Need to Perform Rituals Over and Over Again

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Changing or delaying OCD rituals

Apr 17 • 2019

If y'all take OCD y'all may recognize that your life is spent in a continual vicious cycle of thoughts, feelings, and rituals. One helpful mode to start to disrupt this cycle is to change or delay rituals. Let'southward say y'all have an unpleasant idea (for example, having a thought of stabbing your spouse) that happens to "pop" into your head.

If you adhere unhelpful meanings to the thought (for case, "having this idea means I'm an evil person who is capable of murdering a loved one"), you will probably feel very broken-hearted as a issue. At present, because it is uncomfortable to exist broken-hearted, you are likely to find means to lessen that feet. For example, y'all may repeatedly check to make certain the drawer where you store all the sharp objects (east.m. scissors, knives) is locked and say a prayer to yourself every time you have the "bad" idea.  Unfortunately, you detect that even though these strategies help y'all to briefly lessen the anxiety, y'all demand to do them more and more often considering your "bad" thought seems to occur even more than frequently when you lot try hard not to have it. Yous feel trapped because yous exercise not know what else to practice merely keep using these strategies. The next affair y'all know, your life is beingness consumed by the "bad" thought and your constant efforts to control it.This is how the vicious wheel of OCD develops and keeps going:

As yous acquire more about OCD and become committed (hopefully!) to making changes by fighting back against your obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), yous may be feeling hopeful that exposure and response prevention (ERP) tin really work, and that your life can go a little less stressful and a little more normal, once again. Even so, feelings of hope may also be shared with feelings of existence overwhelmed past simply how many areas of your life are ruled by OCD. The more years that OCD has held you hostage, often the greater the areas of disruption. While ERP can exist very effective, it may accept time, sometimes weeks or months, for you lot to commencement to see the positive furnishings of your ERP efforts. In addition, if you chose to have a systematic arroyo to using ERP for your OCD and, for example, to do ane-two exposures a day or about 1-2 hours of work, that notwithstanding leaves another 22-23 hours when OCD dominates. The following section includes five tools that will be useful in providing you with ideas about how to manage the other 22-23 hours in the twenty-four hours. These tools tin exist used alone or in a combination that makes sense for your needs:

• Alter the ritual: This tool is exactly how information technology sounds. Just because the OCDdemands that you lot engage in a ritual doesn't hateful you take to do it theexact style your OCD says. Having you, instead of your OCD, decide how the ritual gets done can send a powerful message to your OCD that yous will not be bossed almost. For case, if OCD wants you to wash your hands later touching a range of "dingy" items, it doesn't mean you take to launder your hands in the exact style OCD demands: with 3 pumps of soap, 3 rinses and iii paper towels. Instead you lot tin try for 2 pumps, iii rinses, and 2 newspaper towels. Or 2, 2, and ii. OR 1 pump, ii rinses, and 3 towels. You tin make up one's mind what it will exist, or mix up the number pattern every time. Keep OCD guessing.
• Shorten the ritual: This tool is similar toirresolute the ritual every bit in a higher place. All the same, instead of changing the ritual, in this option you lot can shorten information technology. For example, if you lot have a dressing ritual that involves a series of dressing and undressing steps that can last up to an hr to go dressed each day, you lot can start to shorten this. You can begin by estimating how much time you lot spend on each step, and and then shorten each step by a set corporeality each day or week. It's up to you how many minutes and when you lot're ready to shorten farther, but at least its you lot whose deciding how long information technology will take and not the OCD.
• Delay the ritual:  For most individuals with OCD, OCD makes demands and wants information technology done At present. All the same, you lot can send your ain powerful message when your deportment communicate otherwise by stating, "yeah, I'll do it, only I'yard doin' it on my timeline not yours." When OCD makes a demand for action, rather than doing the ritual immediately, endeavor waiting a few seconds to minutes before you lot exercise the ritual. Over time you can lengthen this gap past minutes to every bit much every bit a few hours before doing the ritual. And there is a bonus side effect- the longer yous delay, the weaker your urge to ritualize becomes, and sometimes you lot may not even feel the demand to do the ritual at all! That's a huge success.
• Ho-hum down the ritual:  Some adults with OCD accept many rituals spaced so close in fourth dimension that they feel forced to have to blitz through them to get them all done. Unfortunately, this pressure to rush sometimes backfires. This can crusade the person to take to go back and re-do the ritual because OCD incertitude wiggles information technology's way into their brain making them wonder "Did I actually go all the soap off?" or "Did I accidentally touch the dirty spot when I left the room?" If this situation occurs with your OCD, this slow-down tool will allow you lot to exist more than in command with your actions past doing rituals in a slower or more deliberate way to prevent the demand to go back and re-do rituals. For example, rather than rushing through the house checking the window locks at high speed but then worrying a particular lock was non checked properly and having to return to check non just that lock but to re-check all the locks, y'all can do the first "checking" ritual slowly. As yous are checking slowly, y'all might say, "I'm seeing and feeling that this lock is secure," as yous mindfully observe the lock in the locked position, feeling it with your fingers. If this is done slowly and mindfully once, it can take less fourth dimension than in the "fast" check, where you plant you needed to return and re-bank check repeatedly.
• No AIR: This final tool allows for a combination of other tools. It stands for No Avoidance, Interaction, or Reassurance seeking. The goal is to eliminate all 3 of the following behaviours:

• • Avoidance only serves to increment the power of OCD. When you appoint in rituals, yous do so to avoid feelings of discomfort or anxiety, but this keeps you hostage to your OCD. In add-on, OCD can also dominate people around and tell them not to go places or do things, in other words, to avoid doing things, because its dangerous. Information technology tin can take a lot of courage, but by engaging in ERP exercises and reducing and eliminating your dependence on rituals, you can learn showtime hand that you can tolerate discomfort and anxiety better than you expected. As well, rather than reducing your life to a modest circle of "approved" activities, starting going places and doing things OCD has previously forbidden. Avoid Avoiding!!
  • Interacting with your OCD keeps it hanging around. Although it is hard to ignore OCD given its broad and persistent presence in your life, you practice not have to interact with it. Interacting with it occurs when you do the rituals it tells y'all to do, or you avert the activities and aspects of your life that information technology insists are unsafe. Stop interacting with OCD and start engaging with the life you desire to live!
  • Reassurance seeking is the final expanse that needs to change to help you take command over your OCD. Seeking less reassurance from others allows yous to become stronger in managing your OCD head on, thus reducing the power of OCD.

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Source: https://www.anxietycanada.com/articles/changing-or-delaying-ocd-rituals/

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