The key to finding freedom from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is to lessen your compulsions. By doing so, you can learn to manage the condition enough to live a fulfilling life. If you’re unfamiliar, compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental acts performed to neutralize obsessions (intrusive thoughts, sensations, images, feelings, or urges that cause anxiety or distress), or try to prevent something bad from happening.
“While compulsions might feel good in the moment, they reinforce your reliance on them, which causes them to grow stronger,” explains Jackie Shapin, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in anxiety, OCD, and eating disorders.
When we continue engaging in the OCD cycle, we tell our brains that our intrusive thoughts warrant specific responses—but they don’t. By performing a compulsion you give in to the idea that your intrusive thoughts have more power and meaning than they actually do. “Compulsions don’t teach our brains anything new, nor do they create a corrective experience,” Shapin says.
Resisting compulsions takes time, motivation, and practice—and it looks different for each person. Read on to learn response prevention strategies for when compulsions feel impossible to resist.
Fight OCD compulsions with response-prevention tools
Before we get into specific techniques, it’s important to understand what exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy is. ERP is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that was designed to treat OCD, and is highly effective. Response prevention is the most important aspect of ERP, as it helps you learn to respond to an obsession or urge without performing a compulsion.
By reacting differently, you’re teaching your brain to break the cycle of symptoms. “OCD causes your brain to send off danger alarms even when there is no danger,” Shapin explains. “In order to reduce the severity of OCD symptoms, you have to teach your brain that many of these alarms are errors.” Sometimes eliminating compulsions feels too difficult early on. Even though the ultimate goal in managing OCD is resisting rituals, it can help to start small.
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Five strategies to resist OCD compulsions
1. Delay compulsions
The first thing you can try is delaying the amount of time that elapses between your obsession and compulsion. “When you have intrusive thoughts, your anxiety rises, as does the urge to act on a compulsion,” explains Shapin. Begin noticing when obsessions that cause anxiety arise. When an obsession appears, set a timer for five to ten minutes and do your best to resist compulsing until time is up. You may end up acting on the compulsion once you’ve hit “time,” or you might be able to try going for another five to ten minutes. Either way, sitting with your anxiety for some amount of time will help you learn to feel more comfortable with difficult emotions. “Sometimes your urge to perform a compulsion will even pass entirely,” Shapin adds.
Many people have an “all or nothing mentality” around compulsions. Remember that if you engage in one compulsive behavior, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost all your progress. Increasing the time between these behaviors, even by five minutes, is a big step forward.
2. Do compulsions wrong
Another way of messing with OCD’s patterns is to do a compulsion differently. “If your compulsions involve a number of rituals, change up the order, up the speed, or take part of the ritual out,” says Shapin. You can also intentionally do your compulsion “wrong,” breaking the rules that OCD has created for you. This way, you won’t be feeding your OCD exactly what it wants, but you also won’t be forcing yourself to resist responding entirely, if that feels too hard.
Be creative, and be sure to mix up how you shake up your compulsions to avoid forming new compulsions. “If it feels a bit less comfortable than your usual compulsion, that’s probably a sign that it’s helping,” Shapin says.
3. Undo compulsions
Undoing a compulsion is retriggering yourself after the compulsion is done. If your obsessions center on contamination, for example, you might intentionally touch something contaminated after compulsively washing your hands. Or, if your compulsions center around aligning objects in a specific order or number, you might force yourself to “mess up” this pattern right after completing it.
4. Use the SUDS scale
The Subjective Units of Distress (SUDs) scale is a tool for measuring the intensity of feelings such as distress and anxiety. “Think of it as a fear thermometer that uses a one-to-ten scale,” Shapin explains. “One is feeling relaxed and chill, and ten is complete panic—the worst distress imaginable.”
When starting out with ERP, it is helpful to create a hierarchy of exposures utilizing your SUDs scale as a guiding point. “I will usually have my clients start with exposures that rank around a three or four,” Shapin says. Starting small can help you avoid overwhelming.
It can be helpful to keep track of your SUDs to help you get more in touch with the intensity of your emotional and physical feelings, and track progress. If you have difficulty resisting compulsions using tools you have learned, your SUDs level is probably too high, or you may be experiencing a lack of motivation. It’s okay to try something less intense—the goal is to work your way up!
5. Embrace self-compassion
Cultivating self-compassion and motivation can be helpful tools for resisting compulsions. “One of my favorite tools for increasing self-compassion is focusing on curiosity over judgment,” Shapin says.
People with OCD often believe that the contents of their thoughts mean something about who they are, that those thoughts define their worth. This could not be farther from the truth. OCD latches on to what someone cares about most. If you’re having intrusive thoughts about harming a loved one for instance, it indicates how much you care about that person—not that you secretly want to hurt them.
“If you have OCD, you can increase your self-compassion by taking note of how you speak to yourself,”
Jackie Shapin
Self-compassion strategies include:
- Shifting self-talk towards a more compassionate voice.
- Allowing yourself grace when things don’t happen as quickly or easily as you’d like.
- Talking to yourself like you’d talk to a best friend or loved one.
- Trying not to compare yourself to others.
- Staying mindful about the fact that your experience and feelings are valid.
Motivation is what drives us to behave the way we do, and research shows that self-compassion is more motivating that self-criticism. “It’s hard to practice ERP when you have trouble recalling why it’s worth it in the first place,” Shapin says. Think about the freedom you can have when OCD begins to loosen its grip on your life. Think about your values and how they align with recovery. Managing your OCD helps you get back to these values. Learning about treatment, and knowing that it can help significantly, can be a great motivator.
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Set intentional goals for your recovery
The tools above can give you the nudge you need to resist compulsions, if at first it doesn’t feel possible. Be patient, try different strategies, and give yourself more than one opportunity to try each technique. Find what works for you, and mix it up so that new rituals don’t form.
Remember, if your goal is to get rid of obsessions, you will have a very hard time overcoming OCD. “Just like we cannot get rid of feelings, we cannot get rid of thoughts,” Shapin says. Reframe your goal towards cutting out the compulsions that follow obsessions, because we can change our behaviors. The more you can allow discomfort and anxiety to exist, the more you are teaching your brain that you can handle anything without compulsions.
