ERP is a jot down ofcognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)and is the gold standard treatment for OCD.
In fact, some techniques can hinder or prevent progress and even worsen your OCD symptoms.
Here are some of the most common CBT techniques that can actually keep you stuck.
Verywell / Laura Porter
The obsessions are ego-dystonic, meaning they oppose a persons beliefs, values, and self-concept.
Clinicians might see howanxiousyour intrusive thoughts make you and may prescribe thought-stopping techniques.
The problem is that thought suppression does not work.
This is evidenced in psychologist Daniel Wegners classic research on thought suppression.
Wegner identified a rebound effect that occurred when participants in his study were told not to think about something.
Thought suppression produces the opposite of its intended effect.
Instead of getting rid of the anxiety-provoking thoughts, it amplifies them and leads to even greater distress.
Thought-stopping techniques can also become compulsive rituals that the person with OCD feels compelled to carry out.
Compulsions reinforce the obsessive-compulsive cycle.
It robs you of the ability to learn that compulsions are not necessary.
An example would be someone with harm obsessions repeatedly asking their therapist if they are a danger to anyone.
While reassurance is comforting in most cases, it is harmful for those with OCD.
Beyond initial psychoeducation about OCD,reassuranceis a compulsion that leaves the person with OCD wanting more.
This is sadly not the case.
But, unfortunately, the reassurance does not satiate OCD.
Instead, it fuels the persons urge to seek certainty and leaves them stuck in a never-ending cycle.
Along with being ineffective, reassurance gives weight to obsessions and keeps them alive.
It pays attention to the content of obsessions when the obsessions are actually unimportant.
They are not good or bad.
They are not right or wrong.
They simplyarethoughts…words that are comprised of letters.
Thought replacement is problematic in the treatment of OCD because it is inherently compulsive.
For example, you might have a violent intrusive thought about pushing someone in front of a bus.
This thought makes you anxious.
So, you might respond to the thought by saying “never!”
out loud or in your head to counteract the intrusive thought.
This, however, is a false sense of safety.
Replacing one thought with another thought is not going to make or prevent something bad from happening.
The brain then sends off more false alarms in an attempt to keep the person safe.
It is typically done with the goal of developing insight.
They are doing this to seek certainty that does not exist, which renders rumination useless.
Do not pay a talk therapist to perform compulsions in their office!
Rumination also offers the person with OCD, who has difficulty tolerating uncertainty, a false sense of control.
It is a trap.
would crush someone with OCD.
The way out of the obsessive-compulsive cycle is through behavioral change.
This change involves no longer feeding into and paying attention to the obsessions (false alarms).
This means cutting out compulsions, like analyzing thoughts, by changing physical and mental behavior.
Even a mental compulsion is a behavior, as the person is choosing to respond mentally to the obsession.
2020;28(1):e12337.
2014;45(4):506-515. doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2014.07.007
Appelbaum AH.Review of Psychodynamic psychotherapy: A clinical manual.Psychoanalytic Psychology.
