ICBT is awesome, other thoughts

Scary doesn’t mean true! We can have literally any thought pop into our heads, however the OCD will usually latch onto the ones we find the scariest. Imagine having a thought about something great happening to you. It just pops in your mind. Something great will happen unless you do _____. This seems so foreign to our constantly sympathetic OCD brains which are always on high alert in fear of danger and constantly walking on egg shells to avoid it. Instead, the thoughts we all know and don’t love, which look just like this thought above with the exception of one word, consume our daily lives. This is not because they are the most pertinent or likely to occur, but instead because they set off alarm bells that says we need to make sure (for certain! ahh!!) that this won’t happen. Now this is not where it ends. The doubt arises when we surmise that this scary thing is so close and so scary that I just need to be certain. I need to be certain that this thought, out of many that i have, is not true. These thoughts become increasingly more present as our brain starts to recognize that we respond for them with a fear response (compulsions, cortisol), our hardwired systems to fight or flight, which furthers our feelings that these thoughts are pertinent because they are so present and intrusive. The doubt cannot be as easily relieved for us with OCD, and it soon spirals out of control. Learning how to recognize the doubts that we have and their disordered origins and functions of facilitating the way we cycle through OCD was crucial to me not only avoiding the pull of these loops, but also, whenever they show up to understand that I am safe even if they do. Our brains with OCD become wired to automatically or quickly respond to the fear and anxiety that our thoughts give us with certain implied solutions. It is in our very DNA to avoid harm and make sure that whenever fear happens, we don’t some thing about it. this is not bad alone, but it becomes disordered when it becomes we think everything is threatening, and can’t quite get past the feeling of “what if” it’s not certainly okay. In other words, knowing that the thoughts that we have and the consequential meaning our brain tries to create from these thoughts is what is keeping us engaged in disordered behaviors is very eye opening. To know that the doubts are made in our own minds and are not legitamate is helpful. A final example can be of the thought of eating a lemon. Think about the way eating a lemon makes you feel. Taste it in your mouth, you can almost know exactly how it tastes. Smell it, feel the peel. These thoughts are all very sensory and there, but in reality, do you have a lemon? No. But the thoughts of having the lemon were there. Now given that (assuming) this lemon is not something that sparks your disordered thoughts, this won’t be something that disturbs you. ERP is like giving you a bunch of scary lemons until you realize that the thought of tasting the lemon doesnt mean it’s actually true. ICBT is realizing that just because you have that thought of tasting the lemon, feeling it in your hands, smelling it, doesn’t mean it’s actually true.