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?

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.

The subject of OCD matters to the sufferer because it feels like confirmation that they are fundamentally unlovable and unwanted—as if even existence itself doesn’t want them. They feel like an error, carrying a deep sense of guilt and shame, as if they were inherently wrong. They suffer from low self-esteem and a deep internalized shame, because long ago, they were fragmented and learned a pattern of fundamental distrust—especially self-distrust. But the real trouble doesn’t come from the content of the most vile or taboo thoughts. It comes from the fact that the sufferer lacks self-love. That’s why, when you begin to walk the road to recovery, you’re taught unconditional self-acceptance—because that’s what all sufferers of OCD have in common: if you aren’t 100% sure, if there isn’t absolute certainty, the doubt will continue to attack you and your core values. It will make you doubt everything—even your own aversion to the thoughts. You have to relearn how to trust yourself—not because you accept that you might become a murderer someday—but because you enter a deep state of acceptance about who you truly are. It’s not about becoming a monster at all. It’s about making peace with what lies at the root of the fear. Making peace with the guilt. With the shame. Making peace with yourself and the person you fear you might be. Because that fear is not rooted in reality. It’s not rooted in any true desire to act. It’s rooted in your identity—specifically, in what might threaten it. That’s what confirms the belief that you are fundamentally wrong. And OCD fuels that belief by using intrusive taboo thoughts to attack your very sense of self. But then I wonder: let’s say, for example, someone fears being or becoming a sexually dangerous person—how could that person practice unconditional self-acceptance? I would never accept myself if I were to harm anyone—the thought alone makes me want to cry. I know it’s not about whether or not someone acts on the thought. It’s about the core fear underneath it. So how do you accept yourself when the thoughts—and the feelings around them—feel so completely unacceptable ?