How to cure OCD

[Rishabh R]

I have had OCD intrusive thought syndrome  from 2019.Going to a psychiatrist ,taking medicine improves the situation a little but doen't cure it . Also medicine is addictive.How to heal it naturally and forever?During the day it mental images of past hurtful memories come to my mind.Can anyone give me any advice to how to deal with it ?

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Rishabh R

[Denial]

Accept it no matter what even if you feel like you're about to die. Suffered from this my entire life, I wish you good luck man. 

[Rishabh R]

 Same to u (good luck)@Denial

Edited April 1, 2021 by Rishabh R

[Jacob Morres]

for me exposure therapy worked. problem was that i stopped practicing it and it morphed into different forms of OCD. takes effort but manageable ime. 

you may need a holistic solution because for me, my ocd is weaker when i am happy. so doing things that reduce stress and make you happy can be part of your solution. so like good sleep, relationships, meaning/purpose, meaningful goals, living by your values etc.  

also mindfulness was helpful too. like allowing the fear when the fear comes and just let it rock without any reaction to it. this is helpful for me as well (eckhart tolle stuff) 

btw when i first started learning about it, mark freeman's course called brain school helped me a lot. it taught me some useful principles on how to deal with OCD  

Edited April 2, 2021 by Jacob Morres

[Farnaby]

I suggest starting therapy. Exposure with response prevention therapy is usually pretty useful for OCD. 

I would also explore the deeper emotions and trauma that are often covered by intrusive thoughts.

[Nahm]

@Rishabh R

Practice expressing how you’re feeling emotionally. 

[Farnaby]

14 hours ago, Nahm said:

@Rishabh R

Practice expressing how you’re feeling emotionally. 

This too. I've found that many symptoms, especially the ones related to anxiety can completely disappear when you start expressing your emotions more freely. 

Basically, more congruence between what you're feeling inside and showing outside = less stress = less anxiety, more peace and joy ?

[ethanb121]

Just accept i used to have pedophile ocd and it grossed me out and after awhile I got sick of it and just started imaging even more messed up crap on purpose and like made fun of my ocd your brain doesn't a 180 cuz its like wtf 

[kras]

Ive been suffering from OCD since i was a teenager, maybe 14 so far.

The last 9 years were pretty intense, i have considered suicide many times. I think that doctors and medicine cant help for that condition. 

I think the only think that can help me are pshycadelics, its bad that in my country they are very rare and cannot be found. 

[Someone here]

You have two options.. Either keep reacting to the OCD thought or ignore it. If you keep reacting you will only strengthen the habit and get worse.. Therefore the only solution is to ignore the thoughts and never react no matter how intense it is and often it arises. 

[mandyjw]

It can stem from a belief or sense that you CAN ruin things. Especially that you can ruin things (essentially your own happiness) by thinking. Since you don't want to ruin things, you keep thinking about how you could, and then there's a "oh God, anything but that!" reaction and then there's an obsessive effort put into place to try to stop and resist thought. Because of the nature of thought to sort of defy what it's told NOT to do, it strengthens them. 

You can't ruin things.

ruin (n.)

late 14c., "act of giving way and falling down," from Old French ruine "a collapse" (14c.), and directly from Latin ruina "a collapse, a rushing down, a tumbling down"

https://www.etymonline.com/word/ruin

"Ruin" is a stupid word that is mostly made up of connotations. What you really want is to collapse those thoughts, but those thoughts already are collapsed, they aren't a physical thing. 

What OCD means is that you are a strong, fast powerful thinker. You will have to let go of many beliefs about yourself and others than most people don't seem to be bothered by. You will need to learn to focus, channel your thoughts. You're already doing this, but it will feel amazing to become conscious of it. 

You want to get very in touch with what you want in life, what makes you happy, what thrills you, and realize the power and thrill of focusing on that. Mediation and journaling with a sense of humor is incredibly helpful.

Realize that you were given an amazing gift, an incredibly powerful mind, it's just going to take some extra training to get it moving in the right direction. It's like you're sitting in an incredibly powerful race car but you're not moving because no one has ever taught you how a manual transmission works. You see other people driving around happily in crappy regular automatic transmission cars and you're feeling jealous of them, like there's something wrong with you.  

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by mandyjw

[Origins]

@Rishabh R sometimes you have to run through walls in the mind, or just perform healthy feedback loops. Here's one that may be useful, feel free to ask questions.

You'd just perform the activity on said disabling intrusive thoughts:

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by Origins

[Crane Bahnsteik]

What you resist persists.

Sit down and let your thoughts consume you, but instead of focusing on your thoughts focus on your emotions, when i say emotions i mean the feelings you feel on your body relating to those thoughts (the knot in the stomach, the dry mouth, the fast heart rate, etc), stop resisting the sensations of the body and fully surrender to the discomfort.

The thoughts keep appearing because you are resisting the underlying emotion, no one can handle intrusive thoughts, they spawn by the thousands, but you can handle the knot in the stomach, the dry mouth, the fast heart rate, and so on.

By resisting you become the victim, but when you gather the courage and face your emotions head on you will stop being the victim and you will be able to deal with it.

With practice this will become automatic and you will be able to apply it immediately to every thought.

Also, your diet can have an impact on the number and severity of intrusive thoughts.

[ted73104]

On 2021/4/5 at 8:58 PM, Someone here said:

You have two options.. Either keep reacting to the OCD thought or ignore it. If you keep reacting you will only strengthen the habit and get worse.. Therefore the only solution is to ignore the thoughts and never react no matter how intense it is and often it arises. 

Basically, I agree with you. The OCD thought is not only hard to process, but the imagination of the thought is sometimes really horrific. People very easily project these deep emotions onto external things and start pursuing directions that don't really work.

However, if you really want to fix OCD. You will need be able to clarify and process the root cause of your OCD issue. Starting with finding the suitable therapist for yourself might be a good idea. The issue itself is sometimes not as a big of a monster as it seems to be. It might be simply something that you don't realize about yourself. Your OCD related emotions are protecting yourself from this thing about yourself, and therefore it is being your friend and trying to help you. After you've clarified the root cause, which is not easy, I believe a method can be found on resolving the issue and not needing your emotions to react in that way anymore.

 

[ted73104]

On 2021/4/6 at 8:31 AM, Crane Bahnsteik said:

What you resist persists.

Sit down and let your thoughts consume you, but instead of focusing on your thoughts focus on your emotions, when i say emotions i mean the feelings you feel on your body relating to those thoughts (the knot in the stomach, the dry mouth, the fast heart rate, etc), stop resisting the sensations of the body and fully surrender to the discomfort.

The thoughts keep appearing because you are resisting the underlying emotion, no one can handle intrusive thoughts, they spawn by the thousands, but you can handle the knot in the stomach, the dry mouth, the fast heart rate, and so on.

By resisting you become the victim, but when you gather the courage and face your emotions head on you will stop being the victim and you will be able to deal with it.

With practice this will become automatic and you will be able to apply it immediately to every thought.

Also, your diet can have an impact on the number and severity of intrusive thoughts.

Great post! Should have read your post first before posting.