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You may be doing compulsions right now and sometimes not even realize that they're happening. And one of the reasons is because often we have this notion that compulsions are very visible. You could see somebody washing their hands or going and checking things. But there's also mental compulsions that go on, and if you're not familiar with that, you may be doing mental compulsions. And I wanted to talk about that today and about how to recognize a compulsion. So we know that compulsions are the driver of ocd, the thing that maintains ocd. The compulsions are the food of ocd. You can starve OCD by not doing compulsions, or you can feed OCD by doing compulsions. And a compulsion is any act or attempt that we have to alleviate whatever distress that intrusive thought or image or urge that obsession can bring about. And therefore, when it's mental, it's not visible, right? And it's these invisible ones that might be really fueling ocd. Maybe you been working with somebody who says they know how to treat ocd, and they say, oh, look, I see that compulsion, so let's work on that one. And you work on it, and maybe even it gets down to really low levels, but that OCD is still there and it's still strong, and everyone feels kind of stumped in that situation. I train my therapist at NOCD to always ask if there are mental compulsions going on. Why? Because they are often missed by people who aren't well trained in doing OCD work and in doing exposure and response prevention. They aren't easy to recognize because if we don't ask about it, you might not tell us. So it's so, so very important to see. Now, here's some examples of ways that could happen. Maybe we're cleansing ourselves of bad thoughts by saying something to ourself along the lines of, I'm a person of a good person of a good person, or something like that. Right? Maybe it's even an action that no one would recognize as a compulsion. Maybe we get a thought in our head or an image or urge that we don't like, and we go like this. And a way to just kind of shake it out. And some people might think, oh, this person has a tick. They just do this once in a while. But it might not actually be a tick. It might be a compulsion to try to shake a thought right out of your head. Right? If you're always checking things to see if you accidentally texted someone something offensive or embarrassing, it might just be you think you're looking at your phone or other people think it. When reality is you're doing that for some kind of reassurance. And remember, compulsions, of course, are the big thing we look at in ocd. But all of the safety behaviors are really important to assess. So we want to make sure that people aren't avoiding things. They aren't seeking tons of reassurance from others about stuff. They are doing things without distracting and they're sober while they're doing them. They're not getting high or using anti anxiety meds as a way to try to manage the things that are going on in their life. Sure, we can check things physically, but we also might run through a checklist mentally and no one would know that we were doing that if we were just sitting there. It might just look like we're in contemplation or meditation when reality we're going, okay, I walked out of the house and then I closed the door and then I remember locking it and I told myself to take a mental picture of it. So now I'm reviewing that mental picture. And then I turned around, I walked, and then I walked back to the door and I jiggled to three times. And you're going through this mental checklist as a way to try to make sure that everything's okay. Prayer can become a compulsion, right? We say prayers are things done to commune with higher powers. But if prayers are being done to neutralize something, they lose the prayer concept and they become a compulsion in that kind of instance. So those don't list as prayers anymore. We might always want to make sure that the last thing that we said to somebody was something really good or important. Or we might want to review the last thing that we said to make sure we didn't say a slur or something terrible and it was a really positive thing. Like, did I tell them I love them before I go to bed? Because what if they die or I die at night and then I'll wake up not knowing if they knew that I love them? Or they will wake up and not know if I love them. And, and that would be terrible. So maybe I'll go wake them up and say I love you just in case I didn't say it. And I just want them to be sure that everything's okay, right? And it's this stuff that we go over and over in our head that can be so, so difficult for us to deal with. We might count things, we might count steps or words. We might count things up to a certain number and do things in a certain way we could do that mentally or physically when we're doing it. We might even reread things over and over again to make sure we're getting the right meaning. So you could see somebody reading a book, but they might be on that first sentence for three hours because they keep reading it over and over trying to make sure the meaning that they get from the, from that first sentence is absolutely correct. These are just some of the ways that we might see compulsions happening and some of the things that you might be doing without even knowing that you're doing them. If you lose large gaps of time and wonder where they went. I wonder if there might be some mental compulsions going on where you don't realize how much time you're spending trying to think things through and give yourself a reassurance that everything is fine and okay. If this stuff is happening, please know this. We have therapists ready here at NOCD who can help you. They are waiting to chat with you. So if you reach out to our care team@nocd.com, they'll help match you up with a licensed therapist in your area. We do take lots of insurances here in the US but we do work outside of the US and Canada and Australia and the UK too. And we'd be happy to help you with evidence based treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder and make sure that we're dealing with all the compulsions, both the mental and the physical ones, that could be going on. And we can help you learn to do these ERP skills so that you can start to live the life that you want to live and not that life that OCD is wanting you to live. Reach out to us@nocd.com, book a free call. We'd be happy to chat with you. I hope to hear from you soon.