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When you have ocd, relaxation might not always feel relaxing. And if you have OCD and you've seen a therapist who doesn't really specialize in ocd, they've probably taught you a lot of relaxation techniques. So let's talk about that a little bit. I'm Dr. Patrick McGrath. I'm the Chief Clinical Officer here at NOCD, and I want to talk to you today about how we go about helping people with obsessive compulsive disorder without giving more safety behaviors to them. Foreign. A lot of therapists are afraid of the people they're working with feeling uncomfortable. And so they fill their sessions with things like diaphragmatic breathing and muscle relaxation and tapping and all of this stuff to try to feel good in the moment. OCD eats those things up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's like, yes, teach me more coping strategies, please. That would be great. And we're still going to have obsessions and compulsions, but we'll add these to the obsessions and compulsions so that it grows and grows and grows. And so guess what? I haven't in 25 years taught anybody a diaphragmatic breathing, a muscle relaxation, a tapping exercise. I don't make coping tapes for people or anything like that because we know those don't really help. There seems to be this constant urgency in OCD that I have to do whatever feels good right now. Right. And I have a lot of guilt about feeling bad or uncomfortable. And so if I could just get the right answer, then I could go ahead and I could live life. But the problem, of course, is when you have ocd, you're never going to get the answer that makes OCD comfortable, which means you're always going to be searching for it, and you're going to feel like you're just kind of doing the hamster wheel of hell. You're running and running and running, but you're getting nowhere at all. This allows people to do what? Lose a lot of time to compulsions, maybe a lot of rumination. Spending so much time in planning, trying to make things perfect, do things the absolutely right way. There's a ton of distress around any decisions that have to be made. There's tons of research. There's lots of doubt. We seek all sorts of reassurance. We might always feel shame or guilt or disgust or things like that. We might feel like we're behind in life. We've made the wrong decisions. The things we've done are unsafe. We're undeserved of any kind of compliment. In any way whatsoever due to no. Not fulfilling our potentials. Maybe we have a ton of panic around aging and deadlines and not being able to meet expectations. Or there could even be grief around the fact that OCD's taken up so much time. If you have other conditions, they can be working simpatico with ocd. So ADHD can occur with ocd. And now you get time blindness, right? Where there's difficulty transitioning tasks, doing things in the. In the right order, not being distracted by the shiny object over here and going to do that. All of this can just tons and tons of fueling of concern around time and getting things done on time. And of course, when you have OCD and you're doing compulsions, that's always pushing you back too. So now you're getting distracted, you're doing compulsions. Time feels like your enemy in so many ways. And then that could lead you to feel guilty or shame because you're behind on everything. People were relying on you for something. They didn't get it it because of the fact that you couldn't complete that task on time, but you had all the best intentions to do it. The follow through is what was a problem. How do we help people with this? Well, we know that anxiety about time can create more urgency, which can lead to more compulsions. A lot of times when people feel that pressure to get something done, it actually then leads them to take longer to do it. Why? Because now that pressure screws up their ability to really get it done in a way that they feel confident in it. And so they're stuck. Right. And that stuckness, what does that do? Well, spinning your wheels and just not getting that level of confidence that you want. OCD wants guarantees like this is the right use of my time. There's no way to give OCD a guarantee that it will accept life can't provide certainty that OCD wants. So what do people do? They just feel stuck and more stuck and more stuck. And if they do move, they're again running that hamster wheel of hell. They're. They're creating a lot of energy and a lot of heat and a lot of movement, but they're not going anywhere. Right? They're doing things that work in the moment that aren't the best for them in the long term. Exposure and response prevention therapy can help reduce compulsions that are time consuming. And it can help people tolerate imperfections and uncertainties and doubts and allow people to have flexibility back in their lives. This, this will make it possible for you to re Engage in the parts of life that matter to you instead of losing all of your time to compulsions. If this is something that you think could be helpful to you, well, our therapist here at NOCD can help with that. We do exposure and response prevention therapy. We teach you how to live with those doubts and those uncertainties. And we'll even work with other therapists. If you have ADHD or you have a neurodivergence and you're seeing somebody for that, we'd love to help you with the OCD parts of that and partner with your other therapist in the areas that they're helping you so that you get the best level of help and experience possible for all of the conditions that are affecting you. If you want to book a free call with us, just go to nocd.com and you can click that button that says set up a free 15 minute call. We would be more than happy to chat with you. People on our CARE team are standing by. We'll get you set up with a licensed therapist in your area who's been trained in exposure and response prevention therapy so that we can help you live the life that you want to live and and not the life that OCD wants you to live. We hope to see you soon.