3 Powerful Ways to Stop OCD in Its Tracks

Music. Hello and welcome to the OCD and Anxiety Podcast, where we explore how to have a more positive relationship with anxiety disorders, taking back control so that you can start living the life you choose and not the one chosen by your fears. Music.

Hello and a welcome to episode 469 i hope that you're doing very well wherever you are today and if you are struggling with ocd or anxiety then you can get a free discovery call with me to get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com and there you can book in for that free session directly, or if you prefer, you can send me a message and let me know about what you're struggling with.

In today's podcast, I'm going to be sharing three powerful tips to help you to stop OCD in its tracks. I really hope that you enjoy. If you have any questions at all, please do let me know. And if you would like to follow along on Instagram, you can. My Instagram handle is at robertjamescoachinguk. Also, there's a YouTube channel. There's a link in the show notes for that. So many thanks and off we go.

In today's podcast i'm going to be sharing three very powerful and perhaps more unusual tips that can be really helpful with dealing with ocd in in the moment so often when we're when we're struggling with ocd we're looking for that certainty we're looking for that kind of instant relief from the anxiety and unfortunately when we indulge that when we give into that and we start performing compulsions that that's when things really get out of hand with OCD if we can learn to do something else in

that moment you know that's when we can actually really begin to have a different relationship with our anxiety and therefore we're able to start feeling a bit better so tip number one is is actually a tip around this idea of saying maybe to the OCD now I see this all the time on Instagram people are saying you should say maybe to the OCD and of course they are right but here's a tip for doing that in a slightly different way you know when a thought comes up and you're looking

for certainty about it you're feeling very anxious and you're you're wanting to perform those those different compulsions but in fact what you're going to do is rather than saying maybe to the thought you're going to say I don't think that's true in fact I'm pretty sure it's not true.

Could be and the difference is here so often when we're really struggling with an obsessive thought saying maybe to it can feel incredibly difficult it can feel like a kind of nine or ten out of ten exposure activity and it can feel overwhelming it can feel that that's too hard whereas you know if we choose to actually still allow some uncertainty we're still using this idea of maybe but we're kind of lessening the amount of anxiety that it might give you instead of it being a kind of a nine

or ten out of ten now we're kind of reducing it to a three or four out of ten because you're saying that you don't think that the thing that you're worrying about is true you're allowing that but at the same time you're you're saying but i can't know a hundred percent and actually often I like adding in that last bit there. I don't think it's true. However, I can't know a hundred percent. You know, now what you're doing is you're just allowing that little bit of uncertainty.

And that's the key here. It doesn't have to be, you know, you don't have to be completely uncertain. If you can just allow a little bit of uncertainty, often that's enough, you know, to be able to kind of give you a bit of exposure and learn how to get comfortable with the discomfort of doing that.

Tip two isn't something that you can do in the moment when you're dealing with anxiety and OCD but it is something that's incredibly helpful to practice and will help you whenever OCD comes up throughout your day and that is first thing in the morning when you wake up and you have your normal hot shower at the end see if you can practice turning the shower to cold for the last 15 to 30 seconds now before you tell me no way which is a completely understandable reaction to that

just bear with me a second there's a reason for why we do this when we turn the shower to cold actually what we're doing is we're we're teaching ourselves how to experience something that's very uncomfortable but in a controlled way we're actually activating temporarily our fight or flight system we're giving up the sympathetic nervous system a bit of a bit of exercise if you like and what we're doing though is we're not removing ourselves from

that situation we're not performing any compulsions to kind of get away from the cold we're actually just going to stay in for the 15 seconds or the 30 seconds and we're going to wait and it's helpful whilst you're doing this if you can actually practice slow deep breathing breathing as low as possible down into the belly. Up into the chest, and then breathing out even slower if you can on the exhale.

And what you're doing by doing this is you're teaching your nervous system how to calm down in a stressful environment. Not only this, but you're also practicing acceptance. First thing in the morning, almost before you've done anything else, you're doing an exposure activity, only you're not exposing yourself to your obsession, to your fear. You're exposing yourself to the cold, But actually, you know, it's the same kind of mechanism that you're working with.

You're teaching yourself how to tolerate discomfort, how to allow the discomfort of something to be there. And if you can do that first thing in the morning, then no matter what comes up throughout the day, I think you're going to be a little bit more programmed to deal with it because you've already practiced acceptance first thing in the morning.

You know it can really help you then with whatever other difficult things might come up and so if you fancy doing something that's a little bit different as something that can be really really helpful really beneficial there's all sorts of other benefits that come from cold exposure by the way such as reduced inflammation in the body it generally makes you feel good it releases more dopamine so there's all sorts of benefits that you get

from this so if it's something that you fancy trying you know maybe give it a go it's only 15 or 30 seconds at the end of your normal hot shower.

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Tip number three then is to postpone and exercise. So, what do I mean by this? Well, so often when we're caught up in the moment with the obsession, you know, we get the urge to perform the compulsion... Really, one of the most important things that we can learn to do in that situation is to learn how to postpone doing anything about it. We don't need to perform that compulsion.

That's the trick of the mind. The mind is telling us that if we don't perform the compulsion, something awful is about to happen. That we're going to get out of control. That the anxiety is going to be too strong. Or all sorts of other negative things that the mind tells us about the situation.

The reality is that you're stronger than you think and you can actually put up with the discomfort of not performing that compulsion but you know we kind of need something else to focus on because if we just sit there and we don't do anything then all we're going to pay attention to is that anxiety and that nagging that nagging feeling telling us that we need to do the compulsion we need to get the reassurance or we need to check or you know whatever it is that that we might be struggling with.

So I think the really important thing here is that we recognize that postponement is a really helpful thing here. If we postpone and do something else, it's going to give us an opportunity for everything to kind of settle down. If you think of a snow globe, when we are activated by an obsessive thought.

It's almost like we've kind of shaken this snow globe and the snow is blurring the picture you know we can't see what's actually going on inside the globe because we are so caught up with the worries and the thoughts and the ruminations what we need to do is to kind of put it down and allow everything to to settle and when it does well then often we see the bigger picture we're not so bothered by that rumination anymore or we can see that

it was just a trick of the mind but we tend to need something to focus on whilst we're trying to postpone and this is where exercise comes in and I'm not talking about going off for you know a 30 minute run or something like that although if you did want to do that that's probably a helpful thing if that's something that you already do. What I'm talking about here is actually something, you know, very small, very little. You could literally just do 30 seconds or one minute of exercise.

And the idea here is to kind of change how you're feeling on a bodily level. If you just do, you know, 30 seconds of jumping jacks, or you just jump up and down on the spot for 30 seconds, or you raise your legs for 30 seconds, it doesn't really matter what you do. You could even go into the kitchen and do some cleaning, or you could put some music on and do some dancing.

It doesn't really matter. Whatever it is, the idea is that you really try to get into that thing and that you focus in on that activity for that specific amount of time. And now you're postponing, but you're not just postponing. You're doing something that's going to make you feel better. Because any time that we do some exercise, we actually get a rush of kind of neurotransmitters.

We tend to feel a bit better we get that dopamine we tend to feel better able to deal with the OCD after we do that even if it's only for 30 seconds or a minute plus you've also given your kind of thinking mind a bit of a break from ruminating on that thing you've you've kind of postponed doing anything during that time and you might find that when you come back to that thought it isn't bothering you so much so many thanks guys I really hope that you enjoyed that one if you

have any questions at all about anything i've spoken about today do please let me know and if you would like to get a discovery call from me you can feel free to follow the link in the show notes or you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com many thanks and i will see you next time.

And now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer any information that you view on my website, Instagram page, Facebook group or anywhere else online or any information that you listen to on the podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for actual medical or mental health advice from a doctor, psychologist or any other medical or mental health profession. Music.