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OCD Buddy

Breaking the Cycle

It is important to understand the nature of OCD when trying to defeat. You need to understand the tactics of your enemy when you are in a battle.

  • The cycle starts with a trigger, where thought, idea, action, situation, stimulation triggers the obsession.

  • Obsessions are intrusive, hence can be difficult to get rid of them as they seem to be coming from within you.

  • This time and mental effort spent in battling with obsession leads to anxiety and distress.

  • As a result you develop a compulsion with an aim to repel the anxiety and distress associated with the obsessions.Compulsions can be in the form of behaviour (such as repeatedly taking wudhu) or mental acts (such as repeated praying in silent)

  • This provides a temporary relief, they key word here is ‘temporary’. It’s a momentary relief that you get on completion of ritual. At times it can be only a few seconds or minutes.

  • A major side effect of this attempt for temporary relief is that in doing so you reinforce the OCD and it becomes stronger over time. Remember OCD feeds on itself, hence the more you follow you the cycle the stronger OCD becomes.

  • Then with another trigger, the cycle begins again.

Regardless of the mode of treatment sought, what you are trying to do when aiming to defeat OCD is to break the cycle.

To try and break free, you need to start resisting and avoid taking the compulsion route. You need to confront the OCD. By doing so, you can learn to break the cycle and over time the anxiety and distress will grow weaker and weaker and OCD will start to fade away as a result. This is the only way you can defeat OCD. It may be harder in the beginning as you’ve gotten accustomed to a certain norm and it may result in even further anxiety and distress initially, but over time it will become easier.

Remember, if you keep on following the cycle OCD becomes stronger, and if you break the cycle OCD becomes weaker. You need to learn to break the cycle often and this will lead you to breaking free from OCD all together and defeating it !