by Lee Skavydis

Created on: October 20, 2010

There are many strategies you can use to combat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and most of these techniques are used in the well known 'Cognitive Behaviour Therapy' treatment.

OCD is a debilitating anxiety disorder that causes immense fear in sufferers and those people tend to avoid certain situations, fearing the worst will happen.

Normally, OCD uses a particular subject matter to taunt the sufferer with but the trick to overcoming the disorder is to target the anxiety, not the thoughts!

With that said, here are some ways you can use to fight it:

1. Write your thoughts down on a piece of paper and use a voice recorder to record yourself saying the thoughts that you think of. This desensitizes the brain to the anxiety, although, your anxiety may rise at first but stick with it and you should see a big improvement.

This technique is one of the most recommended ones!

2. If you get an anxious thought, replay the thought until your anxiety comes down. Anxiety can only reach a certain level before it has to come down on it's own, and your adrenal glands can only pump out so much adrenaline.

This will also teach your brain that the thoughts pose no threat to you, or itself, so it will have no need to make you fearful of them.

3. Read many books on OCD and CBT to overcome it. Gaining knowledge will be powerful to you in order to treat it.

'Imp Of The Mind' by Lee Baer focuses on the Pure Obsessional form of OCD and is highly recommended!

'Brain Lock' is a good read for those with the fear of being poisoned or some kind of checking OCD.

If you have OCD that has a theme to do with religion, then I recommend 'The Doubting Disease' by Joseph Ciarrochi.

For the more traditional form of OCD, 'Getting Control' by Lee Baer is another good read!

4. Resist any temptations or thoughts to avoid particular situations. Your anxiety will "tell" you to avoid particular things and doing this only makes the disorder worse for you.

No matter how strong your fears are, search deep within yourself to know that they are irrational and that you will take the "risk" anyway.

You will grow in confidence once you do this a few times!

5. Use deep and slow breathing for those high anxiety moments. Inhale through your nose slowly, hold for a couple of seconds and breathe out through your mouth.

Do this a few times until you feel your anxiety lowering.

6. A lot of OCD sufferers, who tell their friends and family that they have the disorder, often seek reassurance to make themselves feel better. However, this is counter productive and will only calm the sufferer for a little while until they get another worrying thought.

This continues the cycle of becoming anxious and relieving yourself.

7. Teach yourself different ways to respond to situations that cause anxiety because of your OCD.

Instead of reassuring yourself, decide to say: "Okay, this is worrying me now that something bad will happen, but I will go through with it, anyway, and will see what happens".

Training yourself to think differently will teach your mind to think more positively about these situations and helps to overpower OCD.

8. When you have high anxiety, sit through it without responding and do not distract yourself. "Watch" how it acts within you. 

This will help you to respond to anxiety much better in the future.

9. When having an anxious thought do not analyze why you had it, and try to not worry. This is called rumination, and this is a major reason as to why your OCD continues the way it does.

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