OCD - Exposure is the keyword

Face your anxiety and stop doing what you usually do. A little at a time, so you dare. Turn up the challenge when you get bored, not before. Make it as easy as possible to maximize your chances of success. It's called Exposure Response Prevention. You have to do what you fear; step on the lines, touch the handle, leave the plug in the socket. Check the door lock or the hob one less time. Do it a little at a time and find that you survive.

Your OCD is thoughts. Thoughts are thoughts and they are not dangerous. Nothing happens by thinking thoughts. Something only happens when you choose to do something. Action is an Act of Will, they call it. Something you want. You can think anything without anything happening. Think of a bag with 1 million DKK falling from the sky. How many bags fall? None of them. Because these are thoughts that require action before anything happens. OCD is about having obsessions/compulsions that you think are dangerous. This causes anxiety. You become afraid ofthe mind. Some people want to "reset/neutralize" them. The problem with OCD is that it's insatiable. You can't satisfy it. It feeds on doubt and everything is questionable. You have to say no to it and the anxiety. Take a chance and try to challenge it. Experience that it works. That disaster doesn't happen. That you survive even if you try the dangerous things. It's about not doing what it suggests.

You perform compulsions to neutralize the dangerous. The D stands for a disorder. It's called OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. If you want to change it, you have to challenge it. A little at a time. Together with a good therapist. Start with the least unpleasant. See what happens when you don't perform the compulsive act. It's called ERP, Exposure Response Prevention. That's what works. It's within the cognitive behavioral therapy school. You can read more about it over in the Method section. It isWell researched. You can Google it.

Don't do what you want to do when you get these thoughts. Challenging OCD is scary at first. The more you say yes to the anxiety, the more it grows. It's like you're feeding it. Say no. The compulsions briefly help to calm the anxiety that the thoughts create. And then the anxiety comes back, stronger. Maybe something was wrong after all?

You get more anxiety at first when you challenge it. That's why you should do it very little at a time. Until you've learned that it's safe. Start with the easiest, so you can see that nothing is happening. That it's just thoughts. When you get bored, you can turn up the challenge. Not before. It should be as easy as possible. In my experience, people generally take on too big a challenge when it comes to mental change. Because they want to feel better.

If you feel really bad and find it difficult to do this, you can get some medication that gives you a place where you have a little more strength to challenge it. It can be antidepressant or antipsychotic medication, depending on what the doctors decide. That's their specialty. Change takes time. I used to tell my patients in psychiatry that if they had had their problems for several years, they could probably expect that it would take just as many months to make a change. So 10 years would mean 10 months. HoweverIt can happen. It takes will, courage and persistence.