Danielle Thornton, an anxiety and OCD specialist, explains how ERP (exposure and response prevention) works: face your triggers, sit with uncertainty, and stop the compulsions that reinforce fear. Repeated practice rewires your brain and builds confidence.
Danielle Thornton (certified coach and anxiety and OCD specialist).
April 30, 2022.
Foreign.
Welcome. My name is Danielle Thornton. I'm a certified coach and anxiety and OCD specialist. I help people recover long term, more permanently from OCD and anxiety. Whether you're struggling with relationship OCD or any other ocd, subset recovery is possible with the right tools and guidance. And I can help you get there, just like I did. So today I want to talk about why triggers are actually your path to OCD recovery. And first, I want to start with a tip, and that is, the sooner and more often you move towards your triggers or the things that make you uncomfortable, the quicker you're going to recover and OCD is going to fade away. So let's talk about why. So first, OCD is just fear. It's coming from the fear center of your brain and it's overactive and attaching to things that might be wrong. It's hyper vigilant and always searching for danger. Your brain thinks that this is a good thing. It thinks it's doing something good for you. But the problem is when you engage with this, you're actually reinforcing it and making it stronger. So by engaging is the compulsions that we've talked about in other videos. And if you're not sure what your compulsions are, it's really important that you get clear about that. So make sure you start to pay attention to what you're doing in reaction to the fear, to make the fear lessen or to gain some sort of certainty or perfection. Those are the compulsions, and they usually feel like a pull towards doing those. And this is actually true outside of ocd, too. Whether we're talking about anxiety or fear or uncertainty, it is all the same thing. So the way to eliminate ocd, eliminate anxiety, and eliminate symptoms from your life is erp, exposure and response prevention. This is how we get OCD to fade away and stop engaging with it. So the one way that we practice ERP is just not giving it attention, recognizing it when it shows up, and not doing anything mentally or physically to give it attention. And that is a pretty easy thing. Now, where I'm at in the recovery process is I just don't give it attention. When you're deep into the OCD cycle and you've been doing a lot of compulsions, that can be more difficult. So what we actually have to do is lean into uncertainty. And here's why you're here. OCD wants to focus on fears and it wants you to get certainty, imperfection. So it's pulling you in this direction into compulsions. Okay? And when you can't just let it go and not be pulled in that direction. You actually have to go in the opposite direction. You have to stand up to ocd. And we do that by getting comfortable with uncertainty, getting comfortable with not knowing, because OCD is trying to pull you into certainty and perfection and they do not exist. It's impossible to stay there. Okay? Because it will also doubt everything. When you no longer engage with OCD or you stand up to it and you say, you know what? I'm fine with the uncertainty around this. It's actually going to just go away because there's no more need for it to try to engage with you. It doesn't need to warn you if you're not going to give it attention, and it doesn't need to warn you if you're okay with uncertainty. This is how ERP works, and it's what everybody else is doing with fear and uncertainty in their lives. Now, OCD is going to give you triggers, and they're going to feel stronger the more fear you have around triggers. So the reason why it's important to move towards your triggers and not to avoid triggers is because you're creating confidence around triggers and you're lessening the fear around them, and they're no longer going to be triggers. When you're not afraid of something and it doesn't cause anxiety and you have confidence around them, they no longer bother you. And this is why the triggers are so important. Your triggers are actually your exposure work. They're really key to getting better. And so the more you're facing triggers, the better you're going to get in this, you are rewiring your brain around fear and uncertainty. And when fear is no longer something that you're afraid of, then your brain doesn't need to give it to you because you have confidence you can handle it, and things no longer trigger you. So triggers are not a bad thing. Fear and uncertainty are never going to go away. This is part of life that we all have to learn to deal with. But I teach you the skills that you need to handle it with confidence so that fear no longer feels like fear and anxiety. It just feels like uncertainty that you know what to do with and you have confidence around it. This is how you're going to rewire your brain. Each and every time it shows up, you have to be consistent with it. You're not going to change overnight. Nobody does. Your brain can only change so much. But consistency with these new skills is key. And running away from it only teaches you that you can't handle it, when in reality you can. You just need some new skills to be able to handle it and learn with confidence so that it goes away and shuts down and you feel the confidence versus the anxiety. It may not be comfortable at first, and in fact it's usually uncomfortable at first because we haven't learned and trained our brain to be more comfortable around it. It takes practice. Just like anything that's new to you, you have to practice over and over and over again. But the more you practice, the better you get. And the good news is the more you do this, the more the OCD fades away, the intrusive thoughts fade away, the anxiety even fades away. And over time you have a lot less of these things. And then when uncertainty does show up in life, you know how to handle it. And the emotions aren't strong, they're not scary. You're confident and you realize, I know what to do with this and I have control. So what I want you to do is make your recovery a priority. Invest the time in yourself in learning these new skills, understanding what to do, and I am here to help you do that. For me, I needed a lot of guidance and support. The guidance on what to do and the support when things get difficult are crucial. So make sure you're not trying to do this on your own. Take the time and the effort to invest in yourself and it will pay off, I promise. Signing up for a program through my OC coach is going to get you faster, longer lasting recovery. So visit the description below, click on the link for the different options and I hope to see you soon.
