Have you ever heard the phrase,

‘You don’t see reality as it is, you see it as you are’? 

This is why two people can have the exact same experience BUT have two completely different reactions to it.

It’s something worth remembering, especially when you have OCD or anxiety because the brain will be putting a filter on everything relating to your themes coming through, making them feel more intense, urgent and scary than they are. 

When my physical compulsions were really bad many years ago, one of the lies my brain told me was that I had to do everything 4 times or something bad would happen to someone in my family. 
Eventually it got so bad it was taking over my whole life, something had to be done.  At this time one of the observations I made was that no one else was doing these compulsions and they seemed OK.  Why was my brain telling me different?    

Breaking the loop

The way you break out of these loops and false realities is to become the observer of your thoughts.  This is an idea from ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) called defusion. 

Defusion means stepping back from your thoughts. Instead of treating thoughts as absolute facts or commands, you learn to see them as simple words or mental events. This helps stop overthinking and reduces emotional pain but it takes practice and it can be tricky as when we are tiggered, we are quickly pulled into fight or flight.  When in this state rational thinking and the ability to make sensible judgements and defuse from thoughts becomes tricky.   

I’ve talked previously about my fears around swimming – deep routed fears that have been there since I was about 8.  I’ve been working on these more recently and I am slowly making progress, but it takes a lot of time to rewire these patterns. 
One thing I have observed for a while now is that not everyone hates swimming, in fact some people enjoy it and so the problem isn’t swimming, swimming is neither good nor bad, it’s my perception of it that’s wrong. 
My brain has decided swimming is bad, based on an experience I had when I was 8 and so that’s it for life now? Wow!

Another example from when I was younger: I used to feel lightheaded when I stood for long periods of time on hard floors and I told myself this was because I have blood pressure that’s on the low side.  In fact, that’s what I used to tell everyone. 
But having had a bought of bad anxiety since then, I now know that feeling lightheaded has nothing to do with hard floors or blood pressure and everything to do with me telling myself these things and my brain creating the conditions to make it so.  Yes, your brain can make you feel dizzy, light-headed, tired and a whole cascade of other effects which are self-created, sorry.  

Your compulsions are similar; your brain tells you to do them or else… but in reality this is a lie your brain is telling you because of a perceived reality/false belief which I’m guessing doesn’t even exist.

Can you defuse yourself from your OCD thoughs long enough to see them for what they are? 

As Always,
Stay Strong xxx