You did lock the door (how to deal with OCD)
Do you find yourself going back to check if you locked your front door? Or the car? Or maybe you need to check whether you left a light on, or turned the oven off.
Whatever it is, the problem is the same: we know we did lock the door, but we still have to go back and check.
Checking seems harmless, but it does waste some of our valuable time. It also teaches us that we need to go back and check in order to feel okay. A much better strategy is to walk away. It's exposure therapy: it feels uncomfortable at first, but gets easier with time.
Subtitles
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| 00:00:07 | You did lock the door |
| 00:00:11 | Doesn't matter if you feel like you didn't. Trust me you did lock the door |
| 00:00:15 | And you dont need to go back and check whether you locked it |
| 00:00:19 | This is something which comes up with people with anxiety all the time that they will get so far and then they will |
| 00:00:25 | wonder whether they locked their house locked their car whatever it is. |
| 00:00:28 | And then they have to go back and check and it is a pain right? |
| 00:00:33 | but also the fact that we go back and check is quite a bad thing |
| 00:00:38 | because it reinforces the idea that we have to go back and check just to make sure. |
| 00:00:44 | So lets take an exposure therapy approach to this, |
| 00:00:48 | what we need to expose ourselves here to show is its ok |
| 00:00:52 | is that we can walk away from the house without having to go back and check and everything is still fine. |
| 00:00:58 | It is a bit of an uncomfortable feeling but actually there is nobody breaks into our house, |
| 00:01:03 | It is not that we have left the door unlocked and when we come back and all our stuff is gone. |
| 00:01:07 | When we get back the stuff would still be there because we know it,we locked it deep down,right, |
| 00:01:12 | it is only that fear, it is only that anxiety that makes us want to go back and check it. |
| 00:01:16 | So if you want an exposure approach to this, we just need to walk away. |
| 00:01:22 | Because by walking away not going back and checking, we will teach ourselves that it |
| 00:01:27 | is ok to walk away,because we know, we really locked it, we lock it every time |
| 00:01:32 | and every time we go back and check it was locked the 1st time, right. |
| 00:01:35 | So by walking away and purposely reminding ourselves that this feels uncomfortable to walk away. |
| 00:01:42 | But the only reason that it is happening is because of my anxiety not because I geniunely forgot to lock the door. |
| 00:01:49 | Then we teach ourselves it is ok to walk away and in the future we won't spend all this time stressing in going back and checking wheather we have locked the door. |