A short instructional YouTube video by Danielle Jhiani arguing that merely "sitting with" anxiety is insufficient for OCD recovery. The speaker explains that while tolerating discomfort is necessary, effective recovery requires guided Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): structured, repeated exposures to feared thoughts/situations plus refraining from compulsions (response prevention), which habituates anxiety and reduces intrusive thoughts. The video recommends working with an OCD specialist and offers a free consultation link in the description.
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Welcome. Today I want to talk about why just sitting with the anxiety is not enough when you're trying to recover from ocd. So a lot of people are under this misconception that all we need to do to get to recovery for OCD is just learn to sit with the anxiety, learn to sit with discomfort and just accept it. While that is part of the picture in recovering from ocd, it's actually only a small piece. It is really important to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because before we actually get treatment for ocd, our compulsions and a lot of the things that we do when we have ocd, we're running away from it. We're trying to push the feelings away. We don't want to feel it. So that is a very, very common compulsion in itself is to avo the feelings. But telling somebody to just sit with that anxiety and sit with the feelings that they feel without giving them the rest of the pieces of the puzzle is like asking a drug addict to stop doing drugs without giving them any treatment. So learning to sit with the discomfort and the anxiety is part of the picture. We do have to learn how to be with uncomfortable feelings without doing the compulsions. Right. We have to learn how to embrace the anxiety and learn how to let the anxiety. Because if we do this, it actually will eventually pass. Trying to ignore what is is never an effective tactic, and it only becomes a compulsion, which, if you've seen some of my prior videos, you know that compulsions only fuel more intrusive thoughts. They actually reinforce the ocd. So it's really important that we're not doing those. But recovering from OCD is so much more than that, which is why it's really important that you're getting erp, which is Exposure and Response Prevention treatment. When you learn how to do exposures properly and you continue to practice them regularly, what you're doing is you're habituating your brain to the actual feelings and fears that you're feeling. So essentially, your brain is getting used to this anxiety. And when that happens, the part of the brain that's giving you anxiety is going to stop because you're now used to it, and it will actually eliminate the anxiety that you're feeling attached to those particular thoughts. But when you practice exposure, one of three things is going to happen. Either, number one, once you clear that anxiety, you're going to see that the thought and the fear that you had is actually not true at all. It was completely false. Number two, you might find that there was some truth to it. But for the most part, your brain was highly exaggerating it. Or number three, if there is truth to the thought, once you clear that anxiety, the fear and anxiety attached to it's going to be gone and you're going to see it differently or be able to handle it way better than you thought you could before. But when we have all that fear attached to it, it usually exaggerates things, adds a lot of anxiety, and looks completely different than when we actually see it for what it is. Then once you clear that anxiety, it's going to look different and then you can decide how to handle it, which is usually having a conversation or doing something very realistic to start to handle that particular fear. Instead of your OCD anxious brain, which is creating worst case scenarios, then the next part of erp, which is the RPE response prevention. And this is where we refrain from doing the compulsions. And this is also where a lot of people are talking about sitting, just sitting with the anxiety, right? Sitting with the feelings, accepting the uncertainty. We do this when we're actually not doing the compulsions, which is a really crucial part to recovering from ocd. Number one, they don't work in the long term anyway. They might give you very short term relief. They just continue the cycle. And then you stay in that OCD loop, which brings you more anxiety, more intrusive thoughts, and more compulsions. When you actually do the exposure exercises, they're going to give you a lot of confidence in the process, because by doing the exposure exercises you're going to feel your anxiety go down. And this is what's going to help you learn how to sit with that anxiety. As you get the confidence in doing the exposure exercises while you're also refraining from the compulsions and learning to sit with the anxiety. It's a really, really crucial piece that a specialist like myself will guide you through. So I want to make sure that you guys are getting the proper guidance and the proper treatment for your ocd. Because a lot of people try to do this on their own. And it is very, very difficult if you don't have the right guidance from an OCD specialist to guide you through how to properly do the exposures, to help you learn compulsions, help you track them, to find out how much you're doing them and get them down to zero and be able to support you through that whole process. It is really, really crucial to have somebody by your side during this process. A lot of people try to use videos and forums and while they can be really helpful, we can learn a lot from those. You don't know who you're getting advice from, right? You're getting advice from other people who are struggling with ocd and some of them have learned the proper techniques, but some people have not. And I hear all time in groups and forums of people giving advice that just is not quite the right thing to do in order to recover from ocd. But I want to give you hope that you can fully recover from OCD when you get proper exposure and response prevention treatment. If you want help with this process, I'm extremely confident in my abilities to do this. I have helped a lot of people get to recovery from OCD regardless of the theme and it just takes the proper guidance and the commitment on your part to do so. Even if you've received ERP before, I highly suggest scheduling a call with me to talk a little bit more. I do find people pretty regularly who said they've gotten erp, but it just wasn't done effectively. So please see the link below in the description of this video. You can schedule a free call with me to learn more about how I can help you get to recovery from ocd. It is very possible you are not alone and I promise relief is possible.
