OCD Stories We Tell Ourselves

Why do some OCD fears feel so convincing? Kristina Orlova explains how OCD builds a story from a single trigger, pulling in old memories and what-ifs until it feels like evidence. Using an example from her own life, she shows how to notice the story as it forms, step back from it, and look at the process rather than the content, so you can stop selling yourself on the fear and get on with your day. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Transcript

Okay, So today what I want to jump in and talk to you guys about is something I'm going to call OCD kind of stories that we tell ourselves. And I'd like to explain it. So that hopefully you'll get kind of the principle out of this. So when we think about OCD and having an OCD kind of trigger an episode. You know, Let's really think through what happens. So you have a trigger. Usually right after trigger. Um, There's some sort of kind of doubt process that starts. And. Usually with that doubt process, You also have, You know, Feelings of anxiety, Discomfort, You know, Physiological symptoms like shortness of breath, Or maybe your heart's beating faster, Your thoughts are racing. And then that leads to also engaging in some compulsive action whether that's, You know, Avoiding. Something or checking or mentally reviewing. So, Or reassurance seeking or anything like that. So when we look at kind of this process, The sequence, One of the things that I want to bring our attention to is, You know, What is that process? Of how we arrive. At this conclusion. That something might potentially be really bad. Or that I might be bad. Or that I might be a bad person, Or maybe I'm going to lose my mind, Or I'm going crazy, Or what if I have schizophrenia, Or what if I act out impulsively on the thoughts that I'm having, You know, Did, Do I really recall information correctly? Did this thing really happen? Or okay, Wait a minute, This thing did really happen. Oh my gosh, What does that mean? Did I do things maybe worse than I thought? Or, Oh my gosh, Did I really make it so bad that now, You know, People aren't going to want to talk to me? Right, So notice even as I'm saying those things, And I'm pretty sure a lot of this is relatable. But notice how much of that is something that we're doing in our minds. And it's a process we're starting because we're starting to. Basically doubt, Right? We're doubting our own experience. We're doubting our own senses. We're doubting who we are. And This conversation I'm having with you right now, It really comes from inference-based therapy, And this is a newer cognitive therapy for OCD specifically. And as I'm embarking on learning more about it and using it in my private practice and also using it for myself and my own life. You know one thing that I'm learning and kind of seeing is, You know, Very truly the fact that you know the moment that we have a trigger we often go in our own minds and we start to tell ourselves a story about what's going on. And the deeper we go into that story, Um, Another way I call it is, You know, Compulsively I start to ruminate on things, I started trying to figure things out and analyze. So the more I spend time in that OCD story that I'm now telling myself, The further away I get from actual truth or who I actually know myself to be. And so. As I say this, I can imagine that anybody listening might think things like, Well, But what about when, You know, My fear did come true and. Things did happen. Well, We have to step back and unpack this, You know, One of the things through inference-based therapy. That is being looked at is not the actual content of your OCD so it's not all the. All the ways that you know you have intrusive thoughts or fears or things that maybe did happen in real life but it's looking at the process of how you are thinking the process of how do you go from a trigger to where you end up in OCD. Quite often, This process is so automatic. It happens so fast. That we kind of lose touch with things very rapidly. What you want to be able to do is actually start to re-look at everything. And even though maybe there have been real events that took place in your life. But ask yourself a question. Is it not true that the act of living means you will have real life events take place? Is it not true that the act of living means that sometimes you will make mistakes? Sometimes maybe you will get food poisoning. You may have an insect bite or maybe, You know, You did spill, You know, Some chemical accidentally and now you have to kind of wipe it and you got a little bit on your skin and they're like, Oh, Okay. Right, All the stuff that we, You know, People work so hard to try to, You know, 100% avoid and make sure the stuff never happens. We kind of lose sight and track of the fact that the act of living, Just living, Really means. That you're going to be surrounded by real life things all the time. And now think about this people without OCD you know how do they get through stuff like this when you when you think of all the different things that could potentially be. Triggers when I'm thinking through like somebody with religious OCD, You know, Fear of like selling their soul to the devil or that they did something horrible. Or morality, Right, That I did something morally wrong or morally bad, Or a relationship OCD, What if I'm in the wrong relationship? Or. . . You know, Contamination stuff, Which the most popular one that people tend to know about, You know, What if I have some contaminant on me now and I'm going to get, You know, Sick and die? Or what if I pass it to other people? You know, Or responsibility OCD you know feeling like somehow you know the weight is all on your shoulders and you have to now make sure that you do everything kind of really well and you know check everything. An exorbitant amount of times because you're trying to make sure that everything is, You know, Done right and properly because you know otherwise you'll be responsible for harm to others. Well, If, And of course all the other subtypes. You know, Somatic OCD, False memory OCD, And so on. Existential OCD, Sexual interest of thoughts OCD. So when you think about any topic, Right, Any ways that OCD manifests. Think about the general common process that's involved. What happens for anybody with OCD, Regardless of what subtype or theme you have. Every single person with OCD. Ends up doing a compulsive behavior. Why? And a big part of it is because we go in our heads and we have some sort of reasoning process right we're engaging in some sort of. Thinking process. About why we think that this thing could potentially be really so catastrophic that now I can't just sit here, I feel like I have to do something about it. So think about that, Right? Think about the implication of that. You know, Sometimes people with OCD really can recognize and understand that. The. Stuff that's coming out that it's it's kind of intrusive that you know he asked me it's a very low chance but then you get second this down but what if right well what if this thing could really be bad or what if it really does blow out of proportion or what if these people really do hate me or what if what if what if And the thing is that. I think what happens is that you lose track of the process, Right? You get so enwrapped in this story. That you're now starting to sell yourself on. And You're not able to take a moment to separate yourself from and recognize that, Hey, Something maybe in my real life is happening right now. Um, You know, I mean, I like it. I mean, I agree with it. I may feel bad about it, Whatever it is, But that it's just one of the pieces of living life. Um, You know, Like. Sometimes we get food poisoning. Sometimes, You know, We might kind of. Lose ourselves for a minute in something and maybe we do. Do say something or do something that somebody else finds offensive or doesn't like or gets mad at or whatever it is. And as much as we all would like to be in this kind of bubble of everything being all nice all the time and everything is all great and nobody ever gets hurt and, You know, The truth is that we all, We all get hurt we all make mistakes we all fumble we all fall like that's just literally being a human being. And I think that. You know, If we can kind of step back and again, Not get sucked into the actual content but pull back for a minute and go more meta. And look at how is it that you're arriving. At these conclusions, How's it you're arriving at these places of doubt. How did you get there, You know, Is it like, Is that thinking really rooted in actual truth and facts, Based on your senses based on what you know about yourself, Your true self. Is it based on common knowledge that you have or is it based on some arbitrary fact? On some random past experience that you're now your brain is trying to tie in because your brain is working overtime, Trying to figure out a way how to make sense of this right. And if you really look at us again you know a lot of times what I see is that, And even for myself you know that sometimes my CD logic sounds really reasonable. It really does. It sounds really on point. And, And when I look again. Can start to see that oh yeah this this actually know this isn't actually logical right now this is not even based on. On reality, Like this is based on a lot of hypothetical scenarios, A lot of guesswork that I'm doing, Or me trying to pull in some other things from God knows when and go, Wait a minute, You know, And I had to kind of stop myself and go, Hold on, Christina, Like, Is this actually what's going on? Or, You know, Is your are you kind of running away with this? Kind of story that your brain is starting to sell to you and I'm starting to kind of buy it and buy into it. As I've been learning about inference based approach and I've been learning to. You know, Look at my own process of how my OCD brain works. Know, Just processes information, How does, How does my OCD, Like when you get triggered, How does that OCD logic actually work? What's the mechanism behind it? What does it actually sound like? What kind of information is it using to try to kind of make its case, Right, So that I can, You know, Engage in that compulsion when I really pull back and I've and I kind of watch this process and I take some notes and kind of really look at it, You know, I start to see and realize a lot of places where. Um, The OCD brain really is not. Kind of using things that are really rooted in actual reality in the here and now. It's really rooted in a lot of doubt and a lot of kind of catastrophic thinking. It could sound highly reasonable, But really it gets really negatively biased. And suddenly all the brain is looking for is to find any shred of information and every shred of information to pull together to essentially try to prove this point, That this fear, That this thing, That popped in that it's probably or most likely true or it could be true. And. You know, The more that I allow myself to go down that process, The more enwrapped I get in that story and frankly, You know, Start to kind of lose sense of who I know myself to be. And even this weekend there's a moment where I caught myself getting a little bit triggered and I felt like that just anxiety in my stomach like it was like this weird like kind of bubbly up and down feeling and it really didn't feel good and then my heart was racing a little bit but then You know, I saw I witnessed my brain, Kind of, I saw this process where my mind was starting to. Look for Shreds of information or something, Something that I could you know it could latch on to to start to spin this tale and essentially. Pull me deeper into this doubting process. Know, Start to distrust my own self and distrust what I actually knew in front of me. And I, You know, Really caught that and said, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Christina, What are you doing? Like, You're about to go down this rabbit hole and start a lot of kind of mental guesswork about something that you actually don't even really know about. Like you don't even have information about this. How are you even arriving at this conclusion? Like is this, Is this even really rooted truly in something that's actually happening or are you just starting to run away with yourself, Right? So being able to catch that and being able to stop and step away from that process and literally tell myself like, No, I'm not doing that. I'm going to be, Here right now in this present moment and let me allow the next moment to unfold in front of me. And as things unfold, We'll see what happens, You know, But I don't have enough information to start to base all of this hypothetical nonsense in my brain. So I literally just went, No, We're not, I'm not going to do that because I recognize that a lot of the stuff my brain was wanting to use as kind of evidence and facts were based on, You know, Random stuff from back, You know, In the day from my own life, But it's like, That's not really relevant right now. Like right now where I'm at and what I'm doing is this, You know? And so when I saw that I was able to create that separation more rapidly and and then everything just cooled down. Went on about my day and my evening and totally fine. Had a fine evening. And so really watch and catch your own self. Basically in the act while you're trying to essentially sell yourself on the story, The story about, You know, All the ways that you know, Your brain is going to try to tell you that your OCD fear could potentially be true and right and or like a partner that this partner potentially is a bad partner and that you lose sight of the fact that you're maybe hyper focusing on just all the negative aspects and you're not seeing positive aspects. Granted you know I'm saying that with one caveat that relationship you're in generally would be a good, Healthy relationship. We're not talking about relationships where you have very serious concerns and your foundation is not solid and there's a lot of red flags. We're talking about relationships where generally they're actually good, They're fine, But your OCD can't see that. Your OCD brain starts to spin this tale of all the stuff that's bad. And so noticing all such kind of that negative bias you know as humans we have negative bias, But how often do we really stop and kind of check ourselves like, Am I actually focusing on the right target, Or am I letting my brain kind of run away with itself, Especially my OCD brain? Because remember, People without OCD, Even if there's real life events that have taken place, Or even if they did make mistakes, Or something did happen that they were, You know, Nervous around, Usually people kind of reflect on it, They learn from it, And they move on, That's it, They move on, It's done. Person with OCD, We don't move on. We keep replaying this stuff and it's kind of like this becomes really this this like a self-fulfilling prophecy and it becomes really difficult because we keep badgering ourselves and replaying stuff and then working so hard to try avoid things, And we again completely start to lose touch with what's actually happening here right now in this moment. Right, We're not in this moment we're not here we're not present we're not connected to ourselves we're now kind of across the bridge to this other place that's filled and riddled with a ton of doubt that we keep feeding using things that sound reasonable and sound logical, But if you look again, You might notice. That a lot of times. It's not necessarily really truly rooted. In what's actually going on. And again, This is all with the caveat of that we all make mistakes. And active living means that you will also face just, You know, Life circumstances and environmental circumstances that you know, Might be your trigger. Um, You know, Notice, You know, As you move through life, Are you actually moving forward or do you keep getting stuck on things? And then getting stuck in your head. And not able to actually be in the here and now and you're constantly replaying stuff, Even if it's already been like a year or two or three or five or 10. But you're still reliving something in your mind because you keep trying to figure this thing out and you're not kind of connecting and realizing that, You know, You just lost a whole bunch of time. To what, Right? So I invite you to just think about this, You know, I know there can be a lot of questions about this to try to kind of wrap your brain around this and understand you know what's a compulsion versus being in your actual life and how do I do this and again this is, You know, New therapy called inference based therapy it's a cognitive therapy, More like metacognitive approach for OCD. You know, I am currently going through the training process. And working with some modules with some clients. But I do want to put out there this concept that. You know, Even when you have any OC trigger whether it's an internal feeling stage or whether it's a real life event you know. I invite you to really look at and reflect on What is my process of thinking? How do I arrive to these places? How do I arrive? To these conclusions, What is it really based on? Right so so kind of step back from the content of the actual thought and really look at the process, How is it that I go from A to Z. And really look at that and see, You know, What's actually going on for you there and how often are you actually just selling yourself constantly on your OCD story is what I call it. So thanks for listening and hopefully this was helpful.