Danielle Jhiani explains why OCD makes you obsess over forgetting important things. Normal forgetting is fine, but OCD hijacks you into constant checking and writing to feel safe. The fix: let your brain forget, sit with the discomfort, and focus on what actually matters instead.
Welcome back. My name is Danielle Gianni. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, helping people recover from anxiety and OCD, just like I did, so you can have an amazing life and happy, healthy relationships. Today we're going to talk about OCD and the obsession with the fear of forgetting. It's one very, very uncomfortable and anxious. So the difference is, yeah, I might be a little bit uncomfortable if I couldn't write down my appointments, but it's not going to be the end of the world and I'm not thinking about it all the time. I trust that my appointments will show up on my calendar, which they do through the cloud somewhere. And I tell Alexa when to add something to the grocery list. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I don't tell her to add something. Sometimes I go to the store and I forget something. In reality, the way that the brain works, we forget things all the time. We're always having things come into our heads and leave and come and go. Something that's important will come up and we'll say, okay, I need to remember that. Sometimes we remember it, sometimes we don't. Typically, when you remind your brain that you need to remember to do something important, your brain will automatically bring it back up at a later time. But somebody who has this obsession or fear is going to worry that it won't. And they will feel the urge to. To write it down, to put it in their calendar, or to remember it in some way. The things that we naturally forget about, it's okay. They weren't that important anyway. And if they are, they'll come back around. Something will remind us on a TV show that we're watching, or maybe my husband will remind me of something, but most things will come back up. Now the next question will be, well, what if I actually do forget something important? First of all, when it comes to our grocery list, there's nothing that's that important that we need to struggle with these obsessions and this anxiety about, maybe you forget the chicken and you're just going to make that dish with beef instead. Or maybe you make something else that night and somebody stops and gets chicken the next day. Maybe you even miss an appointment. You know what? That's really not that big of a deal either. You can reschedule it. If it is something that's really, really important, I guarantee you you're not going to forget it. You're going to remember it so you don't have to engage in this obsession to be able to live your life. You can trust your brain. You can Trust yourself that you don't need to worry and fear that this is going to happen. An example of exposure here is to allow your brain to retain whatever information that it does and allow it to forget whatever it might forget. If that feels uncomfortable, exposure is also to allow that discomfort to be there. But then I want you to focus on going and being who you want to be that day. Go focus on that. Take action in a different direction. And what you will find often is that discomfort will eventually fade. And then you will realize that your brain actually remembers a lot of what it needs to remember. And what it doesn't remember probably wasn't that important anyway. And then you can get back to a place where, yeah, maybe you have a grocery list, but you're not overly concerned about whether it's perfect, whether you have everything on it, or whether you're going to forget something at the store. Or maybe you have your calendar, schedule of events or a to do list at work. But you're not overly concerned about whether everything gets on it, whether you check it all off the list. And you're okay with forgetting something here and there. So I want to challenge you to stop this compulsion. And you'll notice that the more you do this, the better you feel. I promise. I know it probably doesn't seem possible right now, and it may not even seem possible to reduce this compulsion. I promise you, it's very possible. You just have to be willing to allow the discomfort. But don't just sit with that discomfort. Go do something. Go focus on something else so you're not just sitting in your own misery, because then you're just going to obsess about that. So go focus on something else. Go be who you want to be today and allow that discomfort to be there or not be there. It doesn't matter. And with time, I promise you, this will get a lot better. And the times that you're writing things down or this fear of forgetting will fade more and more over time. My programs will also help you to do this if you need support. There's no way I could have gotten better without getting support of someone who understood what to do, who guided me with what to do in more exposure and response prevention techniques along with the real method that I teach. ERP is the basis. It's very important, but my technique goes beyond and helps you teach the ways that I used to get to the recovery stage and to stay here. Please like comment or subscribe so that I know this information was helpful. Let me know what questions I can answer for you down in the comments, check out the link in the description if you want help with OCD recovery and I will talk to you very soon.
