We all know about Pavlov's experiment with the bell and the dog, Pavlov's conditioning experiment. Like so, people who have OCD have conditioned themselves to certain behavior or actions to relieve the stress only to make it worse. OCD feeds in itself.
People with OCD act on compulsions in order to relieve their distress. But by relieving our distress, our compulsions actually lead to more compulsions, for the simple reason that we are naturally more likely to repeat any behavior that results in a reduction of discomfort. This is called negative reinforcement , because it involves the removal of a negative experience, such as anxiety. So while compulsive behaviors temporarily remove the negative experience of anxiety and discomfort, the OCD traps you in a loop of negative reinforcement. Your triggering thought results in distress, which leads you to act compulsively in an effort to relieve that distress, which provides temporary relief but actually "reinforces" the compulsive behavior, thus leading you to do more compulsions the next time your anxiety reappears. This loop is called the obsessive- compulsive cycle.
When we choose to change our behavioral reaction to an unwanted thought, we may at first feel very uncomfortable. But eventually our minds adapt to this new pairing through a process called habituation . By stopping our compulsive and avoidant behaviors, we stop the negative reinforcement and learn over time that we can tolerate the presence of our unwanted thoughts. The end result is that thoughts that were once a trigger are no longer so triggering.
We cannot control our thoughts but we can replace them, we can substitute a negative thought to a positive one or we can feed the negative thought till it creates an unwanted emotion such as fear or sadness, like the story of the wolves- there are to wolves within us one is negative and evil and carries all that makes us think or feel bad the other is positive, benevolent and makes us feel good, both wolves are fighting in your mind, which one is winning?
That's right! The one you feed the most!!!
We might not be able to control our thoughts but we surely can control our behaviors , and by doing so OCD looses strength.
There is something called Exposure with response prevention (ERP) basically you expose yourself to your fears, grab the bull by the horns. We can do this gradually and this can be done with thought substitution. For example if I was afraid of dogs cause I thought they would bite and kill me I could think we'll... Maybe dogs won't kill me, also not all dogs bite. I could think those 2 thoughts every time I think that dogs bite and kill, after that I could expose my self to some pictures of dogs of all kinds and after that maybe even go and stand outside of a dog park just observing, all these while resisting whatever compulsions. We won't let the thought trigger the behavior, whatever it is that we would do to make us feel safe or not anxious. Adventually the fear and the irrational thought will dissipate.
ERP is about demonstrating for your mind what it needs to better process the false information about the things you fear. If you want to stop obsessing about something, you have to stop responding to thoughts and feelings about that thing as if they were important. But to do that takes practice. You have to expose yourself to the things you are afraid of (which may be actual things or just thoughts and feelings), and you have to prevent yourself from the automatic response , which would be the compulsion to neutralize, suppress, or otherwise undo whatever your brain is presenting to you. The mind has learned that obsessions must be followed by compulsions. It has calculated this carefully based on your observed behavior. If we can demonstrate to our minds that we are capable of being in front of our fears without doing compulsions, then our minds have to admit that compulsions are a choice. If that’s true, it must mean that the obsessions are not as important as previously assumed. If that’s true, then they may not be worth any response, let alone a compulsive one.
Exposing ourselves to our fears can help when we do it in the right gradient.
Being mindful when our negative thoughts or fears are triggering a compulsion we need to resist the behavior so that the compulsion goes away. Thought substitution works wonders in this scenario the thought creates a negative feeling we feel the compulsion to do whatever behavior to feel better but we most use our mindful awareness that the thought could be irrational or that if it makes sense are we obsessing in anyway? By changing the behavior of how we react to these thoughts will make the thought the obsession and the compulsion dissipate and disappear.
In my experience mindful awareness with breathing techniques and making sure we're in the present, (Not in the past or future) while seeing the thought for what it is, evaluating it, analyzing it, and changing the thought and/or the behavior will adventually destroy the trigger that starts the obsession and the obsession will disappear compulsion an all.
Be well,
Eddie
