Is ocd just a coping mechanism for resisting feelings you don’t like? Something has occurred to me in my recovery process. I’ve spent years fighting my feelings and thoughts. I tried everything - meditation, yoga, Cbt, somatic experiencing, Ativan. I wanted to escape the pain I felt and the anxiety and bad thoughts. Now that I think about it, my dad turned to alcohol for that and maybe I turned to OCD. I always had general anxiety as a kid, some depression too. Over the years, my anxiety attacks and panic attacks decreased, however my ocd has gotten completely out of control. The last few weeks I’ve been working on exposures to anxiety and my thoughts. It’s horrible stuff because I have to let myself just feel the anxiety attack and all of the horrible sensations (including derealization!). Just ride it out and let it do it’s thing. However I noticed that when I get anxious these days if I just let it do it’s thing it’ll peak and come down after some time. And I actually feel some relief afterwards. It feels very natural. The old me would try to squash it using Compulsion strategies to escape that feeling. Has anyone else encountered the notion that OCD might be a coping mechanism for dealing with difficult feelings you don’t like?

Common posts on here are "i had a thought" "why am i thinking this" "what if" and these are all OCDs way of making you doubt yourself while taking you round and round in never ending circles at the same time. Regardless of the theme you are facing, there is no "figuring out" or "making sense" of a thought, because it isn't a real situation - it's a passing word or image or scenario without any meaning attached. You can't control your thoughts and the more you "don't want to have them" the more they will appear. For instance, tell yourself not to think about "apples", it will be the first thing that comes to your mind, because that's just how our minds work. Once you categorise a thought as "bad", every time it comes into your mind, your anxiety level will go up and this makes the thought seem real. Because if it "Feels" this bad, surely it must mean something or must have happened - But none of this is true. All we have to do is naturally notice thoughts as they come up, and rather than try to assess or ruminate over the content, we can almost shrug them off. It's the only way to accept thoughts as simply thoughts and nothing more. Anxiety drives the intense feeling and the more attention you give to thoughts, the more power they have over you. No random thought can change your real intentions. OCD is never ever satisfied, so the only way forward is to accept the uncertainty of never knowing "for sure" and to class the unwanted thought as irrelevant. OCD says "quick..bad thought..feels horrible.. what does it mean.. fix it". But in reality there is nothing bad here or nothing to be fixed, it's a false alarm. Once you learn to respond to a thought calmly by working on anxiety, it gets easier over time. It's your perception of your thoughts that needs to change, you believe they mean something about you, but random things pop into our heads all the time - both things we like and things we don't. OCD also latches onto what we care about most and it always comes with a feared consequence, so think about what yours is, e.g "what happens if my worst fear comes true" you can then practice imaginal exposure which is imagining your worst case scenario over and over until you become desensitised to it and no longer fear it - therapists use this technique in sessions. Everyone in the world has thoughts, the thoughts are not the issue, you just get more of what you focus on, up until the point that you can change your attitude towards the thought. If I asked you if you went upstairs today you would have an answer straight away, however if I asked you a question related to your OCD theme, your anxiety would increase and you would doubt yourself, because that's OCD doing the thinking for you. Once you give it less power it becomes a less significant part of your day. It's so easy to give into compulsions as they feel like a "quick fix".. but as I mentioned, ocd is never happy, which is why it wants us to continue to check and seek reassurance. Once you start reducing and gradually stopping compulsions, whether this is rumination, checking, or a physical action (whatever you falsely believe is "keeping you safe" from your feared consequence) you will see it's not necessary to do them, and that the time consuming little things you have taught yourself to do have no effect on what actually happens in real life. Thoughts prompt feelings and feelings prompt actions - meaning - thoughts cause anxiety and anxiety drives unnecessary actions. As a side note, I overcame contamination ocd (I was in a very very bad way and now the theme doesn't bother me anymore). I still have OCD and it can affect me slightly at times, but i can manage it in a way that it doesn't interfere with my day and without the need to carry out compulsions. Please practice, because I promise it helps, it's super scary at first and extremely difficult but the end result is worth it. ERP therapy is also very helpful.

So I’ve noticed that my OCD has calmed down, I’m getting less intrusive thoughts but I feel more uncertain than ever. Is this normal for recovery?

Just noticed something that helped me today. I was having the realization a lot of my issues stem from me not taking responsibility for my own life, and also not recognizing my own self-limiting beliefs (SLBs) and automatic negative thoughts (ANTs.) In doing this, I learned that the only way forward is confronting my deepest darkest fears head on and associated irrational/self limiting beliefs- and that for years and years, I have simply retreated and run away. One of my deepest darkest fears (one of my obsessions) is rooted in the understandable fear of the worst of humanity, and the 'what if' I was that (like many of us.) I actually can have compassion for myself because it is perfectly okay to be scared of the worst of people, and if something like that is perpetuated throughout pop culture-media- it would make sense to have associated thoughts about it. The fear is that I am a serial killer or have motives of one. And the OCD has caused me to constantly question my motives and actions to no end (how OCD latches on- makes you look for evidence where there is none.) For the longest time, I have been convinced I am one, and need to hide myself from the world, avoid people more than just because of social anxiety, what my main anxiety was back then. I look for signs everywhere- and the OCD latches on to any perceived (not real) evidence that I am one, that people think I am one. When I decided to confront this fear rather than run away like I have for years, it made me realize it is just a fear- it has nothing to do about who I am as a person, despite how strong the OCD tries to convince you otherwise. It is so sad how strong OCD can be, to make so many of us good intending people be convinced that they are something horrible. Anyway, I hope this can help people realize the best way forward is to confront it head on. It's akin to shining a light on the monster and seeing it for what it is - a goofy thing with fake prosthetics for a movie that isn't a monster after all- a sheep in wolfs clothing. It's just you have been running from it so long, your imagination has gotten so detailed about how horrible it is, hearing its fake growls, instead of turning around and blasting it with a spotlight. This is I guess what ERP is about. For me, one of the struggles with ERP and a specific exposure is that the OCD will jump to a different obsession , which then tells me ERP is a waste because Im not confronting the 'most recent' fear. This is faulty thinking though- because the solution is to confront the fear, not the specific thought. By doing that, you learn to not run away and do all the compulsions in your mind. Tl;dr- long winded post about me realizing how I have actually been avoiding the solutions (ERP) and making up reasons to not confront my fears this whole time. I have been running instead of shining a light on the sheep in wolfs clothing.