No cure for OCD? I refuse to believe it. (TIPS for Sufferers)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I struggle with this nightmare every single day, as most of you regulars know. It takes form in worrying about “connection faults” with electricity. In my mind, I am safe, my brain says otherwise. It really is messed up. I keep reading about how there is no cure for OCD and only treatment. I take medication (zoloft), supplement with inositol (18g per day, huge help) and do CBT, Exposure and Response Therapy. The symptoms wax and wane, but with just the inositol and some self - ERP therapy, I am improving.
I know this because of comparisons in journaling my thoughts and remembering what compulsions I used to do. With what I am doing now, each time there is a reduction in symptoms, the reduction gets stronger and when I do have symptoms they are weaker. The amount of willpower needed to try and overcome this affliction is almost supernatural. But it works. Anything is better than how I was. I can typically go 4 or more days without symptoms, as opposed to about 15 times a day before I tried ERP therapy and inositol. Sure, this is treating it, but with willpower, I believe and know I will beat this thing. I didn’t have it at one point in my life, so all I have to do is find a way to revert to that state.
I cannot seek professional therapy for my specific situation since professional ERP requires exposing yourself to “dangers” and dealing with the anxiety, without trying compulsions to ease it. The big issue in my situation is, therapists won’t touch me, nor have the resources or willingness to expose me to something that could actually be dangerous and deadly (potential electrical faults). Unless I get a Master electrician with a therapists license and education, I am shit out of luck. There is not a therapist in the world which will or recommend to open up a wall and leave exposed live wires in a semi-hazardous situation or anything like that. I am alone in this. I can only help myself. I am going to do this. I am going to beat this thing and live a normal life again. This takes determination. I am succeeding.

What has worked for me is this, and I am talking about symptom reductions of like 80%;

Do everything you reasonably can (checking/fixing etc.) to alleviate the fears, check things thoroughly, get things done right, wash your hands, etc… then accept that you have done all that you reasonably can and are expected. Learn to leave the rest up to fate. Whatever happens, happens and it is going to happen regardless of what you do.

Remember that those without OCD cannot realize your anguish. It seems illogical to them, as it does to you. That fear that you get when you don’t check, or wash your hands or ritualize, you know it. The fear and anxiety that is akin to the anxiety of a close family member dying in front of you, you feel this every day, sometimes many times. Remember, its only going to hurt more for a little while. Do ERP and expose yourself to this type of anxiety, but don’t follow through on checking things out or trying to alleviate the anxiety. LET IT BE. It can take minutes, to hours. But it will subside to a manageable level and then cease. What will happen is your mind will try to find another compulsion to treat another obsession. IGNORE IT, RESIST temptation

I know this is the temptation of trying to resist a second bite of something really delicious, only an order of magnitude greater, but you must not do it. Tell the OCD thoughts to f*ck off, and that they don’t matter. Remember that this is something wrong with your BRAIN, the organ only, not your capacity within it (the mind). You control what your body does. You can do this. Try it for 3 days. It sounds absurd coming from another person on the internet, I wouldn’t trust anyone else’s advice either, but just try doing it. As long as you can. It WILL work. You will feel better the next time the compulsive urge comes to be, and it will be sooo much easier to dismiss it and move on. Once you’ve done this, you can actually feel that being free of this curse is within reach. You can sense that it is possible. Unlike the hopeless feeling so many of us have been used to. There is hope. The sad part is the only person who can help you, is you. Nobody else will, or cares enough. They don’t feel the pain you feel. I tend to believe many say there is no cure, only treatment for this ailment. If that is the case, why after some treatment does one feel that there is? Nothing is out of reach, it is up to you to use your might, your soul (willpower) to beat this thing down, until it starves and dies. The more you feed (by doing compulsions) the OCD, the stronger and more malevolent it gets. Cut off its food supply. It will start to squirm and freak out as soon as you resist, but keep doing it and it gets weaker. The anxiety and pain you feel is your brain healing, your OCD weakening and hurting you for hurting it. Soon enough it will give up fighting because it will not beat you any more. You can do this. After you get it under control, know that you are now more mentally powerful than most people, since the willpower required to do this is more extreme than anything you can possibly imagine. But, you can do it, and you will do it.

2

Hi, just a few thoughts as a fellow OCD sufferer:

  1. Most mental disorders are lifelong (as I understand it) and OCD is no exception. So unfortunately you and I will probably be stuck with it in some form or other for the rest of our lives, but at least we won’t have false hope which may cause us to be tougher on ourselves than we need to (“why haven’t you beaten the OCD after all these years?” etc.)

  2. Oftentimes it can be helpful to envision the worst-case scenario and confront the worst thing that could happen, mentally. So, maybe…“Maybe the house will burn down” (in that case, do you have fire insurance? How badly would it affect your life? etc.) or “maybe there’ll be a silent short-circuit that will go on for days and weeks and I won’t know about it, and I’ll be silently inhaling burning toxins from that slow smoke and get myself poisoned.” (That one is harder to confront.)

  3. This may sound facetious but isn’t meant to be, but oftentimes OCD is a powerful way to learn things (unfortunately, a pretty torturous way to do so.) So if you must battle OCD in your mind (which you do,) then make the most of it and use it to your advantage. Thanks to my OCD, I’ve learned a lot about rabies, germs, chemical and physical properties, technology (scared of computer or phone overheating,) chemistry, human anatomy and physiology, and a wide variety of topics that I would never know about otherwise. Since we OCD sufferers are stuck with the disease, we might as well make the most of it. So maybe in the course of your OCD you will indeed learn a lot about electrical socketing, wiring, plastics, combustion, current, voltage, etc. that could be handy someday. Hey, in a bad situation, might as well make lemonade out of the lemons. Might as well get an education out of it.

  4. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of JustAnswer, but they have a bunch of specialists whose job it is to answer questions. There are probably plenty of electricians or appliance experts on its website who could talk you through any fears you have about electrical connection faults. They charge a fee, of course - that’s the catch - but it’s usually only a few dozen dollars, which may be worth the longterm peace of mind - if you can get one nagging question answered, it might spare you weeks or months of worry. They’ll often answer your questions within an hour or less. I’ve read some questions on JustAnswer that seem to be submitted by fellow OCD sufferers, so no doubt some OCD patients are using it as a way of getting some mental relief.

  5. Sometimes an OCD thought just has to run its course. Telling it to go away, or trying to prevent yourself from thinking about it (“my electrical connection might be malfunctioning!”) just makes you dwell on it more. Sometimes you just have to let the thought run itself in circles to exhaustion. It isn’t ideal, but some coping strategies just aren’t ideal.

  6. It may also help to think “Many people are in the same boat as me.” In other words, the electrical connections and wiring in your house probably aren’t any worse than those in the neighborhood, or of those of millions of houses nationwide, and your house is no more likely to suffer an electrical malfunction than theirs.

  7. In some ways, OCD isn’t a sign of being illogical, it’s actually a sign of being too logical - far more logical than the average person. It’s a disease that can be described as merciless logic. And, if it makes you feel any better by way of a compliment, it is often an indication/side-effect of a highly intelligent brain (from what I read.)

3

Sorry, it finally hit me that you weren’t *asking *for tips, you were *offering *tips - but, well, hope my feedback helps some anonymous reader/lurker as well…

4

Right. No cure doesn’t mean it can’t be managed, even to the point where you sometimes don’t even think about it.

And I’m big on the “let the thought be there but don’t react” model. It’s a bit more mindful than the classic idea. You just kinda set it off to the side, to keep running. If you check in, you check in.

Though I admit my OCD is the “O-type” where my obsessions are mostly mental. I’m not sure how well that works for people who have more visible compulsions.

5

Wouldn’t ERP for you involve being around electrical sockets and whatnot that you haven’t inspected to verify they’re safe and not ones that are known to actually be unsafe?

6

Have you ever tried just sitting still and not saying/thinking any words for half an hour?

7

Yes, I actually have a haphazardly put in light switch for this reason, not dangerous enough to cause a fire or shock (connections tight, and wrapped up), but it wobbles a little, so its enough to trigger me. But my point still stands, can’t find a therapist willing to deal with that kind of situation, liability reasons apparently. Besides, I could give a crap less about he outlets in their office. I usually just worry about a connection fault getting bad when I am asleep. Thats why I have both a Ionization smoke detector and photoelectric sensor smoke detector in every major room. Its brings some peace, but OCD is not rational, it doesn’t use logic, it behaves like a demonic child that is never satisfied, nor anything good enough. Obnoxious really.
Velocity Its alright, I appreciate any tips from fellow sufferers, anything to get through the day or week is fine by me. I appreciate the reply, wholly. Just knowing someone else is afflicted can sometimes bring me peace, especially if they give tips too! lol

MichaelEmouse It is absolutely impossible to do so. Meditation works on occasion but not enough to provide lasting relief. It really is impossible to shut the mind down on a person with OCD, its near-impossible to even “dial it back” a little.

8

Meditation is possible! You just have to give up on the “blank mind” version of it. That was the big revelation that helped me. Mindfulness meditation isn’t a blank mind at all. It’s just paying attention without reacting. You let your thoughts go in and out, but you observe them as if they are external to “you.” And there is no such thing as a failed meditation. So if you do get caught up in a thought, so what?

Now, I don’t do it too often for other reasons, but I have found myself able to do it. It helps to have someone guiding you via an audio clip, because that helps keep you from drifting off too much.

This idea that meditation means “shutting off your brain” is dumb. (I can’t even do that when I sleep. What does happen is that my thoughts get weird.) I think it turns people off of something they can do.

Maybe you won’t find it something worth doing. But I’d at least like to disspell the myth about shutting down your mind. That is, indeed, entirely impossible. I don’t even think that’s actually an OCD thing–we’re just more aware of the fact our minds aren’t blank.

9

For me, it took about 10 hours of practice for meditation to even start having a noticeable effect. During those 10 hours, it seemed futile.

As BigT says, meditation need not mean having a blank mind. One of the possible goals during a meditation session may be to have no thoughts at all but having some thoughts during the session doesn’t mean one has failed. Noticing that one has gotten caught up in internal monologue, letting go and coming back to the object of meditation is part of the process. The last time I did one hour, about half that time was spent reacting and having internal monologue but it was still a beneficial session.

Spending half an hour without significant reactivity or inner monologue is the equivalent of running a marathon. You don’t need to run a full marathon for jogging to be beneficial. The same holds for meditation.

I should have expressed myself more precisely. The way I said it made it sound like actually having no thoughts/monologue could be achieved for a beginner. I should have phrased it in terms of aiming and working towards having no thoughts instead. There can be benefit even if one falls short of the aim.

10

Thanks for the replies! I will give meditation another shot, I know its not really so possible to shut it all off completely, but sometimes I just cannot even minimize the racing thoughts, I suppose if I keep doing it i’ll get a grasp on it well enough. It does work on occasion, when just focusing on breathing, but not enough to compel me to do it all the time, but if as you both have said, it works better with practice, then i shall keep doing it. Thanks again! I really plan on figuring out how to completely beat this, it will happen. Getting closer every day.

11

I have no idea if this will help but you can buy simple circuit testers to check your house receptacles. They are cheap and easy to use. just plug it into an outlet and it will detect numerous faults. Here is an example I think it’s the one I have.

12

I’m wary of trying to guess at someone else’s mind, especially over Internet so I’m asking to check: Do you have a tendency to feel a strong need to reduce risks or unpleasantness to zero? Nearly everyone would like those to be at zero but for you, do you feel an overwhelming compulsion to get it to zero?

Most likely, you will never completely beat OCD just as you will never completely get rid of the risks of electrical malfunctions.

What’s most likely happening right now is that your amygdala is overactive and actively looks for things to be worried about. Since you’re living in a home with electrical circuits, your mind latches on to that because it’s among the most plausible risks. If you were living in a cabin in the woods with no electricity, your mind would overfocus on the risks of fires. If you were living on a boat, your mind would overfocus on the risks of sinking.

Every time you step into the obsessive quicksand, it’s the psychological equivalent of picking at a scar. The more you do it, the worse the scar gets which then increases your compulsion to keep picking at it.

Meditation can do two things 1: Disrupt those self-reinforcing loops of anxious mental noise 2: increase your ability to decide what you will focus on or not focus on.

Meditation is useful in improving your situation but if you go into it with the feeling that you must get the noxious phenomenon to zero, you are making the same (understandable) mistake as when you hyperfocus on electrical hazards.
I know meditation is tough and often discouraging. At first it’s a huge bitch and you can easily end up feeling worse. It’s like not washing your dishes; When you finally face it, you start to see and feel the entirety of what you’ve been avoiding.
One of the things that helped me was thinking: “Ok, can I do 1 hour of mental silence? No. How about 15 minutes? No. 5 minutes? No. 1 minute? No. 15 seconds? No. 5 seconds? No. 1 second? Well, let’s try.”

So you start giving your all to doing 1 second a few times a day and you find you can actually do that. Then you do 5 seconds a few times a day and sometime later, you can do that. Then 15 seconds etc until you can be mentally silent for most of the time during an hour.

You’ll have setbacks, days where you don’t do as well as you usually do. It will be more difficult and take longer than getting in shape through dieting and exercise but overall, your anxious mental noise will gradually go down and your ability to control your thoughts will go up. You’ll feel better and think clearer.

13

FWIW: my brilliant psychiatrist thinks ERP is a load of hooey (YMMV).

How old are you? I had paralyzing OCD issues when I was a kid/teen/young adult and a lot of anxieties have gradually dissipated as I’ve reached my half-century mark. The issues haven’t wholly disappeared, but I’ve lived through actualizations of “what’s the worst that could happen?” (deaths, other losses) and I think my brain has started to tell me that I’ve made it through some bad stuff and will come out the other side.

Have you read the book Monkey Brain? I can’t remember the author’s name, it’s his memoir about having profound OCD and anxiety issues – it’s the only book about these subjects that I found have really nailed what it’s like when our brains plot to make us miserable.