The 10 Biggest Lies OCD Tells You

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By
Morgan R.

While working on my
obsessive compulsive disorder
(OCD) in therapy for a little over a year now, one
of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that OCD loves to lie.
Through these sneaky lies, OCD pretends to be a helpful friend who
wants to keep us safe. But really, it only manipulates us into doing
more and more rituals. When stressed and struggling with an
obsession, I’ve found it’s helpful to identify when OCD is trying
to tell a lie. Then, I’m more likely to resist doing a ritual or to
fight through the discomfort of an exposure. Here are 10 common lies
OCD tries to tell…and why you shouldn’t believe them!

1.
I have to do rituals to feel safe or keep others safe.

While most people
with OCD know their fears are irrational, sometimes in a
stressful moment those fears can feel true. At times like this, I try
to remember the relief and feelings of safety you feel after doing
a compulsion will only be temporary. Doing rituals never
makes me feel safe in the long run. Delaying a ritual and
sitting with the anxiety is actually what gives me feelings of safety
and control.

2.
I have to do rituals if I want to feel less anxious.

Because of
its cyclical nature, one of the main pitfalls of OCD is that it
can grow quickly. Doing a ritual decreases anxiety, which feels
really good in the moment, but the relief is only temporary. When the
obsession pops up again, we have to do the ritual more and more for
our anxiety to go away. With every ritual we do, we continue to learn
that ritual equals less anxiety, even though it doesn’t work very
well. Exposure
and response prevention therapy (ERP) reteaches our brain that if
we don’t do a ritual, eventually our anxiety will come down on its
own. With every exposure we do, our anxiety comes down faster.

3.
This anxiety will last forever.

This lie can feel
especially true during an exposure or panic attack, but it’s not
only false — it’s impossible. All anxiety will come down
eventually. It might soon go back up again, then down, then up, etc.,
but it will come down. I pinky promise.

4.
Just do the ritual one more time. It’s better than trying
to resist.

This is one of the
lies OCD tells me most often: “One more time!” It’s the same
lie music directors and dance teachers always told us in practice,
and it’s never true. Giving into the ritual only makes the
obsession grow more, which means you’ll have to do the ritual even
more times.

5. My
thoughts make me dangerous.

Something my
therapist told me this week is, “We can’t choose what thoughts we
have, but we can choose what we do.” What many people don’t
realize is everyone has weird, intrusive thoughts. While most people
shrug them off and go about their day, the difference is people
with OCD tend to overreact to these thoughts. We feel responsible for
our weird thoughts and feel like dangerous people. Because of this,
we obsess about the thoughts and engage in rituals to reduce our
anxiety, which accidentally makes the thoughts come more often. This
lie is simply not true; thoughts are just thoughts.

6.
I shouldn’t tell people about my thoughts.

When my OCD tells me
my thoughts are dangerous, it also tells me to keep them a secret. We
don’t want people to know all the weird thoughts we have. This only
makes the thoughts stronger; we fall deeper into the obsession.
It also makes it harder to get help. It’s like saying “Voldemort”
— you can take some of the power away just by saying it out loud.

7.
I should be able to control my thoughts.

Wouldn’t it be
nice if we could try really hard and just stop having intrusive
thoughts? Yes, that would be nice, but I’m sorry to say that’s
not the reality. Go ahead and try, I’ll wait. Tired yet? As nice as
it would be to have control over our thoughts, I repeat, “We cannot
choose what thoughts we have, but we can choose how we react to
them.” The more we react to the thought and try to stop thinking
about it, the more we think about it. The less we react to a thought
and treat it as just a thought, the sooner it passes.

A common way to
demonstrate this phenomenon is the pink elephant experiment. Try it
yourself here!

8.
There is a high probability that something bad will happen.

This is a
common lie all anxiety disorders try to tell, but one I’ve
tried especially hard to fight back against and test out many times.
What I’ve found is usually, it’s not as bad as I expect it to be,
or the bad thing doesn’t even happen at all. Quite often when
I do an exposure, the anticipatory anxiety is worse than the anxiety
I feel when I’m actually doing the exposure. Our brains really like
to keep us safe, which means our brains really like to tell us
something bad will happen, even when most of the time it doesn’t
happen.

9.
If something bad does happen, then I won’t be able to cope.

What about when you
take the risk or do an exposure, and the bad thing does happen? I
also underestimate my ability to cope with something bad. We are far
more capable of coping than we usually believe.

10.
I need certainty.

OCD related fears
come in all shapes and sizes, but one aspect that ties them all
together is an intolerance of uncertainty. Whether you check a
lock multiple times or reread a page over and over, the goal is to
feel certain that the feared outcome won’t happen. The only
way to feel free then is to embrace uncertainty. Instead of
responding to a “What if?” by ritualizing and desperately trying
to achieve certainty, it’s better to respond with “Maybe…”
and work on accepting the uncertainty.

Please source your material! This is by Morgan from https://myocdvoice.wordpress.com/about-this-blog/

Source of article: https://themighty.com/2016/01/the-10-biggest-lies-ocd-tells-you/