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Did you know that getting the right kind of treatment for OCD doesn't just change how you feel. It can actually change the way your brain works. I'm Dr. Patrick McGrath. I'm the Chief Clinical Officer here at NOCD. Thanks for joining us. If you're looking for help for OCD related conditions, check us out@nocd.com and if you like our stuff, well, subscribe to our NOCD YouTube channel. Always happy to have you there to see things. Things like our recorded webinars and even our get to Know OCD podcast. Now here's some things about ocd. It can unfortunately lead people to really feel hopeless, wonder if they're even able to get better. But research does show that OCD has a way to get better through great treatment. We call that exposure and response prevention therapy. And there's even identifiable brain patterns that are going on and you can make changes in those. This is where, again, ERP can help, or even medications can help too. What does ERP do to assist people? It teaches them that they can handle the thoughts and the images and the urges that they experience, right? That we don't have to do something to neutralize them. We don't have to reply to them with some kind of safety behavior. And I see this all of the time where I work with people who have been triggered by something in their head, that thought, that image, that urge, and want to go and do that compulsion right away as a way to neutralize it. Who finally make that decision, that choice, who put themselves into that experience of whatever that obsession is. And instead of doing that safety behavior, allow that feeling to pass. That feeling could be anxiety, discomfort, guilt, shame, whatever it might be. And when they do that and they learn that they can handle it and that they didn't need to do the safety behavior, they start to live the life they want to live and not the life that OCD wants them to live. Let's first talk about neuroplasticity. This is basically the notion that things aren't set in concrete in the brain. Brain. The brain can change. The way that we think about things can change. The way we react to things can change. And we can see this through research. We can see this in the way people reply to treatment. And I think we'll someday be able to see these things in better imaging and scans and things like that. We're not quite there yet, but I believe at some point we'll probably be able to get them there. What does all this mean for you, though? Change is possible. Why? Because our Brains are adaptable, and that's what's really cool to know. So what do we want to do? Well, first of all, how do we help you just learn to live with things, right? These urges to do compulsions, this discomfort, right. Parts of our brain that are linked to the decision making and regulation, well, they can become more and more engaged over the course of treatment. With erp, they can make better choices that aren't just related to the fear responses that we have. When an obsession occurs, right. A lot of people will say things to me like, it feels so real. And why? Because whenever we have the obsession, the fight, flight, or freeze response get triggered, and what do we do? We react to that right away. Why? Because it feels like we're in danger. And we have learned over the course of our lives that when we have a fight, flight, or freeze response, it's probably best to do something right away to stop danger. Like if you're cut off in traffic or if you're walking down the street and the car's coming towards you, you know, you don't sit and think about that for a while. You jump, you get out of the way. So we react really quickly. What we're trying to do in ERP is see, can we put some space into there, maybe some delay in that experience. Can we have people be triggered without just replying or responding right off the bat? When we do this, we have a better way to regulate how we react to anxiety and these urges to do compulsion. So we can see even in some neuroimaging studies that there is a change in the. The way that the brain's functioning. You can see activity changes pre and post, doing exposure and response prevention therapy. So that's really cool. We have a fear center in our brain. It's called the amygdala. And it can be, you know, for some people, hypersensitive to certain triggers. And so we want to help, maybe think about it, like recalibrating that to threat assessments to the point where we won't have such reactions to certain things, we will learn that maybe the reactions we're having just aren't so warranted to those things anymore. When we do this, when we put people into situations that are uncomfortable and teach them they can handle it, they start to live their lives again, right? Think about this way. Maybe the first time you go to a sports arena for a certain game and the team scores and there's fireworks that go off, and you didn't know those were coming, and you were like, oh, my gosh. And Then they score again and maybe you're like, oh, okay. And then the third time you're like. And then the fourth time, woohoo. You know, like it suddenly went from this scary, frightening thing that you weren't expecting that came out of the blue, to now you've been exposed to it, you're used to it, and you even know that it's coming and you have a different reaction to it. That's our brain changing the way that it reacts to something. And that's exactly the kind of stuff that we do when we're doing therapy with people as well. We help them to change the way they react to things. ERP works, right? When we expose people to things that are uncomfortable and we have them do response prevention, that elimination of those safety behaviors, even though OCD saying, don't do that, that's bad, that's dangerous, what do we learn? It's really not dangerous, it's really not bad. And that OCD is kind of a liar, actually. It tells us these things that just simply aren't really true. And because of that neuroplasticity, because our brains can change over time, we can train people to react differently to fear stimuli. Those fear stimuli, those obsessions can, to a point of, oh, there's just that thing, no big deal, whatever. How do we help you with this at nocd? Well, our therapists are trained in doing exposure and response prevention therapy. They're licensed to work with you and they will guide you through developing a hierarchy. We're going to start at the lower level of things and work our way up. Right. We're not throwing you in the deep end of the pool. We're having you stick a toe in the water, see how it feels and build from there. Then you'll do that between sessions. Also, think about if you took piano lessons and you only played for half an hour a week during your piano lesson, you'd only get half an hour better every week. But if you practice between sessions, you have much more opportunity and chance to actually see improvement in your playing. That's what we want to do. And between sessions we can support you with that. We have messaging, we have a community, there's our SOS feature. There's these on top of it, 247 things available through NOCD that will assist you in really facing those fears and living with those obsessions, learning that you can deal with these things and again, living that life that you want to live. If this sounds intriguing to you and you want some help, well, check us out@nocd.com we would love to have you book a free call with us so that we can have you talk to one of our amazing intake agents who will assist you in finding the best therapist available for you. We do take insurance all over the US and we take more and more all the time and we even serve the international community. So please go to nocd.com we'd like to talk to you today.