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Hi, everyone, I'm Ali Graymond. Today I wanted to talk more about the thought and how to deal with OCD thoughts when they come in. First of all, let me remind you that your mind has no idea the topic of the thoughts and why is this so important? And actually understanding it cognitively, it just understands it as signals. Why does it keep bringing it up? Because you keep reacting with fear. And if you're reacting with fear, that means this is important and means that it has to send you more of the same in order to protect you from that danger which you are implying you are in if you are reacting with fear. So in order to not get OCD thoughts, you have to act. Look, seem as if this is no longer bothering you. So everything you do, all of your behavior has to show that this is not important. So you're not altering your plan of the day. You are not spending time analyzing. And it will still be there when you're doing that. So it will still bother you. But you. You have to just look at it that this is irrelevant information, you know, and you're going by, say, for example, if somebody gave you bad, bad news about somebody who you don't even know, right? The more maybe for the first day, right. Then you're kind of thinking about it from time to time. Oh, that's, you know, such a bad thing or whatever, you know. But you don't actually know this person, right? So this is not really relevant to you. So as you are going about your day and not really altering your day, the thought fades away. This is what you have to do with these OCD thoughts, that this is just noise happening around you. This has nothing to do with you. The brain is sending it on autopilot. There's nothing you can do to stop it. You just have to wait it out. But you can't wait it out by paying a lot of attention to it, because that just reinforces the idea that this is somehow important. And since the brain doesn't understand what the thought is about, that's why it's keeping it there. So imagine yourself as if you are in a bubble, and your real thoughts, your real things that you need to get done throughout the day, that's the real you. All of the what if OCD thoughts that are in the same theme that as always, or the same themes as always, that's outside your bubble, that is not you. If you're asking yourself right now, well, how do I know which thought is me and which thought is not me? If you are wondering that those thoughts that you're wondering that about those thoughts are not you. If say, I'm hungry, I need to go eat. That is you. If you're. I'm so mad at this person that is real you. What's another example? I have to do this and this task that is real you. What if I, you know, I don't know, want to do something bad or what if something bad happens or I feel like I want to do something or I feel this or that? That is not you. That is outside the bubble. And you have to keep it outside the bubble. Let it say whatever it wants. You know, another. Another example would be if you bought a parrot and the parrot was already taught a number of words. Okay? So it's telling you those words you know all the time because that's what it's been taught. But you don't have to take it to mean something. There's no deep meaning here. It's literally bringing it up in a loop because you paid attention to it in the past. So try to take it that way. It's okay. It's just meaningless, you know, stuff my brain keeps throwing at me. Don't get into the content. Don't try to solve it. This is not my problem. I'm leaving it outside my bubble. And keep going like that. You will see that the thoughts will start to lose power. But every time you start to take it seriously, to power it up, to bring it in, you know, the. Then it becomes a lot harder. Same thing with rumination. You start to ruminate about one thing even if you happen to solve it. Because it's easy to solve. You know, three more. Come on. Its in its place, you know, don't go down this rabbit hole. You've gone down this rabbit hole many, many times. You don't have to do this anymore. Let it be. Take the chance. You will feel like you're jumping out of an airplane with a parachute. And the parachute will open. It opened for 10. For 10 years for everybody I've talked to. So it will open for you. You will not feel like, oh, I should have really paid attention to it. And now it's all over. Doom. That's doesn't happen. It just feels real in the moment. But if it feels real in the moment one time, I can understand, okay? You can be like kind of tricked into paying attention to it. But if this is happening hundreds and hundreds of times, you have to see it that kind of look back and see how many times it felt real. Okay? It's really real right now. Okay. And how many times did it feel this real? What, every time? Okay, so how real is it really? You know, try to always bring yourself back to seeing the overall picture. Sometimes it helps to write things down. Not you have to be careful with writing things down because you can't make it a compulsion. A and you can't go from one thing to another. So. Okay, I'll solve this one. Oh, I remember how I solved the other one. So I'll go back to the other one. And you're kind of like going back and forth, but it just has to give you an overall feel, you know, so an overall picture rather to how did it. How did it feel before? Right, so you can say thought one. Right? We're not going to label what the thought was, but let's say. Or let's say thought 1. About this theme or on this theme. Level of anxiety, 10. Level of realness, 10, you know, and when you have a list of a hundred of these thoughts, then you can look at it and say, okay, well, I'll just add this one to the list, you know, and really taking it like that, it's attacking you, so you need to attack it. And if you take an aggressive position, then the OCD has no other option but to start reducing. It might kind of push it a little bit, but it will start reducing. So a thought is not different than a physical compulsion. It's just there. It's just a prompt for you to do an action. In this case with the pure row, it's analyzing. And it's up to you whether you do the action or you don't do the action. I hope you find my videos helpful. If you haven't subscribed to this channel, please subscribe at the daily videos about all things ocd. If you would like to do the one on one recovery program with me. All the information is on. You have OCD.com thank you so much for watching. I'll see you tomorrow.