Danielle Quarton, an OCD recovery coach, explains why daily rumination tracking can become a compulsion itself. Instead, track compulsions weekly or a few times per week to catch both obvious and sneaky ones, and work toward zero with outside accountability.
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Welcome back. My name is Danielle Quarton. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach who has recovered fully from multiple OCD subsets. And I help others do the same. Today we're going to talk about tracking our compulsions. And I get this question often. Should I track my rumination every day? And the answer is no. This can actually become very compulsive. I would not suggest that you track your rumination or compulsions every single day. Now, I do help people track compulsions because it is important that, number one, your compulsions get to zero. So number two, you have to have that level of specificity of which compulsions am I doing and where are they? So tracking your compulsions is fine. But I've had a couple people tell me that they were tracking, trying to track their com. Their rumination in minutes, every single day. And to me, that's just an obsession waiting to happen. Right. You're putting a lot of attention on the rumination, which is fine. Rumination is usually the most. The hardest one to stop and the hardest one for most people. So that's a good thing. But there's a lot of other compulsions that you might be doing, and if you don't know what those are and you're not reducing those to zero, you're going to continue to struggle. So, again, every day is going to become compulsive for a lot of you. So my suggestion would be that you track your compulsions on a weekly basis. When I'm working with a client, one on one, or in my recovery programs, I have a compulsions tracker. It is something that's going to help you identify every single one of your compulsions. Most of you, if you've never had anybody help you do this, most of you know what a lot of your compulsions are, but there are some very sneaky ones. And so if you're not getting the compulsions that you know of down to zero, you're going to continue to struggle. And if you haven't identified those sneaky compulsions and gotten those to zero, you're going to continue to struggle. I am in the recovery stage. I identified all of my compulsions, and they're all at zero. I don't feel like OCD bothers me anymore. And you want to get there, too. In order to do that, you do have to get compulsions to zero. But daily is just a lot. It can become very compulsive. And that wouldn't be my suggestion. But again, when I work with people or in my programs, we look at them about weekly. You could do it a couple times a week, no problem. But having that specificity of what are my compulsions, where am I at? And working them to zero is crucial. And again, for me, I needed help with that. Working with somebody or in a program that can help hold you accountable to getting there is going to be really important for a lot of you. I couldn't have done it without having somebody help hold me accountable to help support me through all of that and just to help me get there. Because it's a lot. It's a lot of work. It's hard work, but the more you do it, the easier it gets and the better you're going to feel. So I hope this was helpful today. Again, you can check out the link in my bio if you would like more help. Lifetime recovery is possible. I've done it. I see people do it. And it's just a matter of learning what's going on in your brain. Learning how you're responding, that's making it worse. And learning how to respond differently, that actually makes it better. You can do this, I promise. And we'll talk to you very, very soon. Have a.
