Cognitive therapy also focuses on the meaning we attach to events, thoughts and images. The more negative the meaning we give something, the more negative the emotion we feel. Human beings easily misinterpret things, giving them a more negative meaning than they deserve. In the case of OCD, the heart of th problem is the way normal intrusive thoughts, images, doubts and urges are misinterpreted as abnormal, unacceptable, or dangerous.
Cognitive therapy helps people develop a more realistic and helpful way of understanding the mental events they worry as so much about and to develop behevioral experiments to test out their theories. However, try to gain a better understanding of your own problem before you feel panickly and are having intrusive thoughts or urges. Be cautions about these techniques when you are highly anxious, as we don't want to teach you how to improve assurance and mental rituals rather than eliminate them.
Cognitive therapy can also help you to reduce the chances of your OCD returning, by helping you to understand some of the thinking styles and philosophies that make you vulnerable to the problem. It can then give you tools to help reduce the chanc of these problems recurring.
A third way in which cognitive therapy can be especially helpful is in reducing the obstacles to chance, such as shame and depression, that many individuals with OCD encounter when as they strive towards overcoming it.
Thinking Errors ->
Understanding your 'thinking errors' is a key aspect of cognitive therapy. These inaccurate or unhelpful ways of thinking are by no means unique to OCD sufferers - on the contrary, nearly everyone tends to fall into them from time to time. Unfortunately, emotions such as anxiety, depression, guilty, and shame tend to increase the extent to which we tend to think in a distorted way, and these distorted thoughts can, in turn, leads to more emotions.
Magical Thinking ->
Magical thinking is the belief that one has the power to influence good or bad events, and leads on to superstitious behaviors. Magical thinking is common in OCD. The goal here is to accept intrusive thoughts, images and urges without engaging in any mental activity or behavior that makes us think we can magically prevent them from occuring. 'Acceptance' means treating the thought as just as thought - for example, if you believe that you arecontaminated and that you will lose control and go crazy. It,s purely a mental event.
To strip intrusive thoughts and images of their assumed 'power', we recommend a positive pursuit of anti-superstition, to the point of trying to make bad things happen in our head and in writing to show that it can't be done . Bad things do occasionally happen to all of us, but by chance, not because we have willed it or 'tempted fate'. So sdtand up and fight against OCD and superstitious claptrap! For example, if you are worried about unlucky numbers, make a goal of asking for 13 in various transactions and have pictures of 666 in your bedroom. They are just numbers!
Catastrophizing ->
Individuals with OCD have very often made a 'catastrophic misinterpretation' of an intrusive thoughts, intrusive image, a doubt, or an urges to act in an unacceptable or unusual way. One way of tackling this is first to identify your catastrophic misinterpretation, and think of some alternative ways of interpreting it.
'Black-and-White' thinking ->
This refers to thinking in opposite extreme. The problem is that when we think in extremes we tend also to feel and act in more unhelpful and extreme ways.Examples of black-and-white thinking in OCD are:
'Either iam sure that my intrusive thought is safe, or it's dangerous'
'Either iam sure responsible for causing harm or iam not'
'Either iam clean or iam dirty'
The solution to black-and-white thinking is to think in degrees, like a thermometre. This is what we call the 'continuum method for tackling black-and-white thinking'The aim in using the continuum technique is to set the two ends of the 'either/or' continuum using the concept you have becom caught up in, such as '100 percent good person' and '100 percent bad person' if you believe something like 'either iam good in all i think or do or iam a bad person'
Demands ->
'Must','should','have to' and 'ought' are all words that mean you are making demands of yourself or others. Examples of demands are:
-- They are in flexible, which makes them poorly suited to dealing with real people and the real
world, which do not conform absolutely to rigid rules.
-- I should be in control of the thoughts and images that across my mind.
-- I must be certain that my actions or lack of action do not result in harm to myself or others.
-- I have got to take every care not to pass on contamination.
-- Because iam a basically sensible person I ought to be able to get rid of my OCD without
needing help or advice.
-- Because my family know I become upset if they come into the house without washing their hands they absolutely should do so, whether or not they think it's reasonable.
-- People ought to be more careful not to cause harm accidentally.
There are various problems with the demands we place on ourselves, other people, and the world around us:
--They are unhelpful, leading to painful, disturbed emotions(e.g. anxiety, guilt, shame) and counterproductive behaviors(e.g rituals and avoidance) when they are not met. Even when we do meet them we quickly tend to become anxious about whether we will able to continue to meet them.
--They are illogical, in the sense that they do not logically follow from our wishes and preferences. For example, it's natural to want not to have images of the people we love being killed, but it does not make sense to say that because i do not like it( a preference), I must not have it (a demand).