Tricky Ways OCD Will Try To Get Your Attention.
OCD can be a very nuanced disorder that disguises itself in many different forms. From different themes, to thoughts or urges; it can easily be overwhelming with how many hands OCD has in our jar. While it seems unpredictable in nature, we can start to gain a better awareness to the same patterns that might show themselves. OCD might use the same tactics often to get our attention and to get us to engage in a compulsion. While the thoughts or themes may look different, the common denominator underneath them is still the same old OCD we know. Learning to recognize the patterns of these ruses can make us more prepared to catch OCD in its act.
OCD Making Things Feel Urgent:
OCD is great at catching our attention with something that is deemed as urgent or time sensitive. Its a great trick OCD uses that immediately grabs our attention. I might be more likely to react in an unhelpful way if I feel there is a sense of urgency. Urgency in general can be helpful. In situations where we need to act quickly, our ability to respond to urgency can make us more effective at handling day-to-day threats.
But the urgency OCD tries to create is different, its false in the urgency that it tries to create. It’s like a broken fire alarm system. When we hear the fire alarm our first instinct might be to jump up quick and react thinking there is a fire. But the alarm system could be broken, or someone downstairs burnt popcorn and that’s why it went off. It creates this false alarm that might feel like a legitimate threat but all it is trying to do is get you to engage in a compulsion because of it.
OCD can demand you to “do” something as a response to this urgency. OCD might make it seem that the negative consequences of not reacting to this urgency will be so dire and catastrophic. This can lead to countless hours spent trying to thwart thoughts and feelings, chasing after certainty and control. We want to be able to call OCD’s bluff. Wait out that sense of urgency and find out if the threat is as serious as OCD says it is. The events OCD promises are often the most unlikely outcomes, and that its demands for you to do things immediately don’t have to control your life. The more you learn what OCD sounds like and the more you call it out, the more you’re able to see that you can trust yourself to respond in moments of actual urgency.
OCD May Create Unlinekly Scenarios And Consequences:
OCD can create a feeling that the person has a sense of hyper-responsibility. That hyper-responsibility can look like they need to prevent any negative outcome from happening. OCD might try to persuade someone that they’ll feel better if they listen to what OCD wants while also preventing something bad from happening. It doesn’t matter how improbable something is or how impossible it might be for an individual to prevent it; to OCD, it’s all likely to happen.
People with OCD can end up thinking of all the possible repercussions of not acting in a particular scenario. One may ruminate or dwell over many different what if scenarios. That might lead to feelings of guilt or shame. There might even be beliefs that their thoughts and actions can impact the world around them, and performing compulsions in an attempt to feel certain that the events they’re imagining won’t come true.
Compulsions as we will see only prove to be be short-lived. When we attempt to “do” things about our intrusive thoughts, we’re fighting a losing battle, trying to gain control of things that we cannot possibly be in control of. OCD doesn’t want you to realize that you have the ability to tolerate uncomfortable feelings. You can simply allow them to pass on their own.
OCD Wanting To Convince Us That All Thoughts, Images, and Urges Have Meaning:
OCD likes to attack things that we hold meaning to in our life or play off our fears. OCD almost wants you to assign the opposite meaning to everything you may think or feel. Someone may have an intrusive thought about harming a co-worker. But youslove this co-worker and get along greatly with them. OCD might try to tell this person that by having that thought, they must be a horrible person because of it.
Guilt and shame are common alongside these worries. Emotions that are distressing enough that they get us to react and to engage with in an unhelpful way. One may spend a great deal of time ruminating or dwelling over trying to figure out the meaning to their thoughts. Or trying to assign a value that the thought or feeling was there for a reason. And with OCD, it can often attribute it to it was there because of something negative. That one had that intrusive thought or feeling because they are a horrible, terrible person. One may spend excessive amounts of energy trying to suppress, avoid, or neutralize unwanted thoughts. The problem lies not within the thoughts themselves, but in the idea that they mean something about us, and that we need to respond to them.
