Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
It may surprise you that supporting with someone with OCD probably doesn't look like you think it does. Now, when someone has ocd, it may feel very natural to tell them you're fine, to double check locks for them when they ask you to give another check on something. And you may feel like providing some kind of accommodation or reassurance can be really helpful. But the reality is those things can actually make OCD worse. I don't say that to make you feel bad. You're probably doing it because at the moment it feels like it's the right thing to do. What I want you to recognize is that what might feel like or seem like the right thing to do might actually be in service of ocd. And what might seem like not necessarily the right thing to do could actually be the most helpful thing. So let me give you some explanations. In ocd, accommodations means changing your behavior to help reduce someone else's distress. So giving reassurance or checking things for people, helping them to avoid triggers altogether, well, that might feel like in the moment it's the best thing to do, but in the long term, it actually increases the chance that that's what will have to happen. And therefore people with OCD won't learn how to handle doing those things. What they'll learn is everybody's going to give me accommodations so that I don't ever have to feel bad. These situations, well, it's pretty hard to live like that if that's the case. And what do we want for people with ocd? We want people to learn that they can handle the discomfort that OCD brings. Not that everybody's going to rescue me from all of the fears that OCD creates. So doing these accommodations might in the moment seem like they're helpful, but there's a long term cost, unfortunately, about them. When you're supporting someone with ocd, we need you to do things differently, right? We want you to allow people to have the discomfort. We want to not provide reassurance, to promise everyone that all will be fine and that everything will be okay, as much as OCD wants that. Also remember this, its nickname is the Doubting disorder. And the Doubting Disorder doubts everything that it hears, meaning that no matter how much reassurance you give ocd, and it's still going to want more. No one has ever given OCD enough reassurance to the point where it said, oh, cool, great, I'm out of here. Thank you so much. You finally giving me everything I've needed. In fact, OCD is kind of like Trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it. No matter how much you put into it, you still need more because it's always kind of seeping through. We're not here to try to make OCD go away. No one's figured that out yet. We're here to help people learn to live with ocd. You don't have to be the OCD referee, right? You don't have to be the one that is the external conscience for someone with ocd. You don't have to hear every thought that they're having and be able to judge it for them and say, that one's okay, that one's not. We can live with whatever thought or image or urge that we have. Right? You want to be able to have conversations with people and to provide support, but. But also set good boundaries, right? I care about you. I care about you so much, and I love you so much that I'm not going to give you the reassurance about that anymore. In fact, one of the things that I sometimes do is I'll say you could create a notebook in the house. If someone with OCD asks you a question and they've asked it more than once, write that question down, write down the answer, and then say to the person with ocd, if they ever ask it again, that's in the notebook, you can at least feel good that you've given the answer to someone. And the person with ocd, well, they can choose to read it in the book. Book or not, they probably won't. They've memorized the book. Someone might say, well, isn't the book reassurance? They're never going to look at the book because they already know the answer. In fact, the person with OCD would often like to have the conversation, hoping today you'll give a slightly different answer than you did yesterday. And if you did, that opens up 44 more hours of conversation about why did you change your mind? So we want people to live with maybe, maybe not, right? I'll stay with you while you work on resisting the compulsion, Something of that nature. But what I'm not going to do is give you the answer, because even though that might feel good right now, in the moment, it will just make it more likely that you'll want that again in the future. And if you are the person with OCD watching this, and you realize that your OCD is not only kind of ruling your life, but it's starting to rule the lives of those around you and you don't want it to anymore, well, I hope that you'll reach out to us for treatment. You could book a call with one of our amazing, amazing care team members. They will get all of your information. They'll set you up with one of our therapists who have trained in exposure and response prevention therapy to help you and your loved ones start to live the lives that you want to live and not the life that OCD wants you to live. So go to nocd.com that's nocd.com and book that call today. We hope to hear from you soon.