Trent asks important, and perhaps helpful, questions on dealing with OCD. “If you believe you can keep bad situations from happening with thoughts or behaviors, does that mean you can also cause them to happen through similar behaviors?” Trent says “magical thinking” can help provide perspective on your thought patterns. “This process is called externalization.” “It can be helpful to think about the condition as something separate to you, like a gremlin or a fungus - something you can fight against,” suggests Trent. Reframe your thoughtsĭetaching yourself from OCD can help you approach thoughts and rituals differently. But there are steps you can take to encourage changes if negative thought patterns are dominating your days. Human psyches are incredibly powerful, so going cold turkey on rituals may be difficult. This involved holding on to all kinds of possessions in the belief they will be needed at some point, though hoarding disorder is a separate condition. With this type of OCD, you may take actions like repeatedly checking that your car is locked. This involves repeating an action or thought a specific number of times. This is when items are repeatedly re-arranged and organized because you need them to be a certain way. OCD related to contamination occurs when you feel dirty or marked, so you may repeatedly wash to ensure everything is clean and germ-free. So-called “ Pure O,” for example, sees someone only experience mental rituals, while “Just Right” OCD sees more of a focus on physical behaviors, with individuals feeling the need to align or organize items in a certain way to momentarily relieve anxiety.Ĭonsider these different types of rituals present in OCD that people may do to temporarily calm anxiety or potentially prevent negative consequences from occurring: While there are no official sub-types of OCD, actions and behaviors usually vary between people. Physical manifestations of OCD may present themselves as behaviors like excessive handwashing, home cleaning, or hoarding everyday objects, though hoarding disorder is a separate condition from OCD. They may often take the form of mental responses without any physical symptoms, like counting over and over in your head. These rituals present themselves in many shapes and formats. ” Some intrusive thoughts sound totally irrational: “Just a glance at the wagging tail was enough to start the bad thoughts-he felt compelled to stare at the dog’s anus and his thoughts would start,” and, “he thinks about how easy it would be to throw her defenseless Jessie against a wall and smash her skull.” If a confidant told you they were experiencing such thoughts, with or without the context of an OCD diagnosis, you’d be extremely concerned.Some people speak of OCD as a disorder characterized by clusters of rituals, which are behaviors or actions that occur repeatedly. Some obsessive thoughts may strike the reader as innocuous, even comical: “When he was an adolescent-although he was heterosexual-the worst thing could think of was being gay, which could cause relentless teasing… he would find himself scanning his body to try to feel certain that he wasn’t sexually aroused.” Other intrusive thoughts, the shocking or offensive ones, may seem to reveal disturbing secrets about the sufferer’s unconscious beliefs: “ was now a liberal college student… So now, if he saw an African-American walking toward him on the street, the urge would come to shout. Baer describes several cases of the types of thoughts that torment OCD sufferers, but seen from the outside, his examples may lack the necessary impact to explain the suffering.
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