The Bus Driver Metaphor: Navigating Intrusive Thoughts in OCD

Music. Music.

Hello and welcome to episode 412. Today I am in my camper van in the Basque country in northern Spain, enjoying a little bit of cloud right now, escaping the summer heat of Barcelona where it gets a little bit too hot at times.

So yeah, here we are. And if you are struggling with OCD or anxiety over the summer 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 that 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 podcast i'm going to be talking about a really helpful metaphor called the the bus driver

metaphor it's particularly helpful when it comes to intrusive thoughts which are obviously a really big part of ocd if you find the podcast helpful it would be amazing if you could subscribe most people who listen do not actually subscribe and it really doesn't take very long you could even do it right now if you wanted to and it would really really help the podcast so many thanks guys i really hope that you enjoy if you have any questions at

all about anything i speak about today do please let me know and off we go so as the olympics are starting this week and you know We're going to be talking about a metaphor in today's episode for helping you to deal with intrusive thoughts.

Here's a quote by Bill Bradley to get us started that involves sports and a metaphor. Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes in times of difficulty can be important role models. And I've kind of said it before, but I think it's very important that we do find role models when it comes to overcoming OCD.

That we recognize that there's many people out there, you know, be that sports people, be that anybody who's doing something difficult and is trying to overcome it. Be that somebody who's struggling with OCD and is learning how to lean into their discomfort and overcome the challenge. You know, it's really important that we look to people in our lives who are taking on challenges, who are looking at obstacles and finding ways to overcome them.

You know, that we use these people as role models. And we recognize that for us to do anything in our lives, it does involve, you know, us actually really having to put in a lot of effort to discipline ourselves at times, to sacrifice at times even. But in doing so, you can achieve great things. And, you know, with OCD, obviously it's different because we're struggling with a mental health problem.

It's very, very challenging to have OCD. but i think if we can find a way to be more positive about the challenge of ocd and the obstacles that we face it can really help us help us in those difficult times and finding inspiration for that in whatever in whatever areas of life are interesting to you so whether that is sports whether that's in the arts whether that's in creativity in one form or another other, being able to find some inspiration to take on the challenge of OCD can be incredibly

important because we know how difficult it can be sometimes if you don't have that inspiration.

Okay, so getting on to the bus driver metaphor, this is actually taken from Acceptance Commitment Therapy. I think Russ Harris, the writer of The Happiness Trap in particular, talks about this metaphor. It's not something that I've created myself, but I do talk about it quite a lot in my coaching. I think it's a really helpful perspective in which we can view the challenge of OCD and how how to deal with intrusive thoughts when they come up, which is obviously a really big part of OCD.

When we're not doing well, what we tend to do with intrusive thoughts is to push them away, to recognize that we don't like them, and then almost kind of instantly to start doing things to try to control them, to not have them, to disprove them, to push away the anxiety and the discomfort that they may they may create in us and unfortunately all of these things end up being compulsions if we're not careful where we're just compulsively pushing away things that we

don't like in order to feel better in the short term but we know when we take that short-term perspective which is really what we're doing with OCD unfortunately the more that we push those things away the more that they rebound and we end up getting more of them and you know this This is why if you are struggling with intrusive thoughts and your reaction to them is to, you know, to instantly try to get rid of them somehow, which is completely understandable.

A lot of OCD thoughts can be very horrible and obnoxious and difficult. And so, of course, you do want to do something with them. You feel like, you know, the logical thing is to push them away. But, of course, it just makes matters worse. us. And so this bus driver analogy, I think it really helps to illustrate this, as well as illustrating what we really need to do in these challenging situations when intrusive thoughts come up.

If you can use your imagination for a second and just imagine that you are a bus driver, you're driving the bus and hopefully if you're a bus driver, your objective or your values are to drive that bus safely, to get the passengers safely to where they need to go. And you're doing that. It's a good day. Everything's going fine.

But then you pull into to a stop and all of these incredibly loud and incredibly annoying passengers get onto the bus and of course these passengers are like our intrusive thoughts you know unexpectedly we turn around the corner and suddenly boom they get on the bus from nowhere and they're really annoying they're really loud they're rude they're trying to get your attention they They actually want to distract you from driving the bus.

And, you know, in this situation, we have a kind of choice that we have to make. And this is really important to understand in this metaphor, that there is a choice that the bus driver has to make. He can get or she can get really annoyed and upset about the fact that these passengers have got on the bus. You know, maybe they could even stop the bus and demand that they get off.

But as we know if if the driver does that well the passengers aren't going to get off the bus They're gonna they're gonna get more annoyed. They're gonna get more annoying. They're gonna get louder They're gonna demand the bus driver to carry on driving that bus and it's gonna cause a commotion It's gonna cause a scene, you know, all sorts of negative things could come from that so, you know, that's not going to be a good approach that you you want to take and.

Something else that the bus driver could do is just to get annoyed, to get frustrated, carry on driving the bus, but be really annoyed with the passengers being there. Thinking, why me? This isn't fair. Why did they get on? I was quite happy driving the bus, but now I've got all these loud, annoying people on here. Why did they have to get on? And, you know, now we're getting really upset with ourselves.

And when we do that, again, it just means that the passengers are likely to stay on the bus for even longer because we're getting annoyed with them. And the more emotional intensity we give to those thoughts, the more they tend to kind of stick around. And it's the same thing with these passengers. They're going to stay on the bus. If they can sense that they're annoying you, they may even go past their stop and just think, well, you know, let's just keep on annoying this bus driver.

This is our sport this is how we're going to keep on annoying them so you know as long as they sense that you're frustrated that's what these annoying passengers will do and the third option which is hopefully the one that we want to take and the one that really acceptance commitment therapy encourages us to take is to think about what do we actually value in that situation what is the important thing because to be honest you know if you're a bus driver of course as we spoke about before what

you want to do is you want to fulfill your values and your goals you want to drive your bus safely get the passengers to where they need to go you know and in doing so well if those loud noisy passengers get off the bus sooner well that's a that's a win that's fantastic that's.

If we focus on getting them off or stopping the bus or demanding that they be gone or getting annoyed with them being present there then we're in non-acceptance mode the moment we actually just say look i'm going to get on with my job i'm going to focus on what i need to focus on i'm going to allow those loud annoying passengers to be there on the back of the bus because i can't do anything about them that's all i can do right now i've just got to focus on what i can

focus on and hopefully when I do that they will get off the bus and lo and behold most of the time they do because we haven't got so wound up about them being there and this.

Is a really important kind of strategy that you know acceptance commitment therapy really focuses on it's just about finding a way to allow these difficult things to be there in the background and it's really all about how you you refocus your attention repeatedly in order to stay a bit more in the present moment and to not get caught up in the emotion of the thoughts and you know as i was talking about before these thoughts you know are related to ocd and ocd is a trickster you know the moment

ocd thinks that it's winding you up that it's getting your attention it loves that it's going to want to to do more of that and so you know our job in a way is to not give in to that trickster to actually say nope i can remain calm in this situation i can focus on what's important to me and i can allow the discomfort to be here and at some point those passengers will get off the bus intrusive thoughts and anxiety aren't just going to be there all the time they come and go and when

we focus on the the present moment and more healthy helpful things you know they do often tend to to kind of get off that bus a lot quicker so there we go guys that is the bus driver analogy it's something that has helped me out a lot personally and i think it tends to be quite helpful for for other people too.

So yeah i really hope that you you did enjoy it and you know maybe you can practice and try it and see see how it works for you if you wanted to get in touch and ask me any questions about that at all. Do please feel free to do that and I will see you next time. Music.