Hello everyone!
Iām hoping to get some advice here because Iām worried that my OCD therapist might be steering me in the wrong direction. I started having doubts when she would give me reassurance/logical āexplanationsā to neutralize my thoughts while we worked through CBT (ex: I would be afraid of becoming schizophrenic, and she would help me list out evidence against that thought, and reassure me that Iām not at risk of psychosis). However, we recently started ERP and now Iām even more concerned.
Iāve been doing a lot of research lately, and the biggest thing thatās come up is that you cannot fight OCD with logic, and that the cycle must be broken at the compulsion level. I have pure O, so lately, whenever I catch myself start to ruminate on an intrusive thought or try to use logic to neutralize it, Iāll say something like āI donāt need to answer that question, I donāt need to know this for certain, etcā and try to move on. Iāve found itās been helping.
While doing some ERP today with my therapist, I told her that I caught myself doing a compulsion. For context, I was working on my suicidal OCD fears by reading an article on suicide rates and OCD, and I said out loud āI just caught myself trying to engage in a compulsion by telling myself that since other mental illnesses have higher suicide rates than OCD, I shouldnāt be worried (this is something I researched while deep in rumination about this thought a while back), but I know this is a compulsion and that Iām trying to neutralize the anxiety, and I need to sit with the uncertainty insteadā. However, my therapist then denied that this was a compulsion at all - she told me that it was just thinking logically, and that it is normal and a good sign to push back against OCD fears using logic to beat them.
Now I am wholeheartedly confused. Is this normal? I thought that logic was not the answer with OCD, but rather, sitting with the anxiety and uncertainty is the right way to go. However, my therapist now has me questioning everything, and this has honestly led to even more anxiety on my part (ex: why does logic not work against all my OCD fears? Does that mean some of them are real?).
Could anyone tell me what the right answer is in this situation? Is my therapist right, or should I be looking for a new one? I thought I was on the right track, but now Iām so confused!