OCD is the “doubting disorder”. That’s why we can’t count on “outthinking” our OCD for relief. No matter how strong your logic or rationale, OCD will find a way to undermine you every time. That road ends where it starts. That’s why the behavioral component of OCD treatment (Exposure and Response Therapy) is the gold standard for OCD. It forces you to face your fears and habituate to them, which can result in less compulsions and subsequently less OCD symptoms (aka relief!). I know it seems counterintuitive that facing you’re OCD thoughts will make them decrease in severity/frequency. I also know that sounds scary as hell. But would you rather be in pain from running away from them or be in pain from standing up for yourself?

Gotta give your brain something to do other than compulsively try to solve them while allowing yourself to experience the emotions fully until they're gone. I recommend mantra meditation, but there are other methods.

@Louw I see, thank you. It's very hard to do.

@worryqueen There's another method described in a book called Letting Go by David R Hawkins. I recommend it a the time. It's my favourite. Scary but extremely effective.

@Louw *all the time

@Louw Thanks! I'll check it out :)

Rumination is probably one of your compulsions. Start doing exposures on your less severe obsessions and resist performing rumination/analysis of them - do your best to “sit with it”. It should be easier to do facing a less severe fear versus the thing that scares you the most. Try working your way up. If you don’t know what your less severe versus more severe obsessions are, create a hierarchy. Just my two cents.

@buddhaboy Thank you, I'll try that. Could the same be applied to real event ocd, where there's not only thoughts, but memories? It's hard to sit with memories so distorted you're not sure what's real or not anymore.

@worryqueen I think so. I’ve had real event OCD and approached it the same way as I did my other themes. I identified what my fears were related to the real event, and then did exposures accordingly. That said, it does “feel” different because the event actually happened and that feels different then something hypothetical. It is often said that the content (theme) of your OCD is not particularly significant (it just feels that way). I don’t have experience with false memory OCD.

Not sure. What is an example?

@buddhaboy I have rOCD and the thoughts are telling me “you don’t love your partner”, “you’re just scared”, “you don’t feel anything because you’re not in love” and this will give me great great anxiety. Sometimes, there are lots of anxiety but no thoughts. Idk what is happening to me.

@shawniecakes Those sound like fairly common rOCD doubts and fears. If you have then often enough, I understand how it could be hard to separate OCD thoughts from “real” thoughts. I think working with a therapist could help you untangle that a bit more. Sorry I can’t be of more specific help!

What techniques would you suggest instead, based on cbt?

I believe that your definitions need some retooling. CBT is a broad umbrella term for various types of pyshchotherapy treatments. ERP falls within CBT, it isn’t a one or the other kind of argument. ERP is the ‘B’ (behavioral) component of CBT treatment for OCD. Reviewing probabilities of events occurring, analytical reviews of events, etc. would be the C (cognitive) component, and they are generally considered less effective then behavioral exercises when it comes to OCD treatment. I’m not an expert, this is my understanding based on my own ERP treatment experience and a google search.