OCD and False Alarms: How to Stop Believing Every Thought

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 welcome to episode 453 i hope that you're doing very well today and if you are struggling with ocd or anxiety and you would like to get some support with that well you can by heading over to my website robertjamescoaching.com there you can book in for a free session or if you prefer you can send me a message and let me know about what you're struggling with.

In today's episode I'm talking about the false alarm of OCD and this is something that if you if you do struggle with OCD I'm sure you experience all the time and this is when our mind is trying to convince us that something is wrong and often we'll we'll scan the environment and we'll look for something that's wrong even if there isn't anything wrong at all on that given day because we're so used to there being something wrong and we're so used to having something to obsess about

something to worry about that we can we can look for it and so today's episode is all about this kind of false alarm that goes off in our brain and convinces us that we need to start ruminating or we need to figure something out when we don't now if you would like to get extra support for OCD and anxiety you can check out my youtube channel where i'm now doing weekly episodes like this as well as weekly meditations to really help with ocd and anxiety so

if you would like to check out that you can follow the link in the show notes or you can search for robert james coaching the ocd and anxiety podcast in youtube also you can follow along on instagram my instagram handle is at robert james coaching uk so many thanks if you have any questions at all about anything i speak about today do please let me know and off we go.

Here's a quote by dr jeffrey schwartz to get us started the truth is you are not your thoughts and you don't have to act on them you can learn to see the ocd for what it is a false alarm and this is obviously a very apt for today's podcast which is all about the false alarm and ocd and this is something that i think is really right right at the very heart of ocd you know when we're when we're struggling with with an obsession really what's going on is there is this alarm that's going

off in our mind and we're believing that something is wrong and you know what what that thing is well that depends on what your particular themes. Are it might be that you've been struggling with the same theme for many many years and it's always the same kind of thing that that you struggle.

With or it may be that your your mind is very creative with your OCD that it moves around from from thing to thing to thing you know in in which case it can be a bit more confusing at times as to you know which which thoughts or which obsessions are actually part of the OCD and which ones are actually things that you you do need to worry about but really a lot of the time or nearly always if it is actually part of the OCD cycle it's a false alarm it might

be that we get triggered by something perhaps we see something in the environment or we we see somebody maybe there's an intrusive thought that we don't like or something else happens or maybe you just wake up first thing in the morning and straight away you're experiencing that anxiety you feel triggered straight away and you know you you start feeling like you need to do something about it and so of course well what do you want to do you want to perform a

compulsion because compulsions do temporarily make us feel better that's why we keep doing them and that's why it's so such an addictive thing OCD because when you perform that compulsion temporarily you get that that feeling of relief you do feel a little bit better only because you have to perform that compulsion in order to feel better you've actually just strengthened the cycle of OCD.

And so, you know, what we have to do instead is we have to learn how to recognize that there's a false alarm going off. If you've just woke up first thing in the. That might mean more about stress or different things that are going on in your life than it actually has to do with the thing that you're obsessing about. It may be because you've got all sorts of different challenges going on or maybe you've been stuck in that OCD cycle so much that you've really worn yourself out.

You know you've made it really difficult for yourself to think about anything else than this obsession because you're just thinking about it day in day out all the time ruminating about it trying to have certainty about it so you know maybe it's the first thing that you start thinking about in the morning but that doesn't mean that actually it's relevant and this is the thing with OCD it's when we are able to you know to let go of the compulsions for long

enough that's when we can begin to to recognize something as OCD and as a false alarm.

One thing that I find to be very helpful actually when it comes to recognizing that the false alarm system that's going off with OCD is to actually tune into what you're feeling in your body when you're activated and this is why it's so important that we do try to develop this ability to feel our difficult emotions and to not just ignore them to not just push them away or try to dampen them down in various different artificial ways or to perform compulsions because

when we do that we're not really giving ourselves the opportunity to learn how to feel those difficult emotions to learn how to to be with them and to to listen to them you know despite the fact that they can be very uncomfortable and difficult at times you know they they are just emotions and when we allow ourselves to feel them well we can actually learn something from that we can recognize that actually perhaps we don't need to uh to kind of be thinking about this constantly or that we

don't need to give so much energy to this particular problem because it isn't actually a real problem it's something that our brain has created in order to give us something to to kind of ruminate about and to to obsess about. And, you know, unfortunately, OCD is, it does seem to have this addictive quality to it.

Certainly, that was the case for me where, you know, if I wasn't ruminating about something, if I wasn't going around in circles, you know, with my obsessions in my head, then I would almost feel more anxious because I was so used to doing that, you know, and I almost needed that kind of false alarm system to be going off.

But when you interrupt the cycle by really learning how to feel your emotions when you are feeling triggered in this way, where your brain is telling you that, you know, there's something very, very badly wrong with your particular themes and that you need to figure it out, you need to have certainty about them, you need to spend time on them.

Well actually you know that's actually a sign that perhaps you don't need to figure it all out perhaps you just need to sit quietly for a few minutes and to really focus on what you're feeling and to try to allow those difficult emotions to be there often when we when we begin to allow ourselves to do that that's when we can begin to process those difficult emotions and you know we then begin to let go of some of the narratives and the stories that we've built up around them.

So often we have these limiting beliefs around our themes where, you know, we've thought about it so much for such a long time that we've created all of these stories that just simply aren't true. And when we sit down and we instead focus on our feelings and our emotions and we try to stay with that discomfort... For long enough for it to begin to go down a little bit or to change a little bit, that's when we can really start beginning to move past some of these more challenging things.

So actually what I've decided to do to help you with this is to create a meditation that is focused on trying to feel your difficult emotions when you are triggered in this way. It's such an important skill to develop. And so I'm going to create a meditation on the YouTube channel this week that is specifically tailored for this very theme. So if you would like to check out that, it will be live on Thursday.

So please do check out the YouTube channel, search for Robert James Coaching there and you will find it.

If you have any questions at all about anything I spoke about today do please let me know and I will see you next time just a quick reminder that if you want to get a free session all you need to do to get that is to head over to my website www.robertjamescoaching.com and there you can leave me a message and we can arrange the free session 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 professional. Music.