7 Steps to Solve Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Follow these seven steps to decrease any Obsessive Compulsive Disorder you may have and increase your levels of happiness.

Step 1

Explore where your obsessive-compulsive habits come from. Are they fueled by some sort of fear or anxiety? Perhaps your parents or parents had OCD and you learned that life’s frightening and you must ‘control’ the fear with certain behaviors.

Or you might have experienced a trauma, and obsessive-compulsive habits became your way of ‘coping’ in the aftermath. Maybe it’s the way you react when demands mount at work or at home. Understanding this gives you more power and a springboard for action.

Step 2

Begin by keeping an obsessive-compulsive habits diary for one week. Make it simple – mark a tick for each obsessive thought that you have and a cross for each compulsive behavior. Briefly note any ‘trigger’ that sets off the thought or behavior.

Step 3

Examine your diary for patterns. Can you determine what sets you off? For example, is it stress when you’re rushing around and getting ready for work? that leaves you fretful so that you return to recheck the locks on your front door a couple of times after leaving for work?

On a separate sheet write down: your main ‘triggers’ for obsessive-compulsive habits (say, getting stressed by your morning routine before work), your obsessive or compulsive responses, and relevant goals, for example, to stop re-checking locks.

Step 4

Before implementing any strategy, begin to ‘reframe’ you’re thinking. Accept that obsessive-compulsive habits are NOT a positive and happy coping strategy. Up until now, you may have seen them as your coping mechanism, your savior even!

But they are the opposite, preventing you from learning positive coping strategies. Headline your piece of paper from Step 3 with the fact ‘My obsessive-compulsive habits are not coping strategies!’ Hold this thought.

Step 5

Now you should enlist loved ones to help you with your action plan. If you share your life with a partner, close friends or family members, their support can be vital in resisting your obsessive-compulsive habits.

Explain clearly to them what you’ve identified through your diary and how you’re planning to change this. Tell them you need support in moving forward.

Step 6

Acting requires several elements. Select your first goal. For example, if you wash your hands twice whenever you touch food, the goal is to resist and wash once only. As you struggle the urge to wash again, use deep breathing to relax your entire body.

Moreover, you also use continual communication with a loved one about your inside feelings of fear. Report to them out loud how you’re feeling while you resist that extra handwashing. Now affirm to yourself that nothing bad has happened and that you’ve coped despite not carrying out your compulsive behavior.

Give yourself loads of praise for your resistance and acknowledge that setting goals and good communication are a positive coping strategy.

Step 7

Continue to monitor your goals and stress levels. Let’s say that you have three key rituals to tackle – one at a time – building your coping-confidence. Priorities them and perhaps start by challenging yourself over the simplest one first.

Keep an open dialogue with loved ones about your successes and your failures. Don’t become secretive about obsessive-compulsive habits when it comes to the thoughts and behaviors that you fail to resist. Carry on being open-minded to implementing real coping strategies like talking about difficulties and looking for solutions to the stresses we all face.

When you start to challenge and conquer these sorts of destructive habitual responses, you’ll feel your well-being and happiness increase. It’s a wonderful thing to rise to such challenges.

we’ve now highlighted several ways in which habitual responses, whether practical or emotional, can either ease you through life or diminish your enjoyment of life.

It’s wise to remember that these are often habits of a lifetime and don’t change overnight. Simply increasing your awareness of the way, you habitually respond in your life can be a massive benefit.

When you go on to act to improve certain behaviors, or prevent others, you’ll feel a sense of relief and release. Now we’d like to explore the final Happiness Principle that has a frequently much under-estimated impact on your well-being, profoundly affecting your sense of unhappiness or happiness.