OCD & Trauma

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Hi, my name is Danielle. I am an OCD and anxiety recovery coach. And today I want to talk about OCD and trauma. So while I am completely aware that people do experience major traumas in their life, and sometimes these lead to triggering OCD and may lead to ocd, experts actually don't know how the OCD switch gets turned on. Right. They do think there could be a combination of genetics, so nature and nurture. It could be. Most of us have had it parent with, at least with anxiety. And obviously, there are things in our lives that happen that maybe reinforce the fear. Right? So if you have relationship ocd, it may be a bad relationship or somebody cheating on you. If you struggle with contamination, ocd, something like coronavirus can be a huge trigger. But there are. So there's no real explanations for this. But when we have ocd, we tend to get stuck in a compulsion that is very sneaky and that a lot of people do not realize is a compulsion. And I'm sure you've heard me say this before, but I'll say it again. When we do compulsions, we are keeping ourselves in an OCD cycle and reinforcing the ocd. Okay? So it's crucial that you understand all of your compulsions. And one common compulsion that I got stuck in, a lot of my clients get stuck in and that you might be stuck in is I call either getting to the root of the problem or fixing yourself. Okay. And it's very common for people with OCD to be curious, to like to learn. And typically, we're trying to figure something out or get to the root of the problem. Right. We want more relief. And sometimes you may have gotten ERP and maybe you haven't. But either way, if you're not able to recognize these sneaky compulsions, it's easy to get stuck in them, and it's really easy not to realize they're compulsions. So trying to get to the root of your OCD to fix it or fix yourself is a huge common compulsion that is going to work against you. So some of the ways that this happened for me was researching ocd, right? Which for me, because of what I do for a living as an OCD coach, this was normal, but it did become a little bit compulsive. The other thing was looking into my attachment style. This was a huge one, and I was taking courses and learning, and I thought, oh, my gosh, maybe my attachment style is the issue, and if I just heal my attachment style, that I am going to feel better. And I even had A therapist tell me you don't really have relationship ocd. You just have severe, fearful, avoidant attachment style. So I thought, oh, my gosh, maybe she's right. And this was before I really had the knowledge about compulsions that I have now through. Thank goodness I do. But. So I was taking courses and I was googling and searching and learning about my attachment style. But what happened? Because this is a compulsion, like all compulsions, you are going to get into an OCD loop, and it may take, you know, you may not realize it, it may take some time, but I noticed that.

The more I learned, it was never enough, right? I kept learning it wasn't helping me like I hoped it would. It was not enough. I learned from one person, and then I needed to learn from someone else or I'd find somebody else on YouTube. And I had to continue to learn from them because maybe they knew something that the other person did. And as you can see, if you're familiar at all with ocd, we start to see the pattern here. And I'm thankful now for it. It was difficult at the time, right? But now I know that this hidden compulsion really got me. And I'm hoping to teach you all about this particular compulsion to help you realize, not realize, but help you determine whether you're stuck in this compulsion or not. I have a degree in psychology, understand psychology very well. And I was looking at my past, my family things, thinking that maybe my parents weren't emotionally available enough and all these things, and looking back at my relationships and going down OCD rabbit holes to find the root of the problem. There are a lot of people out there that will tell you that trauma includes all kinds of stuff. For example, breakups and, you know, things that are normal life situations. Let me give you the definition of trauma. According to the American Psychological association, trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event, such as an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Immediately after this event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. Okay, now this is not to downplay at all the negative experiences that you've had in your life that have created emotion or difficulty in coping, right? Like a breakup, a divorce, things like that. I'm not saying that these events aren't in some way traumatic. What I am trying to say is that when we have OCD and we start to check, right, or open doors, we're gonna find stuff. That OCD will take us down rabbit holes. And so this is a really, really important one. That I wanna point out. And some of you have had traumatic events, right? I do not wanna discount that. But what I learned is that the root of my problem was that I had OCD and nothing else. In fact, when I started working with somebody again, which is important, was important for me at that time, even though familiar with erp, it's easier when it's you. It's easier to get guidance from somebody else because we can't always see everything. I remember wanting to continue to do these courses really badly. Like I felt like I had to. Right? That's how compulsions feel. We feel like we have to do it. And I knew at that point it was a compulsion. And she said, you know, can you just not do it until we're done? And I said sure. Because I knew it was compulsive at that point. And so I guess I can wait. But I felt it, right? I felt that urgency.

I waited. And by the time we were done doing ERP again, I realized I didn't need it now. OCD told me I did. OCD told me that I need to take this course, I need to learn this thing, I need to heal this particular thing. And ocd. I was in the cycle, I was in the loop and OCD was active at that time. So hopefully this has helped you. If you are doing any sort of self help work. I know a lot of people are doing cbt, which again is another.

Wonderful thing for depression, but does not work for ocd if you are in something that you're not quite sure is working. And sometimes they feel like they're working at first because they're compulsions. Right. And they help us in the moment, but in the long term it may not be working. So if you are unsure about anything, just know that ERP is the evidence based treatment for ocd. I've tried a lot of different things myself. ERP worked and that is the direction you need to go. As I've said before, if you want my help with erp, I'm extremely confident in being able to help all forms of OCD with erp. I've taken what I've learned from specialists and the training that I've gotten in that way and I have made it even better. I have some extreme benefits to working with me. But if you decide not to work with and you decide to work with somebody else, please make sure you're getting ERP treatment. If you do want to work with me, there is information below in the description. You can find at least how to contact me or see more of my videos. If this was helpful for you, please like and subscribe to this channel so I know to do more videos just like this. And please take care.

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