrease those feelings. Right.

So today I want to talk about how OCD can latch onto the recovery process. Essentially, OCD latches onto ocd, also called meta ocd. So again, you heard me say that this part of the brain, it's just the fear center of your brain that's sending you thoughts to try to protect you. It's hypervigilant, always searching for danger. So it's taking something really small and making it big. Sometimes it's finding things that aren't even there. Or again, it can take something in real life that's happening, but make it into something that is much bigger than what it really is. So let's talk about some of the ways that the Brain wants perfection when it comes to the recovery process. I experience this myself in the recovery process. The majority of my clients experience these same types of thoughts. And again, the solution is the same exposure and response prevention. And I'm going to give you some tips today on how to respond to these thoughts with one of the ways that you can practice exposure and response prevention. So a lot of people going through the recovery process are learning to practice ERP in response to whatever intrusive thoughts that they're having. And as you start to practice erp, it works every single time. When it's done properly, your discomfort is going to go down. So it might be high anxiety that's going down. It might be just discomfort that's going down. And you might have some days where you feel really great and then you have another intrusive thought. Remember, intrusive thoughts are very, very normal. We all get them. It's just that someone with OCD is giving these thoughts a lot of meaning and attention, okay? And the more you do that, the more of them you're going to get. So the goal is here, to let them come. Pushing them away is a compulsion, right? So we have to allow intrusive thoughts to come. They're normal. They're going to happen. They're never going to completely go away. What will happen with recovery is they won't bother you. And the more ERP you practice, the less that you will get. So an exposure here is to allow the thoughts to come, expect them to come. Right.

ERP and OCD recovery is very counterintuitive. What you're doing to try to get better is actually making it worse. And what you don't want to do is actually what's going to make it better. So through the recovery process, I tell my clients, you need to expect the thoughts to come. You need to even invite them to come. And the funny thing is, the more you do that, the less they're going to come. Now, the purpose of doing that needs to not be to get rid of it, right? Then it becomes the compulsion. The compulsions are the things that we do to get rid of the discomfort or get rid of the ocd. We need to do it to truly be okay with inviting them in. And so we need to be okay with having intrusive thoughts. It's normal. What we also need to do is learn that when we get an intrusive thought, and they'll stop feeling so intrusive over time, by the way, we choose what to do with it, which is not compulsions. We choose to recognize it for what it is. A doubt, a thought, uncertainty, imperfection. And we choose not to engage. Right now, the not engaging part is not the best technique to just let the thoughts come and just don't give it attention. That's a great technique for someone who is close to or in the recovery stage. You're going to do that all the time. But if you're really in the OCD cycle and doing a lot of compulsions, you're not going to be able to just not give it attention. By the way, what you do want to do is allow the thoughts to be there, practice not giving them attention, and you need to do a lot more exposure and really thoroughly learning. Exposure and response prevention needs to be done with a specialist, someone who can teach it to you properly, someone that you can follow up with and say, okay, this is working and this is not. So we can direct you back in the right direction so that it does work. It's going to be something that you can learn a little bit of online and practice. But I don't know anybody who's just learned it all online and they get to the full recovery stage just by watching a video. It's just not the way our brains work when we expect OCD to go away forever. Again, these are ways that your brain is wanting perfection. Right? Perfection is not possible. So the more we try to get OCD to go away and the more frustrated we are when we get an intrusive thought. We're just feeding the ocd. We're expecting something that isn't possible and it's just going to make it worse when you're doing compulsions and you get really frustrated with yourself for doing compulsions and you expect yourself to be perfect. Again, this is another way that trying to engage in perfection with OCD and it's unrealistic, you need to allow yourself to be imperfect. That's going to release the pressure and then you're more likely to make a decision not to do the compulsion versus the added frustration that you're adding on top of it. And again, the I was doing well and OCD came back. This is going to happen. The recovery process is up and down, but as you are practicing erp, you're going to be improving. The downs aren't going to be so low, they're not going to feel so uncomfortable. They're not going to last as long. If you are doing ERP really, really consistently and learning it properly. Okay, so OCD wants perfection. And these are some examples of intrusive thoughts that come when you have OCD about OCD recovery. Now, OCD also wants certainty. So one of the common intrusive thoughts here is, am I doing ERP correctly? Am I doing it enough? Is this a compulsion? Am I now analyzing? A lot of people will overanalyze what they're doing, the recovery process, what's happening. And again, analyzing, trying to get certainty or trying to figure something out is just a compulsion. Do I have ocd? Is this really ocd or is it real? Extremely common intrusive thought. And again, I'm not telling you that because I want to give you reassurance. I'm telling you that because recovery requires that we recognize when OCD shows up, which is any time that we get a thought that causes discomfort and it's followed by a compulsion. Okay? And through the recovery process, that discomfort may have started here, and it's going to get really low. You're even going to say, well, it doesn't really feel uncomfortable. And I'll ask my clients, well, how much time have you spent ruminating? And they'll tell me, well, a couple weeks. It's obviously uncomfortable. It's just that your anxiety might have been really high at one point, and now it's a lot lower. And you don't have those feelings in your body, but there's obviously discomfort around it. Otherwise you wouldn't be seeking an answer or spending so much time with it. And then, what if I never get better? Again, thought uncertainty, discomfort, usually followed by the need for certainty that you're going to get better ocd. So what do you do in this case when you are practicing the recovery skills and OCD starts to attach to that? You have two options. Essentially, the best option is stop trying to figure it out, stop trying to get certainty, stop trying to get perfection. So go do it imperfectly. That's an exposure, right? That might feel uncomfortable. It should be. That means it's a good exposure or don't get the answer right. So today, if you're struggling with, is this thing that I'm doing a compulsion? Your response should be exposure. I don't know. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. And response prevention. Don't give it any more attention, don't try to figure it out, and get the OCD to fade away and quiet down, and then you can get back to your erp. But if you're getting obsessive and compulsive about erp, it's not going to work. It's either not going to work very well or it's not going to work at all. So you have to use erp. With erp.

Take a break, do it imperfectly, don't get certainty, and then when everything calms down, go back to the skills that you're learning. I hope this was helpful. I know this one might be a little bit confusing for people, but again, this is why it's so crucial that you work with somebody who really understands this stuff. I have learned so much in the last four years after working with four ERP specialists that it's just unbelievable how much better we understand this now than maybe what we did before. And you can get there too. You can get to that full recovery stage where whatever the topic is right now, it is not bothering you. But it takes learning all of this stuff properly, recognizing it right away and using ERP right away. Because otherwise you're going right into compulsions and back into that OCD cycle and takes time. So as long as you're experience, you're using the tools and experiencing some level of progress, you're on the right track. Okay, Some people experience jumps in progress, some people experience slow progress, but either way progress is progress. And a lot of people who experience fast progress, they're still going to have dips. And it's because they're putting more time into ERP and they're catching the intrusive thoughts pretty quickly and using ERP more consistently. So I hope this was helpful. If you want help with the recovery process, I have one on one coaching sessions. I have membership programs that are very cost effective and I have a lot more coming up for you next year. So check out the link in the description below and I will talk to you soon.