In this TedX talk, Dr. Steven Hayes offers several helpful techniques for handling nasty intrusive thoughts and putting some distance between you and the stuff in your head. Check it out:
When I was doing Exposure & Response Prevention (ERP) therapy for OCD, it was very behavior-focused. It was all about progressively cutting out compulsions, starting from the easiest and working up to the most difficult. Although ERP is a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), it’s generally heavier on the B than the C. But […]
Cutting out compulsions is a key component of recovery from mental illness. But when we engage in compulsions inside our heads as a reaction to anxiety and depression and other feelings we don’t like, they can sometimes be more difficult to wrap our heads around (pun intended!) than compulsions outside of our heads. In this […]
Our fears love to latch onto the very things we would never want to have happen. The problem is, the moment we start reacting to the intrusive thoughts with coping, checking, and controlling compulsions, we actually encourage our brains to throw those intrusive thoughts at us even more, and they only get more intense the […]