Danielle Thornton, an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, argues that OCD can completely disappear if you stop compulsions and practice exposure and response prevention consistently across every theme. The brain retrains itself when you refuse to engage obsessions, though intrusive thoughts remain a normal part of being human.
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Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach who has recovered from anxiety and multiple subsets of ocd, and I help others do the same. Today I want to talk about the question of can OCD completely go away? The answer is yes, but there's a little bit of a caveat. Here's how we do that. OCD consists of obsessions and compulsions.
If we stop doing the compulsions and we stop engaging in the obsessions, and the way that we do this is learning, exposure, and response prevention, then, yes, those obsessions will go away. It may take some time, but they will. And the more consistent we are with erp, the quicker they are going to go away. Okay? So the way that this looks is that if you have a particular obsession, let's say it is contamination ocd, and you obsess about whether your meat is fully cooked, okay? Every time a thought comes up about this particular theme or whatever your theme is, it doesn't matter whether it's relationship ocd, pocd, harm ocd, just right? Doesn't matter. Every time that theme comes up in your head, every time you get a thought about that, if you recognize it right away and practice ERP right away, it is going to fade away quickly, slowly. It depends on how strict you are with your erp, but it will go away. Okay? If you do this consistently enough, it will go away every time you do it, right? If you start engaging in compulsions, it's going to stay there that long, right? And your brain knows whether you're engaging or not. So you have to get to the point where you are not engaging whatsoever. And by practicing ERP every time, you have some control over this going away. Okay? Now, every time it shows up, I use a V quite often. You have to recognize when it shows up so that you can use ERP instead of going right into compulsions, which you'll do if you don't recognize it. Okay? So this is how you get rid of that particular obsession every time it shows up. And if you're really consistent with this and you do it correctly, it will go away every time. And once your brain gets the hint that you're not going to engage with this anymore, it's going to stop bringing it up, okay? Now, sometimes our brains go to other thoughts or other themes, and the mistake that people make is that they start engaging with the other thoughts and other themes. You have to practice exposure and response prevention with every single thought and theme, and eventually your brain runs out of things to Engage with. Eventually it learns that you're not going to engage whatsoever. That's the key. You have to stop engaging a hundred percent. Your compulsions have to be at zero in order for this theme to go away. Okay? So yes, you can absolutely get rid of the theme if you learn when it shows up, learn ERP and use it consistently right away, every single time. Okay? It may take some time, it may go away quickly, but either way it will go away. Here's the thing though. Uncertainty is part of life. Negative thoughts are part of life. Intrusive thoughts are part of life for everybody. Okay? So we cannot get rid of discomfort, we cannot get rid of doubt, we cannot get rid of uncertainty or negative thoughts. So these things are part of existence for every single human being. Okay? So this is why a lot of people continue to struggle, because they may get really good with one OCD subset, but they continue to engage with another. Or they may get really good at several OCD subsets, but they continue to practice these patterns in other areas of life where there's discomfort, uncertainty, or doubt. One thing I've learned in my recovery process is that this does not just show up for the few OCD subsets that I struggled with. It shows up all over the place. It shows up in my work, in my friendships and everywhere. So we have to start to recognize the pattern of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that we then practice unhelpful coping mechanisms with like avoidance and other compulsions and stop doing that. And when we do that, our life will completely shift. So you're going to still have uncertainty, you're still going to have weird thoughts, right? Everybody has these. It's not the thoughts or the discomfort or the situation that is the problem. I used to not believe that too, but it's true. It's what we're doing with it. So when we learn exposure and response prevention, and we learn it really well so that whenever discomfort, doubt, uncertainty shows up and we use exposure and response prevention right away, we completely retrain our brain on what to do with these things. The fear based thoughts stop. The intrusive thoughts stop bothering us. We may get a weird thought, but we don't give it attention, right? That's the quick and simple version. You have to do a lot of exposure first if it's really bothering you. But yes, OCD can go away, but you have to get really knowledgeable about when it's showing up. You have to get really knowledgeable about what to do about it and you have to be extremely consistent, okay? And it will go away. And this is where your control is, right? So if you're still struggling and you've done some erp, you're either not doing it correctly or you're not doing it enough, or you're not recognizing when you need to be doing it. Because it works every single time. I have been through it personally, so I am not just saying that as a coach. I am saying that as somebody who has been through it, who struggled with it, who has avoided it, and who has finally done it and who has been in the recovery stage. Ok, So I hope this was helpful. Comment below on your thoughts and anything that you might want to know about this. But if you want help to get to this recovery stage and learn how to stay there, check out the description below and find that link and check out my programs. My life's work is to help each and every one of you get to and stay in that recovery stage. It is possible. It can take time. The recovery journey isn't just smooth sailing, right? But OCD anxiety is not either. It's actually worse. Right? The recovery process is learning in ups and downs like a baby learning how to walk okay, but you'll get better and better and better at it and more knowledgeable, just like I have, and you feel more confident, more in control and you're going to feel so much better. So let me know if this was helpful and check out the link below and I'll talk to you next time.
Sam.
