This Is the Best Treatment for OCD!

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Welcome. My name is Danielle and I am an OCD and anxiety recovery coach. And today I want to talk about how traditional therapy often fails those who are trying to seek help from ocd. Now, I work with people all the time who have tried all different modes of therapy and self help for their ocd. And there are a lot of things out there that are very helpful for anxiety, maybe depression, but not for ocd. This is very specific. But of course, when you're struggling with anxiety, which OCD is an anxiety disorder, one of the first things that most people do, rightfully so, is they seek out a therapist. You might just look somebody up on the Internet and go and hope that they can help you. And while some people are able to find an OCD specialist that specializes in ERP exposure, exposure and response prevention, not everybody is able to find that. So let me give you some reasons why other therapies often fail. And the first thing is OCD is often very misunderstood. A lot of people who don't actually specialize in OCD don't fully understand it. So if you were to go to a therapist and tell them that you're struggling with thoughts around your relationship or that you might be gay, or that you have thoughts of harming children, a lot of people are afraid to actually say that out loud, unfortunately, until they find the right person to help them. But these are common things that a lot of times people are afraid to say out loud, because if someone doesn't understand ocd, they're probably going to tell you that, you know, maybe that thing is true, right? Or if you go to a therapist who doesn't understand OCD or how to treat it, they might understand and recognize that you're struggling with anxiety. You probably get diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. PTSD is another common diagnosis, or any sort of anxiety disorder. Those get diagnosed all the time when it should be ocd. So they recognize that anxiety is the issue, but what they don't understand is that it's actually ocd. Additionally, most compulsions are mental. There are a lot of physical compulsions that people do, like, you know, washing their hands, cleaning, things like that. But a lot of compulsions are mental, which not only does the OCD sufferer not recognize how much they're doing these compulsions and how unhealthy they are because they've been doing them for so long. But you're not gonna, and you're not gonna typically tell your therapist that you're doing these things because they feel normal, they feel okay. Some people will be able to recognize that and say it. But a lot of times they, the therapist is completely unaware of the mental compulsions that are going on. So a therapist that starts to do talk therapy with you is a big problem most of the time for ocd, and that is because it becomes reassurance seeking. So the person with OCD is wanting to get help. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. There is a certain amount of.

Reassurance that we need because we're wanting to get help, and there's nothing bad about that. But when we're getting the wrong kind of help and that therapist is reassuring you, that's where the problem comes in. If that therapist is not teaching you how to do exposures to your fears and your anxiety, then it's likely becoming reassurance. You probably don't realize it and that's okay, but it is. So every week you go and you get a little bit of reassurance and you leave and you come back. And that doesn't mean that some of the tools that they teach you aren't somewhat helpful. In fact, compulsions themselves feel good in that moment. They help in that moment. That's why we do them. But in the long run, this becomes a compulsion in itself. But in the long run, it's not going to help. It's actually going to make your OCD worse because you're continuing to stay in that OCD cycle of getting intrusive thoughts and doing compulsions which reinforce the ocd. Now, cognitive behavioral therapy is, is often said to be the right type of therapy that you need for ocd, and this is actually partially true. Okay, so ERP exposure and response prevention does fall underneath the umbrella of cognitive behavioral therapy. It's one of the tools and it's the only evidence based treatment for OCD that actually works long term if it's done properly. But there's a lot of other tools underneath of the cognitive behavioral therapy umbrella that actually either only minorly work and become compulsions or don't work at all. So in the long run, a lot of these tools that therapists try to use for your, what they think is usually anxiety to use, CBT are not effective in the long term. And so people end up in therapy for a year, two years or more, and they're not getting much better. And that's a big clue that something's off. Because ERP actually can take anywhere from two to six months at the most. But mostly two to four months is the most common. Most clients that I work with is about nine weeks so it should be a short term tool for you that you can now, you know, keep going forward and manage your OCD. And at the end of that nine weeks, my clients are at least 90% better. So some of the tools under CBT that work wonderfully for depression would be taking the thought and making it a more positive thought, or kind of going into the thought and analyzing it, looking at whether it's true or not. These are wonderful CBT techniques that do not work for OCD because they become the compulsion. And as you know, if you have ocd, in almost every form of ocd, a compulsion is obsessing or ruminating. That's when you are going into the thoughts, analyzing them, looking at past memories, future memories, trying to figure it out. That is the most common compulsion. And these CBT techniques actually help you to continue to do that, which is very unhelpful for your ocd. Additionally, I have seen some clients that have received erp, but it wasn't done effectively and therefore it wasn't helpful. So a few tips on making sure that if you are currently in therapy with an OCD specialist, these are the things to look for for somebody treating your OCD effectively. And the first one is they are doing exposure exercises with you in the office and expecting you to do those exercises daily outside of the office. Those are really crucial.

Number two, they should be telling you that in order to fully recover from ocd, you should be doing zero compulsions. And on top of that, they should be helping you understand what your compulsions are in more detail and every week asking you where you're at with those compulsions in order to reduce them by the time you are done with treatment. And number three, they should be teaching you all of these techniques and teaching you about your particular OCD and exposure and response prevention, so that when they are done working with you, which again should be short term, you have a full understanding of how to use erp, and if you ever have an intrusive thought, come up again on your own. So of course I am always here to help you get to the full recovery stage with your ocd, which means that you're not doing compulsions and therefore the intrusive thoughts are to a normal level, which means you barely get them at all. And if you do, they're not that bad and you know how to deal with them. Through erp, I help people every day get to full recovery from their ocd, and it is amazing to see the results and the healing that is possible. I have been through it myself. Which is why I help others recover as well. So if you do want help, feel free to schedule a free call with me. I can answer all of your questions. There is a link below to my website, my Facebook groups, and how to schedule a free call with me.

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