Agree with your OCD thoughts!

How would it feel if you were to start agreeing with everything your OCD tells you, instead of fighting against it? I'm guessing this proposal sounds pretty horrifying. Why would you want to agree with something which goes completely against your own values? Wouldn't this make you a terrible person? Or increase the risk of you causing harm to others?

Actually, no. Whenever we work against our OCD by rationalising ideas, seeking the right answers or arguing with it, we feed into the OCD cycle. This encourages our intrusive thoughts not only to continue, but to escalate over time. It isn't our intrusive thoughts, images, feelings, bodily sensations or urges which are the problem. The problem is the attention and engagement we give to them. Therefore, the short-term solution this provides becomes our long-term problem.

When we work with exposure and response prevention (ERP), our aim is to upset our OCD; to go to all the places it doesn't want us to go and to refuse to comply with its demands. This feels very challenging at the start but becomes easier over time when we turn it into a daily routine. Aside from the ERP exercises themselves, there are other clever strategies we can use, which are designed to out-smart our internal bully. One of them is to embrace whatever OCD chooses to tell us.

For example, I might say 'I really hope my parents will die in a car accident' or 'when I get home I'm going to stab my partner with a large kitchen knife'. Now, this doesn't feel particularly comfortable to say, but just because we say these things doesn't mean they are actually going to happen. The point is that words are ultimately meaningless in this sense.

By working in this way with OCD, we begin over time to take the power away from it. The idea in this work is not to try to get rid of the thoughts, but for us to develop a different relationship with them. The more we do this, the less scary the thoughts become over time.

Another way to work with this can be to leave things uncertain. OCD hates uncertainty and wants us to seek certainty in all situations. Therefore, if I was to say 'maybe I want to have sex with my dog, maybe I don't', this leaves room for doubt which is a good thing. If we can lean into our 'bad' thoughts in this way and stay with the anxiety until it calms down a bit, this is really helpful for the long-term management of OCD.

In my work with clients, I describe this process as stepping outside of ourselves to watch from the outside how OCD interacts with us. Rather than become swallowed up by the content, we make a conscious choice to take a step back to see what actually happens in the moment. We can liken this to conducting a small case study of ourselves. This way we can notice what happens in terms of what has triggered us, what we would most like to do in the moment and where our anxiety level is. We can then pay attention to what happens to our reactions over time when we stop engaging with OCD. After a period, our anxiety level begins to reduce by itself naturally and we find that nothing bad happens.

If we can imagine an invisible line between ourselves and our OCD, we can learn to see it as a separate entity from ourselves.

This entity attaches itself to our lives constantly because it seeks our attention and our engagement. This is how it gains control. It's very helpful to view OCD as separate from ourselves and perhaps also to give it a name. This enables us to understand that our daily experiences with obsessions and compulsions are not related to ourselves, but stem from an anxiety condition.

There are many ways in which we can invite OCD into our lives to enable us to set new boundaries for it. So, next time your OCD tries to scare you with a new thought, why not give it a hug and say 'I agree, thank you for telling me about this'. This is safe and incredibly helpful.

For help with managing your OCD, please contact an OCD therapist experienced in working with exposure and response prevention. For information and support for sufferers and families/carers, consider reaching out to the charity OCD Action.