OCD recovery has been a struggle for me since a teen without knowing what it really was. I thought it was superstition – nothing less, nothing more. Dealing with it as an adult I began to think of it as a more serious conundrum. I had been so perplexed for so long that I was accepting the holes of my identity.
Pieces of me were missing. Had nothing to blame, no answers, no questions even. Til I figured out it has a name and that I am not the only one that suffers from it – That is when my recovery could begin.
Looking for the information:
Someone had already ratted me out to me. My secret was revealed which by itself was a load off. Gladly, I owned it – It’s a disorder, it’s not that uncommon. I don’t have to hide it. Though I would still hide it, but I would also seek it.
I put on my hiking gear, drank plenty of water before going through the jungles of google.com and yahoo.com, maybe even bing.com with a slim chance of askjeeves.com too. Search engine after search engine, I typed in their blank space with the magnifying glass ‘OCD recovery’ and ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’. Found it to be an actual thing.
There wasn’t much to peruse back then other than the definition, but I grew curious.
Listening to other’s struggles:
I found a show, don’t remember the name, where a therapist put 10 patients through an OCD recovery boot camp to prove to them that there compulsions were not necessary. Their agony was shared on the screen and I was glued.
I remember the therapist made this guy palm the inside of a dumpster. They both did it. The patient began to FREAK. Explaining that he could feel germs spreading and crawling. They both stayed put outside, forcing him to just deal with it. The therapist even licked his own fingers to help ease the patient.
At their round table, he consoled this lady who had a bad thought about her kids. The therapist sat with her in agony because she wanted to give in to impulse and rely on her compulsions. He huddled their with her telling her to give it time and that her kids were safe at home still. She fought through it and wasn’t really relieved until she got to speak to her family later that night.
It was hard to watch, but some of those people achieved something huge. Witnessing that sparked a bigger challenge in me. I had my moments, but the only accountability came from me and my OCD.
Sharing my struggles:
I met my wife and hid my struggles from her for a while. I had so many moments where I thought I had won that I thought there was no need to let her in on it. My compulsions were to a minimum, so I’m good.
Still up and down, and some of the downs hit me to where I started thinking it wasn’t fair to her to shun her from my struggles. I let her in on my secret, told her I was OCD. She didn’t run, she didn’t dismiss it, she wanted to help.
She would do her own research letting me know what she would find, what techniques others were using to fight it. When I really struggle, I let her know that my OCD is kicking my tail. She prays with me, she talks it out with me, she understands me.
That helps A LOT.
Positive Reinforcement:
Instead of trying to force good thoughts over the intrusive bad thoughts, I began a collection of positive sayings. These would be in the form of memes, quotes, pictures, drawings, anything I found motivating or happy. I easily saved them on my phone and scrolled through often.
This was better than scrolling to find on the internet, Facebook, or instagram as I had more control of the content. I didn’t just whip them out when I had a uneasy thought either. I tried to make this the norm of my thinking instead of focusing so much on the negativity and trying to avoid it.
So when the word ‘cancer’ was thrown out there on a TV show, maybe I could hear it and not think of the word ‘cancer’ as a cancer. Or when a song mentions a sad experience, maybe it wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.
It was like training for positivity instead going to war with negativity.
Challenging myself:
That made me challenge myself more and more. Feeling compulsive? Don’t just react. Give it a moment. After a moment, if I still felt compelled to give in, I might give it another moment. If I gave in, I gave in, but at least it wasn’t like a reflex and automatic.
I began to give in less and less. Still, impulse would win sometimes, but I challenged myself with a lot of successful moments. This was the big step to continuing with recovery. Balling up my fist, closing my eyes at times until the urge was smaller.
There were even times where I welcomed the opportunity to dismiss that bad thoughts and the compulsions. I felt like if OCD gets to challenge me, I should be able to challenge OCD. Why does it get to say when we do battle.
Rewarding myself:
In those moments where I felt like I won – It was glorious. I wanted to raise my hands as the champ. I couldn’t though, because OCD would eventually win, making me go through the cycle leading to compulsive repetitions that irked the mess out of me. UGH OCD!
More and more, I had victories. I decided I would reward myself. I made a checklist (this checklist helped me so much). It’s a digital checklist that I still use. It is composed of 60 positive/ motivating words / phrases. Whenever I felt the urge to revert to my compulsions and reflexive repetition and didn’t give in, I would go to the checklist and check a word or phrase.
For each time I did let impulse win, I would remove a check. I hate removing the checks. It makes me feel weak each time. I don’t like unchecking, in fact, I hate it. I love checking though, it makes me feel strong and motivates me to keep up the progress.
When the list was fully checked, I would reward myself with a fun purchase or a small gift card to be used towards a larger ‘want’ purchase later. I would find some days I had earned 15 checks, some days I had earned much less. Earning 15 checks in a day was great, earning less could be one of two things.
Sometimes, I might only earn a few checks because OCD would get the best of me. The more and more I used this checklist, the better I would get at dismissing, and that caused me to earned less checks as well. Opportunity for compulsion was less – Not from avoiding, but because focus was redirected.
It feels great to earn lots of checks towards my reward because that means I’m dismissing the thoughts as just thoughts and not impulsively acting on it. It also feels great to not earn so many checks because the compulsive thinking was dwindling.
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Try it for yourself, let me know what you think.
Sharing my achievements:
This one is simple. I share my accomplishments with my wife eager for that face to light up with excitement. Hehe. I share it here also because I too benefited from others sharing their OCD recovery tactics, struggles, and accomplishments.
Check out some of my other posts where I share my struggles and achievements here: My Top 10 Triggers For Compulsive Behaviors, My OCD Then And Now, OCD Woes – How OCD Sucked The Fun Out Of Fun.
OCD recovery is not meant for us to do alone. That’s what it wants – How it eats. Share it with someone you trust and claim victory to a huge battle.
Let me know if you found this helpful. I am curious to hear your opinions. Leave a comment or find me on Twitter @UghOCD or Instagram @brentleybigkid.
