Tag: mental-illness

What’s the RAS and why it’s crucial for OCD recovery

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One of the greatest insights into the brain and how it functions for me was when I learnt about the reticular activating system or RAS for short. 

I first read about the RAS in Jim Kwik’s book, Limitless – which I would highly recommend. 

He states that:

‘Every second, your senses gather up to 11 million bits of information from the world around you….
…The conscious mind typically processes only 50 bits per second. ‘

The RAS system plays an important role, 11 million is a lot and would be completely overwhelming if it all got through to your conscious awareness, so the RAS, filters out most of the information coming in. 

How does it know what to let through and what to ignore? This is generally based on where you focus your attention!    

Have you ever noticed when you’re shopping for something new, like a car, you suddenly start seeing the one you’re interested in all over the place?

I remember when my husband and I were looking for a new front door. I’d never looked at anyone’s front door before in my life, but all of a sudden I knew what everyone’s front door on my entire street was like.  We’ve now purchased our front door, and since then I’ve had no interest whatsoever in anyone else’s – my brain has stopped drawing my attention to them.

Another interesting example of this was when my husband and I went for an anniversary meal one year.  We were sitting in a beautiful conservatory enjoying a wonderful meal and I made a comment about one of the flower displays and how interesting the vase was.  My husband – generally much less interested in flowers and much more interested in technology – commented that he hadn’t even noticed the flowers but was looking at how they had discreetly wired in the sound system speakers – something which I had little interest in, so hadn’t noticed. 

Isn’t it fascinating how two people in the exact same space and moment in time can be experiencing something completely different, depending on what their brain thinks they’re interested in and is therefore drawing their attention to!

Bringing us round to OCD we can see how this system can work against us.  When we’re overly focused on our obsessions (unwanted, intrusive, and distressing thoughts, images, urges, or feelings that repeatedly enter a person’s mind and cause significant anxiety.) our brain is going to see them as important and hijack that small stream of data coming through to our conscious awareness to bring our attention to them.  As it does this it blocks out all the other things we might very well have been interested in! 

Another great quote which I love is: ‘What am I missing by choosing to worry and be afraid?’

How much of your life are you missing out on? It can feel tough to hear all this, particularly, if like me, you’ve had OCD for a long time.  OCD thoughts consume so much of our mental space and energy that when other things come along, they could be right in front of us and we don’t see them!

So what do we need to do?

Well it doesn’t happen quickly, but we need to not engage with the OCD obsessions when they come in, any resistance to them shows the brain they are important and activates that filter.  I know it can feel impossible, but I have found, through 30 years of OCD experience, it is the only way to be rid of them. Just say: 

‘Thank you brain, that’s exactly what I want to hear right now’

and carry on with your day. This way you’re not pushing it away but you’re also not interacting with it.

Next, you need to check your inner dialogue. This will also effect what comes through your filter and quite often is running on auto pilot in an unhelpful way.

A great exercise is to sit for a moment and see how you talk to yourself.  I’m guessing if you have OCD you’re probably not being that kind.

From Jim Kiwk’s book, a quote from Dr Jennice Vilhauer

‘The inner critic isn’t harmless.  It inhibits you, limits you, and stops you from pursuing the life you truly want to live.  It robs you of peace of mind and emotional well-being and, if left unchecked long enough, it can even lead to serious mental health problems like depression and anxiety’ 

and I’d venture to add OCD to that list.    

Take a moment and write down what you hear yourself saying, then see if you can find a better more uplifting dialogue to tune into. Below are a couple of ideas for when OCD obsessions come in but you can apply this idea to all aspects of your life:

  • ‘I’m noticing my OCD is feeling overwhelming right now, but I’m working on letting it be and I know it will pass.  I am a strong and resilient person who can sit with this uncomfortable feeling’
  • ‘I know that giving into the OCD obsession will only make it worse in the future, I’m being strong now for my future freedom, I’m so proud of myself’
  • ‘When my OCD is triggered, I know I will be thrown into fight or flight, I can’t think rationally in that state so there is no point in interacting with the thought, I love that I can empower myself with this knowledge’.  

Next time you’re triggered have a go at using one of the above and see if it helps switch your mind away from negative thinking – which is going to be the focus of next week’s post.

Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already so you don’t miss any of my upcoming posts. let me know your thoughts on the RAS in the comments below, I’d love to hear your experiences of it too.

I hope this insight has been helpful, As always, Stay Strong xxx

Understanding OCD as a Faulty Defence Mechanism

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I’ve talked in a previous post about how OCD is closely linked to our sympathetic nervous system, how when we get triggered by an obsession, if we pay attention to it, we get thrown into fight or flight – which is not where we want to be. 

This system has it’s uses and, in the past would have been responsible for keeping us alive and safe but when we have OCD, this mechanism – which is designed to be a temporary state – can become a permanent trait! 

I guess this is because the brain has seen that by keeping us stuck in an OCD loop we are ‘safe’ from the ‘perceived threat’ and even though we can logically see it’s not a useful mechanism, all the brain can see – who’s main job it is to keep us safe – is that we are still alive, so job done. 

It’s worth noting here that the brains top priority is keeping us alive.  Not happy, not living our best life, not being socially connected or prosperous, nope, just being alive and if it thinks there are risks and threats out there that need to be avoided – due to OCD’s faulty system – and it thinks the OCD spiral keeps you safe, then it is going to have you looping down that rabbit hole forever! 

It does seem that in OCD there is a ‘fault’ in the switch that allows us to dismiss obsessions when they come in, the threat system, seems ‘hot-wired’ but why? 

I personally believe (and current evidence seems to confirm) that the ‘fault’ comes from some sort of highly driven sympathetic time or event in a person’s life.  This person will most likely have a predisposition (genetic vulnerability) towards OCD; however I also believe that we don’t have to know what that time or event was, sometimes it’s obvious – birth of a child, prolonged periods of feeling unsafe or stressed but other times it’s not and that’s OK.    

Putting these two ideas together:

1. That OCD is a fault in the threat detection system
2. The brains top priority is to keep us safe,

we can see how OCD can be seen by the brain as ‘a useful tool’. It becomes a learned habit – ‘if I spend my time focused on OCD thoughts, then I’m safe’. 

Is OCD therefore a defence mechanism – albeit a faulty and unhealthy one – to ‘avoid life and keep us safe’?

It feels like quite a big question and something that people with OCD might object to but just stop and think for a second. 

Does your OCD stop you from living the life you’d love to live?  And in doing so does your brain – rightly or wrongly so – believe that it is keeping you safe?

Another interesting insight I had was that with OCD we tend to know that the obsession is unfounded, and logically not true but because we can’t be 100% sure we get stuck. 

Is this another, particularly clever, part of the mechanism?  We sit at home ruminating and so not venturing out into the ‘scary world’ with the ‘unpredictable uncertainty’ – but it’s never enough to ever fully convince us that the obsession is true. Therefore, we stay at home, where we are stuck but according to the brain safe, job done. 

It’s an uncomfortable theory right: is OCD a defence mechanism the brain uses to keep us safe? 

If we look at OCD this way, then we can start to see it for what it is – a badly calibrated, unhealthy and faulty protection system which for whatever reason can feel productive and useful – it’s not. 

We need to start to write a new story, remember the brain will always focus on the negative and try and find evidence to prove itself justified. 

I would bet for all the negative evidence it finds there’s just as much, if not more positive evidence to the contrary, your brain is just not seeing it – tunnel vision.  You need to widen the spotlight and make it a flood light. This way you can see the whole picture and realise everything OCD has been telling you is a very convincing LIE! 

This idea of OCD as a faulty safety mechanism has helped me to see that my brain is just trying to keep me safe, it has allowed me to be a lot kinder to myself and even laugh at the non-sensical nature of it. 

I hope it helps you too,  
As always stay strong xxx

The Power of Surrender in OCD Recovery

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Surrender is something I’ve been trying to implement more in my life recently. 

I have written previously on how trust and confidence in the process of ERP are so important but also allowing yourself to surrender any internal resistance – which by the way can feel impossible at times – is really important, doing this allows your system time to discover it can cope and reset. 

I’ve recently noticed a sneaky OCD compulsion I have, where when an OCD thought comes in I naturally start to make a list of all the reasons that thought is rubbish.  It’s not even a fully conscious thing I do, but I have noticed me going:

‘Well, there’s no way I’d do __________ because I’m a good person and I’ve never done anything like that before and actually this feeling of doubt is a sign that I’d never do ________ and why would you hurt someone you love?’ etc, etc, etc

Does this sound familiar?  I think for a long time I’ve done this thinking it helps, but I’ve now realised it’s a damn COMPULSION!  Which has been keeping me stuck, argh!!!!

So, surrender is now my new strategy, noticing when this inner monologue kicks in and letting go of the need to defend my character. 

It reminds me of something I read called ‘Resisting the demons’ from Tara Brach’s book: ‘Trusting the Gold’, which I’d like to share.  It’s about a twelfth-century Tibetan master, called Milarepa and it goes as follows:

‘…he returned one evening to find his cave filled with demons.  Although he understood that they were just projections of his own mind, that didn’t make them any less threatening or horrible.  But how was he to get rid of them?

First, he thought teaching them spiritual truths might help.  They just ignored him. Angry and frustrated he ran at them, trying to push them out of the cave.  Far stronger than he, they laughed at him.  At last, Milarepa gave up, sat down on the floor and said, “I’m not leaving, and it looks like you are not either, so let us just live here together.”  That’s how we might finally respond to the especially stubborn demons we live with: “Well, that’s just the way I am.  I guess I have to live with it.  This is just the way life is.” 

But to Milarepa’s surprise, when he stopped resisting, instead of taking over, all the demons got up and left the cave.  All except one, and this one was particularly powerful. Milarepa realised that the only thing he could do was have the courage to deepen his surrender.  He walked over to that great demon and placed his head inside it’s gigantic mouth. “Just eat me up if you want to,” Milarepa said.  At that moment the demon vanished.’ 

Does this story resonate with you too?

I can see how the demons represent OCD obsessions, the ‘teaching them spiritual truths’ is a compulsion and feels a lot like what I’ve been doing recently with my, ‘I’m a good person reasoning’.

It does feel that surrendering – counterintuitive as it seems – is the only way to allow the thoughts to come and go without the distress. It’s only when we stop, judging, controlling, tensing against and avoiding our compulsions that we arrive in a more open, tender and healing space where the thoughts lose their power over us. 

I think it can feel ‘useful’ to be fighting against and battling our inner ‘demons’ at times but years of struggle has taught me that it’s not. 

When you finally stop it can feel a bit open and spacious, which is uncomfortable in a different way, the brain likes to be busy and it’ll want to fill that space with something. It is a creature of habit, so you will probably still get the doubt feeling coming, even if you’ve let go of the obsession, you need to get used to that feeling. If you don’t the brain will try desperately to attach it to another obsession – this is known as the ‘whack a mole’ effect – but know if you let it be the brain will eventually realise it doesn’t need to produce that feeling any more.

OCD recovery can feel like a long road but stick with it because the peace and clarity you get in the good times is worth it.

As always, you are not alone,
Stay Strong xxx

Overcoming OCD: Letting Go of the Rope

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I have had OCD for what is fast coming up to 30 years. As I quickly approach my 41st birthday it can sometimes feel like I’ve been fighting a war inside my brain for what feels like forever.  I’ve read all the books, listened to the podcasts, had a couple of rounds of therapy, trained as a yoga teacher and PT, I look after my nutritional and physical health, and choose to share what I’ve learnt in the hope of helping others through my blog, Instagram posts and workshops. 

So why I ask myself do I still struggle at times?  Why does the world still feel overwhelming & why won’t my nervous system just relax already? 

Maybe my expectations are too high?  I had a therapist once say to me that I might just have to ‘accept the fact that I’m an anxious person’, not really what you want to hear but then expecting to find total inner peace is probably a little unrealistic too I realise.     

I know Steven Phillipson says, ‘I don’t care how you feel, continue with your day aligning to your values’ and I try to do this. It is in fact how I’ve managed to achieve everything I have over the last 10 years but I do sometimes wonder how much noise is normal?

I wrote in a post a while back: ‘When we have OCD, Fight-or-flight can turn into a trait instead of a temporary state!’ and this is how I feel, like I’m stuck in fight or flight most of the time. My ability to relax, be in the moment and not feel overwhelmed is seriously lacking.    

I feel like I’ve been on a mission the last few years for answers – which I now realise may be a sneaky compulsion of mine, eek!   Maybe what I should have been doing is letting go of the rope – another ACT metaphor which I love.

This ACT metaphor illustrates how struggling against your obsessions (the monster) is a never-ending fight, but Letting go of the rope and not engaging with your intrusive thoughts, accepting the presence of them and carrying on with your life while aligning to you values is your way to freedom. 

Breaking it down a bit further:

  • The Monster: Represents your OCD obsessions.
  • The Rope: Represents your attempts to control, avoid, or eliminate these obsessions with compulsions.
  • The Pit: Represents the fear of being consumed by, or drowning in your obsessions.
  • Letting Go: Means dropping the rope (not completing the compulsions) and ceasing the battle, not necessarily defeating the monster (obsession). 

We need to recognise that fighting our obsessions is exhausting and ultimately ineffective, allowing our difficult thoughts and feelings to be present without fighting them is the key, this then frees up energy and attention to focus on what actually matters. 

I wonder then have I secretly been pulling on that rope and keeping my OCD alive with all my research and development?  Argh! Does it all actually come down to my inability to just stop and sit with the feelings?

As I head towards my 30 year anniversary with OCD, I need to acknowledge that some education with OCD is important but then try to recognise where the line is between being informed and it being a compulsion.  

Have you got any sneaky defaults which are keeping your OCD alive and kicking? Do you feel like you’re doing everything right but you’re still struggling too?  

Maybe try and keep a list this week, whenever you notice yourself doing something unnecessary because of your OCD, write it down, awareness is the first step to being able to change these traits, which we have unknowingly accepted into our lives. 

On a more positive note and bringing some hope back into the conversation. I do have the odd occasion when I come out of fight or flight and it feels so wonderful.  It feels like what life should be, I’m present, in the moment and experiencing life as it could be, full of opportunity and joy.  

If I have one target for the next 40 years it’s to spend as much time as possible out of fight or flight and if I can achieve this I will be a very happy soul. I want to be able to enjoy life without rushing through it, listen when people talk, take joy in the small things and the process of getting to them.      

Let me know if any of this resonates with you.  It can be very lonely at times to have OCD, and community can help us feel that less.
A bit of a heartfelt one this week as I approach that 30 year milestone but sometimes that’s what’s needed.

As always, you are not alone,
Stay Strong xxx

Understanding OCD Through Relational Framework Theory

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Does this sound familiar?

You’re out enjoying your day, you feel happy, in fact you feel really good and then all of a sudden out of no where you get hit with an OCD obsession.  ‘Ugh you think, why now when I was having so much fun and feeling so happy?’    

Why indeed?

Well there’s a theory to why this happens and it’s called, ‘relational framework theory’ in fact it’s what ACT – acceptance commitment therapy – is built upon.

I’m sure I’m not going to be as good as the creators at explaining how it works so please go look up Steven C. Hayes if you have a chance but the theory is based upon the concept that humans think relationally. 

This basically means that humans can and do relate objects in their environment to other objects. Virtually in any possible way e.g. same as, better than, opposite of, greater than, faster than, part of, similar to or like, before and after, if/then, family relationships, near and far etc,
There are all sorts of ways in which we sort and link information in our minds and it has been amazing for our evolutionary progress however it also opens us up to the possibility of immense suffering.   

Lets dig a little deeper

As we grow as humans, we create vast networks of relationships in our brains.  We link objects together so we are better able to make sense of them and recall them when needed. 

Ever found that when learning something new if you can relate it to or build upon something you already know it’s far easier to remember?  Or when you try and recall someone’s name it can help to remember where you know them from? 

This is because your brain has linked ‘Julie from the gym’, with the gym in your head, therefore remembering the gym will help you recall Julie’s name. 

Julie from the gym might also have other connections such as she has a daughter who goes to the same school you used to attend or maybe she likes to play netball and so does your friend Jane – Jane and Julie will now be linked in your mental framework too.

Here’s a little game you can play to help demonstrate this further:

Write down one noun – any type of object or animal will do

Noun 1 _________________________

Now write down a second noun

Noun 2________________

Now answer the following 3 questions:

  1. How is the first noun related to the second one?
  2. How is the first noun better than the second one?
  3. How is the first one the parent of the second one? 

The third one can take a bit longer but given a bit of time an answer will come.

This exercise highlights how the brain can relate anything to anything else!!!!!!!  It is an interesting insight as ultimately not everything can be the parent of everything; however, the brain justifies these relations by features it abstracts from the related facts. Your mind can always find a justification for that relation!  Sound similar to OCD?

Bringing us back then to OCD and the start of this post.

We can see how obsessions (unwanted, intrusive, and distressing thoughts, images, urges, or feelings that repeatedly enter a person’s mind and cause significant anxiety.) can become linked to events, people, places, circumstances, actions, words, smells, music/sounds etc.

The obsession, whatever it is, can become attached to an existing relational framework in our brain, triggering our OCD every time we then come into contact with that object or framework in the future!

‘ARGH!!!!!!!!!’

Does this sound familiar? 

Can you think of any frameworks that OCD has latched onto?  Maybe something in your bedtime routine, perhaps when you cook a meal and get the knives out, maybe when left on your own with your kids, perhaps when the news comes on, or it could be when you get into your car, the things OCD can attach itself onto are literally endless.

And unfortunately, once it has attached itself, as far as I’m aware, there’s no easy way to unattach it again.

Having an awareness of this is so important for OCD recovery because we have to accept that we are going to get triggered, and if we fight it, push it away or try and block it out, it just makes it stronger and even more sticky.  You can’t unravel these networks they are too vast and convoluted.    

So what can we do?

We have to let go of the struggle.

There’s a lovely ACT metaphor which illustrates this nicely

Someone is standing in a battlefield fighting a war. The war is not going well.  The person fights harder and harder.  Losing is a devasting option, but unless the war is won the person fighting it thinks that living a worthwhile life will be impossible. So the war goes on. 
Unknown to this person however is that at any time they can quit the battlefield and begin to live life now.  The war may still go on and the battlefield may still be visible. The terrain may look very much as it did while the fighting was happening but the outcome of the war is no longer very important and the seemingly logical sequence, of having to win the war before beginning to really live has been abandoned. – Extract Taken from: Get out of your mind and into your life by Steven C. Hayes. 

Here we see that the way to move forward is to stop fighting, accept the obsession and carry on with our lives aligning to our values.  Eventually the brain sees the link to the framework as unimportant and stops bringing your attention to it so readily, however every now and then it will throw it back up to check if its important and it’s your job at this point to say:

‘thank you brain that’s exactly what I wanted to hear right now’

and then carry on with your day aligning to your values – for more information on values work check out my post here.


If you’re enjoying learning more about ACT therapy then I would highly recommend looking up Steven C. Hayes, which is who a lot of these ideas have come from. 

A small thank you at the end of this one for your ongoing support, this is my 100th blog post and definitely something which should be celebrated.

As always, Stay Strong xxx

ACT Metaphors for OCD Recovery

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I’ve written a lot recently about how when we have OCD, if we give into our compulsions we are likely to be plunged into our sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system.   

This is an issue as when in this state we are unable to think rationally and our intrusive thoughts can feel all overwhelming. 

There are some great ACT metaphors which we can use to illustrate this concept, below are 3 of my favourites, let me know which one’s yours:

1. The fog

When an OCD thought comes in imagine it like fog being blown towards you.  You have the choice, at this stage, to not participate, let the thought be and wait for the fog to dissipate or you can give into the compulsion.  Every time you give into the compulsion, whatever it may be, imagine a new layer of fog being blown towards you, further damping your ability to see clearly.

2.Ripples on a pond

Here the OCD obsession is like a stone being thrown into a pond.  If we do nothing and let it be the ripples will soon disperse and we will be able to see clearly again. If however we give into the compulsion it’s the equivalent of throwing a new stone in every time.

3.The bus stop

Here we see that before we are triggered we are standing at the bus stop watching the traffic go by.  If we then get triggered and give into the compulsion it is the equivalent of walking out into the road and being surrounded by the traffic, therefore not being able to see clearly.

There are plenty more of these metaphors out there, if you’ve found these ones helpful why not have a look around for some others or if you know of another helpful one then add it in the comments below, I’d love to hear it. 

I do think the metaphors can make it all seem very easy to just draw yourself back out of fight or flight. I don’t for a second want to belittle how hard this is to do when you’re in it, believe me I know, but it can help to show what the effect of giving into an OCD compulsion can be and hopefully it gives you another tool and incentive to not give into those compulsions when they come along, they really do only lead to misery. 

I really hope it helps, as always remember you are not alone.
Stay Strong xxx 

Conquering OCD: 10 things EVERYONE should know about thoughts!

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Here are some useful things to know about thoughts that EVERYONE should be taught at school – it would honestly save us so much time and energy.

1.Thoughts are mostly random – don’t believe me? Then grab a piece of paper, a pen & a timer. Set your timer for 3 minutes, place your pen at one side of the paper, close your eyes and start drawing a line. Every time your train of thought changes, change direction on the page. After 3 minutes see what you’ve got, my bet is it’s not a straight line.

2. Everyone gets intrusive thoughts – it’s a normal human condition. I wrote a post on this a few years back, you can read it here.  

3. We get over 60,000 thoughts a day – do you really think you’re controlling them?

4. It’s not the thought that’s the issue – the thoughts come in randomly most of the time and if we can just let it be, it’ll float on out again too. The brain will realise we’re not interested in it and move on. It’s the attention & meaning we give to the thoughts when they come in that causes the problem! 

5. You can’t outthink your thoughts – there will always be another, ‘what if?’ or ‘Maybe?’.  Logic is limited but imagination is not.  Think of logic like the size of the earth and your imagination as the universe, you cannot logic yourself out of an OCD intrusive thought – trust me I’ve tried! 

6. Your brain has a filter – its called the reticular activating system (RAS), it draws your attention to what it thinks is important to you and filters out everything else!!!  It works this out by seeing what you focus your attention on – see how this can be an issue in OCD? No blog post on this one yet but I have do have an Instagram video on it which you can view here.

7. The OCD themes are irrelevant – the subject of your thoughts doesn’t matter! It’s your inability to sit with doubt and uncertainty that’s the problem.  If you’ve had OCD for a while it may have changed themes once or twice over the years.  This is called ‘whack a mole’ and it highlights that it’s not actually the thought but the associated feeling of doubt that you struggle with.  

8. Most of our thoughts are about the past or the future – we are rarely in the present moment – where anxiety doesn’t exist.  This isn’t our fault; our brains top priority is to keep us safe and one of the ways it does this is to analyse the past to try and predict the future.  It also likes to run through different potential future scenarios to see how they might turn out for us – a very useful tool if used wisely and can even be fun when imagining happy outcomes but with our unlimited imaginations & OCD this can quickly turn into an activity which can cause us immense distress. 

9. At night the prefrontal cortex takes a rest, and the more primal ‘chimp’ brain takes over – don’t take anything your brain tells you between 11pm and 5am seriously.  How often have you been awake in the middle of the night worrying about something and then in the morning you wonder what all the fuss was about? Everything feels harder at night and this is why! I’ve also done an Instagram video on this one here.

10. We think mostly about ourselves – we’re actually quite egocentric- this however tends to cause us distress, especially if the thoughts are of a intrusive nature, remember: ‘Overthinking only leads to unhappiness’. Try thinking about yourself less and others more, you’ll be happier! 

In summary

  • Our thoughts are mostly random
  • Everyone gets intrusive thoughts – it’s a normal human condition. 
  • We get over 60,000 thoughts a day – do you really think you’re controlling them?
  • It’s not the thought that’s the issue – it’s the attention & meaning we give it! 
  • You can’t outthink your thoughts – there will always be another, ‘what if?’ or ‘Maybe?’.  Logic is limited but imagination is not.    
  • Your brain has a filter (RAS), it draws your attention to what it thinks is important to you and filters out everything else!!!
  • OCD themes are irrelevant – the subject doesn’t matter; it’s your inability to sit with uncertainty that’s the problem.
  • Most of our thoughts are about the past or the future, we are rarely in the present moment – where anxiety doesn’t exist. 
  • At night the prefrontal cortex takes a rest, and the more primal ‘chimp’ brain takes over – don’t take anything your brain tells you between 11pm and 5am seriously.
  • Most of our thoughts are about ourselves, this causes us stress, try thinking of others more.

    I’ve learnt a lot of the above from my extensive reading and research into psychology and well-being literature, I share a lot of these ideas with my students in my anxiety workshops. It’s nice to see them all summarised here in a helpful way.
    I really hope they help you as much as they have me.

    As always, you are not alone,
    Stay Strong xxx

Resilience in OCD: Why the holidays can be hard

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OCD recovery can be tough; in fact it’s very rarely a straight line.  Some days we feel like we can conquer the world and ‘why was I even worried about that thought’ and the next day, that same thought, can be all consuming! 

Does this sound familiar? 

I believe it has a lot to do with our nervous system, which is like the software of our body.  Everyday it’s impacted by our day-today routine, which in turn has an effect on our resilience levels, which directly impacts how well we can manage OCD thoughts when they pop in.   

Our brain sits at the top of our nervous system and its number one job is to keep us alive.  It really doesn’t care if you’re living your best life or not, it just wants you alive.

As a result, the brain likes predictable routines, to know what’s coming next and anything out of this remit can upset our resilience levels. 

A prime example of being out of routine is holiday season.  Not only does a lot of the day-to-day structure disappear but most likely we’re moving less, eating worse, drinking more, potentially sleep is also disrupted, not to mention you may also be staying away from home.  All this is dysregulating for the nervous system, as a result we can get more easily stuck in our sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight). 

Why does this matter? 

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) has two main branches: –

Sympathetic – fight or flight
and
Parasympathetic – rest and digest.

Our resilience levels depend on how easily we can move between these two states.

When our resilience levels are low our nervous system can get “stuck” in fight/flight.  When they’re high, our nervous system can activate fight/flight when needed (getting up in the morning/running for a bus) but then returns to rest and digest efficiently afterwards. 

This flexibility is called autonomic regulation.  Can you take a guess what our resilience levels are like when our routine disappears? And in turn how well we are able to manage OCD thoughts when they occur?

A great analogy for this is: The threat bucket

The water level is your resilience level at the start of the day – and it will depend on how safe your brain feels. 

The arrows going in are your daily additional stresses – some days these will be less and the bucket wont overflow, other days they’ll be coming in so quickly you can’t keep up, if your bucket overflows you’re moving into fight or flight.

Note: if you have OCD it’s likely that your base line water level will already be higher to start with and if you’re ruminating throughout the day it’s a bit like having a hose filling that bucket up with a steady drip, drip, drip. 

Taking this metaphor a bit further we can release some of this built-up stress with the tap at the bottom of the bucket.  This is where all the self-care and routine comes in, those little daily habits which lead up to big results, or in this case resilience. 

Routine can be incredibly important in OCD recovery as it improves our resilience levels allowing us to deal with obsessions (intrusive thoughts) more easily – remember those days when you’re able to dismiss that same thought that kept you caught a pervious day?  Those are the days your resilience is high and you’re not suck in fight or flight.    

Routine including: good nutrition, sleep, movement, social connection and relaxation are unbelievably important for recovery maintenance.  This is why I’m a PT, I’ve had to force myself to live the lifestyle I know does me good.  The brain and body automatically seek comfort but this is not what keeps us healthy, especially when we’re dealing with mental health issues. 

If you know you find the holidays hard then it can be so helpful to prepare some support in advance, where you can try and keep some elements of your routine in place.  Maybe drink a little less, take a walk after dinner, make sure you have a good meal, including protein, before you start on the sugary treats, have someone you can talk to if it gets tough, write down the things you know help and refer back to them if OCD hits. 

I did just this and it really helped me out over the last few days, remember when you’re in fight or flight it’s very hard to think rationally so you want everything in place and ready beforehand.  If you’re not sure where to start then comment ‘FOUNDATIONS’ in the comments below and I’ll send you a link to one of my foundations trackers to get you get started.   

I’m going to follow this post up with a more detailed look at what happens when that bucket overflows, so don’t forget to subscribe.

Remember, you are not alone,
Stay Strong xxx

Why OCD Compulsions Make it Worse!

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If you’ve landed here, you probably already know a bit about OCD but in case you don’t here are the Cliff notes.

OCD stands for: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. 

Obsessions are: unwanted, intrusive, and distressing thoughts, images, urges, or feelings that repeatedly enter a person’s mind and cause significant anxiety. 

The resulting compulsion is a repetitive behaviour or mental act that a person feels driven to perform in response to the obsession. 

Todays blog is all about why the compulsion part of OCD is not helpful for us. 

When you have OCD completing a compulsion, whatever it may be, is done out of a need to neutralise the obsession in some way. 

Examples of compulsions include; driving back round to check that a bump in the road wasn’t a person.  Washing your hands more than once to make sure they’re clean.  Going back to check if the oven is off, or that the doors are all locked and secure. 

There are in fact endless examples, and we’re all slightly different which can make OCD a very tricky beast to catch. 

It can be hard at times not to complete a compulsion, especially if we feel responsible for others safety but I’ve found that by invalidating the supposed ‘safety guarantee’ of the compulsion, the need to do it disappears as well. We start to see it as pointless – because it is, read on to see why.

How do I know if it’s an OCD compulsion?

The real clue to whether it’s an OCD compulsion or not, is that when it’s OCD it’s normally accompanied by distress.  Afterall if we don’t mind the compulsive action, then is it an issue?

People with OCD are normally fighting an inner battle where they are trying to work out the doubt and uncertainty they are feeling – impossible by the way – and compulsions such as checking or ruminating can feel like a productive way to do this.  Well, I’m here today to confirm to you that IT IS NOT. 

We feel like the compulsions are’ ‘helping us’ and ‘keeping us safe’ but they’re doing the complete opposite, yep you heard it right, they are making everything worse!

Now I’m not a qualified therapist but I know from years of experience that as soon as you give into one of those compulsions, you are validating the faulty signal coming from the amygdala and telling the brain that there is something to worry about.  You’re basically saying,

‘hey brain, this is important, you need to be on high alert and focus all your attention on this obsession’.    

By doing this you are putting yourself into your Sympathetic Nervous System, more commonly known as fight or flight.  Once in this state you will not be thinking rationally. The logical brain switches off and passes everything over to the more primal survival part of the brain. This part of the brain is all about keeping you safe and you’ve just told it, by giving into the compulsion, that there’s something it needs to worry about. 

Basically you’ve just started to fall down the rabbit hole.  I told you last time, he might look fluffy but he’s a whole lot of trouble!

When in fight or flight you cannot think rationally and so you are in a state where the brain can convince you black is white, up is down and left is right – things you know to be impossible!  You are not able to reason or be sensible in any way in this state and giving into an OCD compulsion puts you in this state.

How do you know when you’ve reached this state?  It can be hard when you’re in it to know but I like Martha Becks phrase:

‘If you’re struggling, you’re spiralling’

basically if it’s causing you distress then you can be pretty sure you’re in fight or flight. 

At this point you need to step away and reset.  Say ‘thank you brain, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear right now’ and carry on with your day aligning with your values.

More tips on how to do this coming next week, so don’t forget to subscribe below!  

In summary, compulsions are pointless because:   

  • As soon as we complete a compulsion, we validate the faulty signal aka the obsession. 
  • This then takes us into fight or flight – as we we’ve just told the brain there’s something to be worried about
  • Once this happens, we can’t think rationally
  • This cycle is self perpetuating.

I have illustrated it below to make it clear.

Hopefully you can now see why completing compulsions is COMPLETELY POINTLESS!!!!

I really hope this helps, let me know in the comments below.
As always, Stay Strong xxx

Why Habituation is key to OCD Recovery

Posted in Mental Health, OCD, OCD Awareness Week, OCD GeneralTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Last week I posted about choice and why it’s so important in OCD recovery.  Towards the end of that post, I mentioned habituation and I felt the topic so significant for me in my recovery that it deserved it’s own post, so here we are.

What is habituation?

According to google it is:

‘the process of making or becoming accustomed or used to something.’

In Psychology specifically it’s:

‘the diminishing of an innate response to a frequently repeated stimulus.’

When applying this to OCD specifically:

We can see ‘the innate response’ as the compulsion and ‘the repeated stimulus’ as the obsession. 

Applying habituation to OCD recovery

We learn in therapy that everyone gets intrusive thoughts and so the aim in OCD recovery is not to get rid of the thoughts (obsessions) but to see them as completely irrelevant. 

We do this by recognising the trigger (obsession) when it comes in and habituating (getting used) to it, so that we no longer feel the need to complete the compulsion – whether it be mental or physical. 

This was a big turning point for me, realising that the obsession is something you can ‘get used to’.  The result of this is that the brain eventually no longer brings your attention to it – as it starts to see it as insignificant. 

For a long time I saw OCD recovery as not having the obsessions but now I see that it’s my reaction to the obsession that is the key.  I have no control over whether the thought/image/whatever appears or not only my reaction to it.

The Reticular Activating system and habituation

You only have so much mental capacity each day and the brain has an unbelievably effective filtering system called the reticular activating system or RAS for short. 

According to Jim Kwik’s book Limitless,

‘every second your senses gather up to 11 million bits of information from the world around you…
…the conscious mind typically processes only 50 bits per second. ’

‘(The RAS) also acts as the gatekeeper of information through a process called habituation, which allows the brain to ignore meaningless and repetitive stimuli’  

So the brain takes in an unbelievable amount of information every second and then decides what it’s going to bring to your attention and what it’s going to discard, mostly down to what you’re telling it you feel is important!

When you are struggling with OCD and you see the obsessions as important the brain will prioritise these thoughts above all others. Once you start to habituate yourself to the OCD triggers the brain will no longer use its finite resources on information you’re telling it is irrelevant.  It will file it as a ‘meaningless and repetitive stimuli’ and no longer bring it to your attention.

Yes, this is habituation and it’s where OCD recovery happens!   

A note here to highlight that we shouldn’t expect our obsessions never to show up again.  Every now and then the brain will throw one to the forefront of your mind and say,  ‘Remember this?  You were really obsessed with this at one point, is it still important?’ and your only job is to do absolutely nothing.  This is how we break free from OCD. 

In summary, we need to habituate to our obsessions, show the brain that they’re insignificant and carry on with our day aligning with our values. This is how we live our lives in recovery. 

Not sure on your values? Then be sure to subscribe below as that’s what next weeks post is going to be all about.

As always,
Stay Strong xxx