Changing your response to thoughts

Hi all,

I wanted to share about "changing your response to thoughts" from a book.

Hope this helps.

The bibliography is below.

And, while you practice accepting your distressing thoughts, here’s something else for you to think about: When you boil it down, the content of your distressing thoughts is not the problem; rather, what causes your pain and frustration is how you respond to the content of your thoughts. You’ve taken a lifetime to learn how to be tense, fearful, anxious, and angry in response to these thoughts. But that doesn’t mean it has to be this way.

If you choose, you can learn to respond differently to your thoughts, observing them and letting them slip back into the mental ooze from whence they came without engaging with them. This is where most therapy for OCD goes awry—in getting all caught up in the content and meaning of your thoughts instead of focusing on the process of how these intrusive and mostly irrelevant thoughts get stuck in the loop of your mind.

“I’ll just allow this thought to be there.”

“I will go about my day in full and complete acceptance of the ‘glitchy’ thoughts my OCD puts into my head.”

“I will allow my horrible thoughts to take up space in my mind for a while.”

“While I don’t have to like this thought, I fully accept its being there.”

DuFrene, Troy. Coping with OCD: Practical Strategies for Living Well with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (pp. 74,75,76) New Harbinger Publications. Kindle Edition.

[Bentleywins]

My OCD is all health related and I have no idea how to use ERP for that.

[Tikirob in reply to Bentleywins]

Hi Bentley I have health related OCD. I’m not doing great but better than 4 years ago when I first tried ERP. If you have any questions or want to talk about it please let me know. I don’t want to see others suffer with OCD.

[Hidden in reply to Bentleywins]

I am sorry to hear that you are having health related OCD.

I came across an article written by a therapist about "Hypochondriasis" which means health anxiety.

It is about health anxiety OCD.

Hope it helps.

beyondocd.org/expert-perspe...