A (0:00)

I'm Ali Graymond. I'm an expert in OCD recovery because for the last 19 years, I've been helping people fully recover from OCD. If you would like to do personal coaching with me, all the information is on younhubocd.com you can sign up from there.

B (0:14)

Let's talk about why you're getting these specific disturbing OCD thoughts. You have to understand that what's disturbing to you, another person will laugh at, another person with OCD will laugh at, and then they'll tell you their disturbing OCD thoughts. And then you'll be like, really? You're bothered by this. So what is happening is that your brain is sending you what is the scariest thing to you, the thing that goes against your character the most? And since everybody is different and their values are different, what's the worst for one person is not the worst for another person. So that's why you're getting these specific thoughts. It's whatever you view as the worst possible thing you can think about. So it's a flip of who you really are. So if, for example, you're getting disturbing harm thoughts, it's because you're a very sensitive, very good, very nice person who, who in reality wouldn't hurt a fly, but you're getting these very, very disturbing thoughts. Or a person who is very religious will get thoughts that go against their religion. Or a person who is. Who very much values their relationship will get thoughts that go against their partner in way. One way or another, right? Something negative about their partner. So this is all OCD classic. And if you just see it as a mechanism rather than, oh, my God, I got this thought. How can I have this thought? You can have, so first of all, 70,000 thoughts a day. So anybody could have any kind of a thought. But when you had this first thought and the first time you got this thought, it was probably one of 70,000. So just your brain was just throwing different things at you, and this thought came up, but you reacted in this nuclear way that just like you react probably now. Oh, my God. Why this thought? Your brain flagged your reaction, understood that this is important because again, it goes against your character, and then started to send it to you again. Sent it to you again. Again. You had a nuclear reaction, your brain flagged it again, and now you're creating this snowball effect. So why these thoughts? The first one just happened. Your reaction cemented it. Then again the brain centered, your reaction cemented it again. That's what happened. So if you understand really what happened Here you can start to see how you now can undo it. And the way to undo it is to stop having an oh, my God reaction. Stop saying that this is important. Instead, yeah, okay, sure, whatever. So you're not agreeing with the thought. You're not disagreeing with the thought. You're not doing anything that flags this thought as important in terms of this thought. You need to show the brain that this is completely irrelevant to your life. What you should have showed it on day one when you first got that thought. You should have just let it pass. 70,000 thoughts, a day stream going through your brain. You should have just let it pass. You didn't. Now we're doing it. So now we're choosing to let it pass. But you're letting it pass from a. From a much worse position, because now you've activated the importance, right? So now you're feeling. Your brain is sending you feelings as if this is super important. Then you have to undo that important as well. So it's a little bit more difficult in that way. But you can do this if little by little, every day. Again with the tracking. I'm tell. I. I will tell you about the tracking all the time, because I am so. Confident is not even the word. I see it every day with clients, how well it works and how fast they're recovering, because it's accountability. If you're accountable for anything in your life, you will do better than if you're not accountable, guaranteed. So if you're accountable for how much you are letting yourself react and you're trying your best, doesn't mean you won't react. You might, but you'll react a little less, and then a little less. And then the brain will drop importance. And when the brain drops important, it will drop anxiety, and when it drops anxiety, it will be less for. Less difficult for you to react correctly. So be easier, right? So this is a process. And every day play this game of reduction. Use the app as a game where every day you're doing just a little bit less reaction, a little less rumination than the last time. And it doesn't really matter in how bad of a situation you start out, because if you're progressing, I've seen clients start at the same time. Let's say two clients start at the same time working with me, and one is in a really bad state, crying, hysterical, really bad, but they're extremely motivated. And then another is not so bad, but they're not that motivated to recover. And the one that was way worse bypasses the one that wasn't so bad in their speed of recovery and recovers first. Why? Because they want it more. They're pushing every day where the other one is more of like coasting. They're not doing as much recovery work. So no matter how bad the place where you start out every day reduction, that's what you need to be doing.