Danielle Thornton explains Real Event OCD, where people obsess over actual things that happened. Hyper-analyzing past events and seeking certainty makes it worse. Recovery comes through Exposure and Response Prevention, accepting uncertainty, and working with a professional.
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Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton. I'm a certified coach and anxiety and OCD specialist, and I help people recover more fully and permanently from ocd. Whether you're struggling with relationship OCD or any other OCD subset, I can help you get there. Recovery is possible with the right guidance and the right tools. I've done it, and you can, too. So today we're going to talk about real event ocd. Real event OCD is a subset of OCD where you might hyper focus on something that actually happened. Okay. So you might replay what happened in your mind, what you wish you would have done differently, what actually happened, what could have happened differently. Okay. And let's just talk a little bit about the different subsets and the names for ocd. What I want you to remember is OCD is just fear that attaches to thoughts or feelings or situations. So it can attach to things that are actually happening or things that we're afraid of happening, or things from the past or things that might happen in the future. Okay? So when it comes to the different names of subsets for ocd, you can go on to five different sites and find different categories or different names or subsets for ocd. And this is because OCD can attach to just about anything. And so what's happening is, as we go along, people are creating different names or subsets for different ways that OCD shows up in your life. Which can be really helpful, because when we have a name to what we're experiencing, it can really make us feel like, okay, we're not alone. There's a reason for this, and now there's a solution. Right? But something that I want to remind you is no matter what subset of OCD that you have, OCD will often attach to real events like this. So this is just a name. But what I also want to encourage you to remember is that even if OCD is attaching to something in your life that doesn't have a particular name, it doesn't fall under a certain category. You. That doesn't mean that it's not ocd. OCD is obsessions and compulsions. So it will attach to thoughts, feelings, and situations in your life, and then you tend to need certainty or perfection around that thing, and then the compulsions follow, which keeps you in that OCD cycle. So when it comes to ocd, what a lot of people struggle with is, is it real or not? Right? And then when they feel like it's real, they start to panic because they feel like if it's real, it actually means something. And the reality is, this is not true. OCD has nothing to do with whether this thing is true or not. Sometimes OCD picks up on something and creates something out of the blue. Sometimes there's a grain of truth to what happened, and then other times.
It'S completely true, but OCD is completely hijacking the situation and our feelings around it. So it is the compulsion to figure out if it's true or not. And when you're hyper focusing on something that really did happen or a way that you really feel in the moment, the problem is not the thing that happened or not the thing that you're focusing on, but how you're reacting to it. So OCD can take something in the past, and it may or may not have been a really big deal, but OCD is going to hyper focus on it and analyze it. And the more you hyper focus on it and analyze it, the bigger it's going to get, usually in a negative way. Right? So the idea with recovery from OCD is to stop hyper focusing, stop analyzing, stop jumping into those negative thoughts and feelings, because that's only going to grow when you do that. Exposure and response prevention requires us to accept uncertainty and accept imperfection in life and continue to move forward without focusing on those negatives. And when we do that, the negatives fall away. When we stop hyper focusing on what ifs and what we could change, none of those exist. Certainty doesn't exist. Perfection doesn't exist, and we can never go back and change the past. And the more we analyze, the more we go into negative thought spirals. So regardless of whether you're struggling with real event OCD or any other OCD subset that might be focusing on things in your life, ERP is the solution. And if you don't have a name for what you're experiencing, that's okay too, because OCD is ocd. And people are going to continue to come up with different names of different subjects. I've worked with hundreds of clients, and OCD shows up in all areas where there is no name yet. So the name doesn't matter. Whether it happened or not doesn't matter. What matters is that fear and uncertainty are attaching to something, and then you're seeking certainty and perfection, which don't exist, and it's exaggerating the whole situation and making things worse. All right, so the key is acceptance and focusing on what makes us feel good and what's important, and letting go of the rest. That is ERP in a nutshell now, easier said than done. Right. I have been there. I have experienced ocd. I know what it is like. So what is really important is getting help, getting the guidance and the support, and for a lot of us, the accountability to keep moving forward in the direction that we need to do to recover. Because a lot of people learn a little bit about ERP and they start doing it, but they don't fully do it and they don't get the guidance and support they need to do it. So they stop doing it, essentially. Or they do the exposure, but they don't fully do the response prevention. And both are required. And it's not easy sometimes. Right. So support is so important. I wouldn't have been able to do it with without someone guiding me and supporting me and walking me through that process. So if you need help with recovery from ocd, I want you to know that it's possible. I'm happy. OCD doesn't bother me much anymore. It takes time to get there, and it takes the right tools to get there. And I'm here to help you do that. So make sure you check the link below in the description for the different options that I have to help you get to the recovery stage more permanently with ocd. And we'll talk to you next.
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