Watch this if you have OCD
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- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2024
- Hi! I’m Claire, and this is my channel, Woodshed Theory. Here you will find the awkward ramblings of an adult autist. I love being creative and sharing my experiences with you. Subscribe to see more DIYs, Discussions, and Bunnies on your feed!
Today I am coming at you with what I wish I had been told before I got help for OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can be a debilitating disorder. I hope you find my words supportive.
Here are some resources you can look into if you are struggling with OCD:
OCD Workbook: Your Guide to Breaking Free from Obsessive
www.amazon.com/OCD-Workbook-B...
11 Online Resources to Treat OCD
www.treatmyocd.com/blog/onlin...
Meta-Analysis of the Dose-Response Relationship of SSRI in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
International OCD Foundation
iocdf.org/ocd-finding-help/su...
What is OCD?
www.psychiatry.org/patients-f...
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Thank you so much for this video. OCD could be a barless prison, but it's even worse if you can't express it. When I was a kid I was constantly scolded at home and brutalized at school for my OCD, stimming, and tics. I was isolated, but I'm not alone anymore. Thank you for your kind soul and for spreading awareness and compassion.
A good way to put it - a barless prison. You are right that the best key to escape is realising that you are not alone, even if you can't get over the anxiety of leaving the house and interacting IRL. Good luck @passaggioalivello - to us all!
@@smicketysmoo Thank you so much my friend.
Thanks for always supporting me Pass
Happy Friday! Negative self talk make my OCD sooo much worse. Talk therapy has really helped me change the voice in my to a more positive one over the years. Definitely think it's genetic as my mom has it too and I wonder about my son. Thanks for sharing your experiences and some resources! ❤
Thanks for your support. Therapy was so helpful for me
Thanks for the great video, Friend! As a decades-long sufferer of OCD, just hearing you say "it is not your fault" was so great! So important! Love your videos - thanks for being you!
Hi Chris! Thanks for your kind comments!
I went through CBT and I'd love to add somethings I learned too on my journey (which is a work in progress)
Exposure is your best friend, but it's easier said than done. I have what is called "harm OCD" or "morbid OCD" and mine is mainly thought oriented rather than action (I don't usually participate in active compulsions. It's also known as pure O) my greatest fear is hurting others/being out of control. My therapist had me do exercises which challenged my OCD. It was TERRIFYING, which is the point. You increase the anxiety on purpose so that you brain learns through exposure that the thought means nothing. We increased difficulty overtime to the point where she brought a knife to the session and had me hold it against her skin. I bawled my eyes out. But it's all apart of the process.
This is important to figure out WITH a therapist because they can help you how to push that baseline bit by bit, as going to far too fast can make OCD worse (The technique known as flooding isn't a good idea to do yourself and also seems to work a lot better with active phobias, planes, dogs, bugs etc rather than thoughts since they are hard to expose in the same way).
My OCD is better and I employ CBT in any avoidance behaviors I have or fears in general. I've also done it for social anxiety and it's absolutely better than it was. I couldn't even go to the store and talk to an employee before. My partner would have to go with me. Now I can go, by myself and do so often as well as ask an employee a question. It's still tough, ordering food is still anxiety inducing, but it is MUCH better than it was and I've had social anxiety since puberty.
5 main points I learned while in CBT and most of these are applicable to whatever regimen/situation you have if you have OCD.
1. Your behavior changes before your thoughts and your thoughts change before your feelings. Meaning you will feel like garbage even if you are doing things right. You will still feel scared and panicky. It takes time to retrain your brain. Just because you feel bad, or even worse than before doesn't mean you're doing it wrong or that something actually is worse.
2. There is no "wrong" way to go about it. You will mess up, engage in a compulsion or rumination. That's okay. There is no grading curve in the process. The idea is to try to be consistent, to challenge your avoidance behaviors.
3. The idea is to try to direct the bus (your mind) to continue along the path you want. Feeling scared being in the kitchen cutting up veggies and your pet, family member or partner walks in? Keep cutting the veggies as best you can. Even set a time limit if it's too much and stick to it. Cut for 10 more seconds deliberately.
4. Do not distract. Not immediately. Distracting to try to "go to a happy place" makes OCD worse because you are telling your brain that the thing you are scared of that is a thought matters. Accept it first. Say "I'm having this thought, maybe it's real, maybe not" or even "It is real and will happen, oh well." challenge it. After you've sat with it for a few minutes, even visualize sitting in a room with the thought in your head, then you can distract because otherwise you'll just ruminate.
5. Anxiety isn't your enemy. OCD is your brain for one reason or another finding that a thought is a real threat and creating a looping pattern of your worst fears (which means that you can get new ones overtime). Everyone has anxiety. The difference between normal levels and disorder is how easily it's set off and if it's set off by things that don't pose a threat. Anxiety is a healthy response in the right situations. It's not a monster to vanquish.
Bonus: OCD is curable. Unlike multiple types of disorders out there, you can actually be free from the effects of OCD and even if you don't reach that point, it's absolutely manageable. It's about retraining your brain to understand the thought isn't a threat as well as any medicines that can help taper down the extreme response to help you be able to use your tools in order to retrain your brain. It's not a developmental/neurological disorder.
Thanks for all of your insight! I think OCD is curable for some, but I will probably be affected my entire life. Just have to keep working on it.
Thank you for this comment. I'm struggling really bad with OCD around been fat and one area is my belly. I keep checking my belly and it's so hard to stop or not give into the complusions. I feel so depressed that I just wanna give up xx
Thank you, yet again. Sharing your - clearly painful - journey is both helpful and healing to those just starting it. Going through the whole assessment/diagnostic process myself at present and coming to terms with all these letters - ASD/ADHD/CPTSD and now (possibly) OCD, or perhaps just symptoms (the compulsions/intrusive thoughts/constant dread, shame and guilt) are just part of the other stuff. Let's hope there is light on the other side! Your channel helps me believe that this might be true.
Thanks for the resources - my book bills are soaring!
but learning more is always the best way to deal with these issues.
It’s so hard to work on yourself but it’s freeing!
Thank you for being so vulnerable. I've known people who were on meds for OCD but I didn't know what they went through. I'm so glad you got help.
Thanks I am so glad I got help too. I could never have imagined feeling better
This is really useful to me. Each semester, I have at least a few students with OCD. Whenever you share about this, it helps me understand more ways I can support them and make it easier for them to succeed with our class.
Thanks Cathy you are a kind person
@@WoodshedTheory I kept getting the "comments have moved" message on today's Porch Coffee and I wasn't able to get the link to them to work on my device. I'll try tomorrow from the computer, but I just wanted to say, yay for the Peter Rabbit mug!
This is a great topic today, thank you for sharing. I'm curious, was there a point when you realized you had a problem or condition, that it wasn't just your choice or your personality that makes you think or feel a certain way? Can you give some examples of intrusive thoughts? I'm familiar with intrusive feelings with various phobias, but I'm not really familiar with intrusive thoughts.
One thing that worked great for social anxiety was a pandemic. There were no more social obligations, everyone was hiding from everyone. I'm guessing disease around every corner is not a so good for OCD :p Also drugs. I'm a big fan of fixing the root cause, those tweaky little neurotransmitters.
I realized it was an issue very young. An intrusive thought can be something like - being violent to someone. There are many examples online.
Just to add to Woodshed's response. Everyone has intrusive thoughts. They are unwanted thoughts. Anything from being mean, being violent, doing something strange, dangerous etc.
Difference in OCD is that those thoughts ruminate, they stick around.
An example I use a lot is it's like watching a show on the TV. Every once in a while you flip to a channel you didn't want to see that had content that may disturb your or make you feel weird and uncomfortable. People with out OCD can change the channel (the brain doesn't pay it much mind), but someone with OCD is stuck on that channel. The buttons change nothing and now they also can't look away (The brain perceives the thought as a threat and therefore obsesses over it).
OCD is also very common with Autism. It seems like anxiety disorders are common with various other disorders, but with Autism it's so common that my clinic is literally called Autism and OCD.
You also tend to know pretty young if it activates (there does seem to be some brain propensity for it. Anxiety runs in my family for instance) but you often don't know what it is called and you get scared that others don't experience the same thing (which isn't true, they do, just not to the same degree, but people are uncomfortable talking about things because they fear the same thing the OCD person does, that it makes them a "freak") Being a kid and having OCD sucks because kids are very judgmental and lie about their experiences if they think they are "abnormal".
I’ve watched this video three times now 😄. It’s such an encouragement to hear you share part of your experience with OCD. It is very isolating, especially if you developed it as a child, and you grew up wondering what was wrong with you. 😏 I don’t have any friends that suffer with it, so I don’t talk about it. It’s such a hard concept to try to convey to someone who doesn’t experience it. I did take an SSRI for a couple of years for anxiety and depression, and it surprisingly helped with my OCD symptoms as well. I’ll have to check out the workbook that you linked. Thanks again!
Thanks GHill happy to have you here. Ocd is so isolating and it gets lonely
OMGsh, I just looked up OCD intrusive thoughts for the first time and didn't realize that was OCD! I have this too. I am so overwhelmed with ALL the things I am finally figuring out is all part of this huge cluster of ND things that I have had all my life.
I actually married a guy that I knew was "a bit OCD" because it helped balance me as a sloppy person. Of course it turns out to be incredibly poor executive function and a myriad of ND issues along with having more stuff than I can manage.
Anyway, he is the one and only person I confessed to about the repeated pattern thing, like in regards to touch or looking at something or needing a physical balance, etc. Other than telling him, this is the only other time to open up about that.
Also, the examples of intrusive thoughts, me too. Horrible things that I would NEVER do and thankfully NEVER did, but always wondered why such a suggestive thought would come to my mind. Evil things!
I can't even tackle this one right now. It's too hard when there are soooo many other things I need help with right now. I just have too much! It's all too much!
By the way, we divorced within 6 years because he ended up having me isolated and under too much control. I started taking back my control and setting up boundaries that he could not live with so he left in 2019.
I realize now we are both autistic and other ND. That is why we got along so well. But he would not be open to working on his issues like I am mine.
Hi Tricia I know it is a lot to unpack. I have a video about what I wish I knew about ocd you should check it out
Thank you for the video
Thanks for watching!
I have been in and out of therapy since I was a teenager. I’ve also been on and off medications since then. My symptoms shifted significantly while I was in grad school. I was afraid to talk to my therapist about what I was experiencing and had no idea these new intrusive thoughts were related to OCD (I was diagnosed as a teenager). I found that medication combined with group therapy worked really well for me. I had never been in group therapy before. What I found was support from others who really understood what I was experiencing and also tools to help with day to day life. For me, it was group therapy that was life changing. I didn’t just have a therapist telling me things to do, I had peers encouraging me and supporting me in a way I never thought possible. I still struggle, and some days are better than others, but I have tools and a greater understanding of myself as a result. I also have amazing people that have shown their bravery which is also helpful. Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you for your thoughts Mary ❤️ you
I like group therapy as well. But I have not tried it for OCD.
I'm finally at peace with my mind. I had some ridiculous amount of intrusive thoughts that would just randomy and one after another being processed through my mind that i was always aware of until December last year and im 40. I was so relieved and finally gained a proper amount of stress tolerance. I resent the amount of externalities neurotypicals will allow just because they misinterpreted what i said and will not take five minutes to juat consider anything i described, look it up, and decide whether it's possible. I lived so distracted and overwhelmed in all internal resources that if i were anyone else they probably would have decided to do other things, just start making creative assumptions. My brother would get in a constant stream of crimes both accidentally and intentionally. I assume due to what he was dealing with. I also juat guessed based on my brother passing away 6-7 years ago, yhat my expiration was about due. Stating this, no it cant be true the neurotypical said. Realizing I'm autistic, i think the average age is 40. My current age. I'm not trying to impress anyone but when you have a certain understanding but not quite able to fully explain it, then its plain wrong or catastrophizing, etc. I've come to believe I'm a Cassandra, I don't personally want some kind of respect or status, gratitude but just considering something i say could have any amount of relevance would be beneficial.
I am glad that you have found some peace.
I grew up in a medication negative environment as well.
I think that medication can be a useful tool.
It has helped me so much!
@@WoodshedTheory That is good!
Hi. Please help. I have a doubt that a sheet of paper I had in my pocket,that I lost,might make somebody slip on snow or ice and will die because of me. I don’t know what to say to myself to stop. I even think about smashing snow and ice on the sidewalk and in the street where the paper might have fallen with a hammer to be more sure it is not there. Thank you
Hi nick sorry you are having a rough time. I would really suggest you talk to a doctor it sounds like you may really benefit from some help. It really helped me to go to group therapy
I know a person who has a weird form of ocd it has to do when purchasing things for example she purchase a bag that she really love or lets just say a jewelry, when she pays for her purchase her ocd will demand that she will take picture or video while paying her purchased items, because if she didn't take video her ocd will trigger bad, like thoughts will pop up ocd will tell her did pay for it or did you steal it, or sometimes she feels convince that she paid for it and did not steal it the ocd will morph into another thought like what if you with the fake money or like the payment is lacking, now she will doubt if the bag and jewerly that she bought was truly hers or not the worst thing is the guilt of stealing, that gives her extreme anxiety because she really likes the bag or jewerly that she bough now she can't feel certain about the thing she bought. i feel sorry for her.. ocd is indeed a prison, but the way i see its not just a prison its HELL! period.. if ocd was a person i already killed it..
I have heard about this type. I’m so sorry your friend is suffering
@@WoodshedTheory yes i feel sorry for her she needs to record her payments of her purchases her ocd will play false memories if she didn't its a cruel type of ocd