#ocd tips

I’m going to address them, but I don’t want anyone feeling super guilty if they’ve said/done these things before. It’s okay to make mistakes, and the ones I’m talking about are usually in good faith. With that out of the way, here I go.

1: “Good people don’t worry this much about being bad!” I understand the good intentions behind this, but it’s an affirmation that can actually be rather detrimental. OCD can use this as a metric for how good of a person someone is being. Those with OCD who are in recovery might regress because “Oh no, I’m not worried. Am I a bad person now?” This statement is only nice to hear for the first 10 seconds before it becomes a weapon.

2: “I can’t do x, I have OCD!” Yes, OCD is a disability, and it’s absolutely understandable to want to avoid triggers at all costs. However, if you never interact with it, the fear will never go away. Of course, exposure therapy only works in a controlled environment where the one with OCD is CONSENTING TO and AWARE of what’s going on. It needs to be your choice to do this in order to work, otherwise, the fear will spike and it’ll actually set you back. That being said, that doesn’t mean you should never interact with a trigger. It’s important to try and make progress, or else OCD will control your life, and that’s not healthy. It should just always be on your own terms and at a time where you’ve built up your confidence.

3: On the flip side, encouraging people to just jump straight into ERP (exposure and response prevention). As mentioned before, that’s not okay either. That’s signing up for panic attacks and setbacks. First, you need to work on the cognitive side and try and delay compulsions until you feel ready to completely avoid them. This delay can be 5 seconds, 2 minutes, an hour, as long as you’re taking back some control. You can even build up to changing the compulsion slightly (such as applying hand sanitizer instead of completely washing your hands) before you do direct exposures and don’t perform your compulsions. Make sure you’re ready! Forcing someone with OCD into an exposure they’re not ready for causes psychological harm! People without OCD: please don’t do that to your loved ones!

4: Treating reassurance like a treatment method. Seeking reassurance is a compulsion. Providing reassurance reinforces the need for it. If someone with OCD is constantly asking for your reassurance, try and work with them instead of blindly giving it (just make sure you’re following the guidelines above. Flat out refusing isn’t good either!)

5: Don’t assume what the fear behind the obsession is. So many just jump to contamination OCD being all about germs and sickness when it isn’t always the case! Usually, behind every theme someone with OCD has, there is a core fear. For example, someone could fear abandonment, so their contamination OCD isn’t about illness, but rather being perceived as gross and left by their loved ones.

Been going through a bit of a rough patch lately and was revisiting my notes from the International OCD Foundation's annual OCD Conference earlier this year. Wanted to share in case these tips might help other folks too.

Apologies for the chunky list!

Use self-care to stack the deck in your favor à la Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Focus on the basics first (sleep, diet, water, etc).

Build a strong foundation so you can build on it without it falling over.

Focus on how you can handle the things that are 100% in your control to increase your resilience.

Set the bar low with goals. It’s only up from there and you have to start somewhere.

Don’t worry about whether or not something is your OCD. You’re not in the business of figuring that out. OCD rule of thumb, if there’s urgency attached to figuring it out, it’s probably your OCD.

It doesn’t matter what the content of your OCD thought is about, the response is the same. The same principles apply.

You’re building your muscles, maintain aspects of ERP and CBT so those muscles don’t atrophy. This helps prevent you from ending up in a more vulnerable/susceptible place to OCD.

Be aware of when your OCD is “getting loud.”

Know what you’re going to do if a lapse or relapse happens.

Medication is 20-30%, skills and tools are the rest.

You’re always learning what does and doesn’t work. Even if exposures don’t go the way you hope, it’s okay. It’s data. Gather experiences and data so you can learn from them. Your experiences expand you and help you grow and expand your resilience. You’re always learning what does and doesn’t work.

Think of “failure” as “failed experiments” for which you’re collecting data and can learn from.

Develop strong emotional regulation to keep yourself stable.

Keep an eye on where your life gives you opportunities for exposure and take advantage of those gimmes.

Micro avoidances add up, so work hard to handle even little ones. Recognize when you’re triggered by something and choose to do it anyway. Sometimes it’s OCD and sometimes it isn’t.

Even if what you fear happens, it doesn’t mean your OCD was correct. Your OCD is never correct.

Self-compassion is hard work. It’s not about being positive about everything but rather about being real/more realistic.

Reframe perfectionism as “I’m committing to x” and it doesn’t matter if it’s perfect or the best or whatever, just focus on that. For example, "I’m committing to exercising for 5 minutes,” and not thinking about if it’s perfect or not.

Remember when you’re having a tough time, think “I’m working on it.”

Think “yeah, and” rather than “yeah, but” because “yeah, but” often comes up when we’re negating positive things we did.

Even if you’re not certain something will give you a positive outcome, still do it. Even if it doesn’t do what you hoped, you still fought back. Give yourself the opportunity to see the outcome and with that comes flexibility. This can be as simple as making yourself a piece of toast.

Here's some ways you can do it:

- "Hey, I really need to ask some stupid questions so bear with me"

- "I'm sorry, I need to ask some questions that might be ridiculous right now"

- "Excuse me, I'm struggling right now. I need to ask some silly questions to clarify"

- "Sorry to bother, I'm a bit confused. Mind if I ask some stupid questions before we continue?"

My OCD is driven by anxiety around contamination and living with my partner with allergies.

TW for Disordered Eating Habits caused by OCD and mention of intrusive thoughts!

hi hello hi how’s it going. welcome to the 3am-burst-of-motivation-tumblr-post-of-the-day, where i’m sharing all of my study tips that allowed my adhd/austism/ocd/bpd brain to somehow squeeze out straight a’s for the third year (sixth semester) in a row. 

1. study differently for different subjects. contrary to popular belief, flashcards and rewriting your notes does not work for every subject (unless it does for you, in which case ignore me and do what works for you). different subjects, at least for me, require different environments, techniques, and associations. 

2. association! sensory stuff works great for me because i tend to associate physical things with emotions and even personality types, so have something be constant every time you study. example: i have two tubes of chapstick, one peppermint and one pomegranate. i put on the peppermint one right before i go to bed and the pomegranate one after i eat breakfast - i associate the different scents with different activities (going to bed and starting my to-do list). 

3. to-do lists! mine are written on sticky notes and stuck to my mirror because i hate hate hate having the sticky glue stuff from sticky notes on my mirror and i’m not allowed to clean my mirror until all the sticky notes are off of it. when i can’t see my mirror, they’re on the outside of my backpack because they’re bright pink and the social anxiety makes me think people are staring at me if they are on my backpack. 

4. change your location often. specifically for my adhd peeps who have the attention span of an overexcited puppy, walk around. do things. go to a park or a coffee shop or a grocery store or a sidewalk or a bench somewhere or my personal favorite, the bank. when you’re understimulated go somewhere with lots of different noises and when you’re overstimulated so somewhere quiet or control noises (listen to music, noise-cancelling headphones, humming). 

5. keep a piece of paper next to you for the Random Thoughts That Come at Inconvenient Times and write down the stuff you want to look up/do/tell someone about and like... i don’t even know why that helps but it does. just having your thoughts out there i guess?

6. body doubling. find a person who will study with you. bonus points if it’s another neurodivergent person. they are depending on you to finish the studying and get the good grade. THEY ARE DEPENDING ON YOU. DON’T DISAPPOINT THEM. (side note anxiety people i would not recommend this for you)

7.  go to a place that will remind you to pee and eat and drink things. starbucks is great for this. so are most restaurants. 

8. get a new thing to study with every week. i like new things. if i have a new thing i am going to use it until it’s no longer exciting. i get a pencil, just a boring, manual pencil from the drugstore every monday afternoon for like sixty cents. it’s a fantastic method, at least for me. 

9. don’t drink something with caffeine in it while studying. you will either fall asleep or end up on a roof. it is not a good situation. caffeine for neurodivergents is like sleep pills, for me at least and most of the other ND’s i’ve met. if not for you, you’re lucky. 

10. spaced reps. in other words, find a big pair of dice and write vocab terms on each side, then hurl it at the ground and define each term. do this for like an hour. it’s fun and gets a lot of energy out. 

11. stim. vocal stims, physical stims, self-talk, fidget, yelp, squeal, tap your foot, walk around, shrug your shoulders, twitch your nose, jump up and down, ribbit like a frog. stim, stim, stim. it helps. 

try to label your thoughts even with simple words like hunger or anxiety!

Ask for help and accommodations ahead of time.

This is the most important tip, so I’m putting it first.  If you need extra time or extra help in class, ask before it gets to be a problem.

Teachers and professors are also more responsive when you give them a heads up, verbally or over email, if you’re struggling extra hard on an assignment because of your mental health issues. 

The sooner you address your struggles, the better--in my experience, anyway.

Practice effective time management as much as possible.

Executive functioning can be hard for people with OCD, and this includes time management.  I’ve found that doing assignments ahead of time, even if you don’t think you need to, is a great place to start. 

Always plan for assignments to take longer than you think they will, because OCD can make it harder to get work done. 

It is also very helpful to set up “do dates” as well as “due dates” when doing schoolwork, which basically means figuring out when you will do assignments to get them done on time, and trying to stick to that schedule.

There’s more info under the cut!