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Maybe you've had unwanted thoughts that scared you or made you uncomfortable, or images or urges that you found to be disturbing and made you question who you are. What kind of person are you? Why would you have these? Well, here's something I want you to know. Almost everybody has those. And there are things that you can do to help you learn how to live with those, right? And. And there are things that you can do that unfortunately make it worse. So let's talk about it from that angle, because here's things that I want you to not do, right? A lot of times, maybe in talks you hear about things that we want you to do, but today I'm going to talk about things that I don't want you to do. Why? Because you're probably doing them if you have OCD or related conditions. So the first thing that I want you to really work on is not trying to get rid of a thought. Now, this may sound really weird to you. It's like, but I don't want to think this anymore. And of course, the more you don't want to think of something, the more guaranteed you are to think of it. I keep my pink elephant here at all times, right? And what is it? If I tell you, don't think of a pink elephant, what will you think of? You will think of a pink elephant trying to, you know, maybe shake your head to clear a thought out or to do all sorts of things to make it go away. Those, unfortunately, backfire and just make the thought stronger. So instead of trying to get rid of a thought, I want you to work on accepting that the thought is there. The second thing is, I don't want you to be logical about this. I don't want you to use logic to try to talk about, well, here's what would happen if that were to occur. Here's why this is good or bad or something of that nature. OCD would love you to take a logical approach to this, because OCD uses a different logic than we use outside of ocd. OCD logic will always have one more, yeah, but what if? Than you'll have an answer for. So if you start to approach this with logic, OCD is like, great, because I'll be able to give another, yeah, but what if. And we'll be able to keep this going and going and going and going, and we'll spend hours and months and years and decades trying to figure it out, but you never will. So this isn't a logical problem. This is an emotional problem. And I want you to consider the fact that you're not going to solve an emotional problem with logic. You're going to learn to live with the discomfort. And that's why we're not trying to solve whatever the thoughts are or the meanings behind the images or urges that we're going to have. Instead, we're going to live with them and let them just be there. There doesn't have to be a solution to all of this. It's more about how can I just be with something and let it live in my head. If I try to push it out, like we said before, it only gets worse. I'll give you one example. I have tinnitus. Or some people say tinnitus, which is a ringing in the ears, which is really loud right now because I just said the word tinnitus. And if I try not to think about it, it gets even louder. But if I just accept that it's there, eventually it fades in the background. And though I'm hearing it all the time, I'm not actually really paying attention to it. So to me, there's a difference between hearing something and paying any attention to it. So, sure, I hear the sound, but because I'm not paying any attention to it, it has no influence on my life whatsoever. We also don't want you to try to avoid the subject of something. I don't want you to run away from dating if you have relationship ocd. I don't want you to not look at certain things if you have an image or urge about it. I don't want you to not be around it because of that. I want you to face those things. Live with ocd, right? We don't want people to do safety behaviors. We don't want avoidance or reassurance or distraction or substance use or compulsions. We want people just living with whatever their thoughts and their images and urges are. They're not actually dangerous. I can think anything right now. The ceiling's going to collapse on me. I'm not going to do a compulsion right now. We'll see if it happens, right? I'm not manifesting something just by thinking of it or having some kind of image of it whatsoever. I can just be with it. And therefore I know that my thoughts and images and urges don't have to mean anything about me or what kind of person I am. I'm not terrible because of urges that I have I've treated. So people, for example, who have fears of what if I were to push somebody down a flight of stairs that I can no longer take a flight of stairs without thinking I could totally push everybody down the stairs. When I'm on a staircase with people, that thought pops into my head pretty much every time I'm on an escalator or a staircase. Do you think I'm a terrible person for that, or is it just because I've treated so many people for it? I've just associated it now with taking stairs. You may think I'm a terrible person, and guess what? Even if you do, has no impact on me whatsoever. I'm going to just live with that. What are we going to do? At nocd, we do Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, the gold standard of treatment for OCD and related conditions, to help you learn to live with whatever your thoughts and your images and urges are, whatever those obsessions are, so that you can live the life that you want to live and not the life that OCD wants you to live. At nocd, our therapists are really well trained to do all of this work with you to provide that exposure and response prevention therapy for OCD. If you're looking for help for OCD, check us out@nocd.com that's nocd.com Our team is standing by, ready to take your call and set you up with a licensed therapist in your area so that you again can live that life you want to live and not the life that OCD wants you to live. We hope to hear from you soon.