by afraidofdiseases » Wed Dec 19, 2012 12:27 pm

Why does Harm OCD (and other forms of Pure-O) occur?

in theory

in worst case

What is going on in Pure-O?

Helpful techniques

Your compulsions are found counterproductive by the OCD part of your brain

By making your obsessions stronger

Hello.I've suffered from Harm OCD (mostly about self-harm) for 4 months. I wanted to share some reflections and possibly help others. English is not my native language, so please bear me with the writing and grammar mistakesFirst, we have an underlying fear. Sort of like a worst-case scenario. Our mental nightmare. It could be dying, it could be losing our spouse, our children, our parents or our pets. Then, I believe, at some point, we are realizing what wecould be able to do, or, known as a trigger. Picture having dinner, eating steak. We could just pick up that steak knife and stab someone (or ourself). What is keeping us from doing so?To illustrate with another example (which will apply to anyone, OCD or not). If you are standing on the edge of a cliff, you will experience two sensations. One is fear of falling by accident, but the other is realizing that nothing is holding you back from jumping.People with Pure-O are falsely assuming, or feeling, that nothing is holding us back from doing what we fear. So the brain is constantly reminding us of a danger that in reality doesn't exist. We just feel that it does, because we are falsely assuming that nothing is keeping us from doing what we fear.In my experience, pure-O is involving four elements:- Obsessions (images, like stabbing someone or slitting your wrists, thoughts, like "what if X happens" or "I want to kill someone or myself" false urges "feeling drawn towards what we fear")- Compulsions (mental rituals like arguing with your thoughts or convincing yourself that you would never do any harm, or physical rituals like touching a piece of wood, holding your breath or washing hands)- Problem solving (trying to think yourself out of the OCD, looking for a cause). The expression "rumination" is commonly used but it's not correct. Rumination is reliving bad experiences and has something to do with depression, not OCD.- False beliefs (I'm going to do or become X sometime in the future)We often believe that our obsession is the problematic factor. This is, in my experience, not necessarily true. Anyone can have almost any intrusive thought. But we, who are suffering from OCD, respond differently to the thoughts. Which is, again, causing problems.Problem solving is possibly the worst strategy to get rid of OCD. It always fails. Try to think of the false beliefs as a "long-term" obsession, and you will see that problem solving is a "long-term compulsion". Just as our compulsions are reinforcing the obsessions, the problem solving is reinforcing the false beliefs. The fact is, there are really no problems. So trying to solve something that doesn't exist, will make our brains believe you really have a problem (that you really are a murderer or suicidal or gay or whatever we fear that we are).We who suffer from Pure-O, are victims of the "thought-action-fusion" belief.Somehow we believe that thinking something makes it likely to act on the thought. Of course, who can blame us? Just think of the following example:- You feel you need to go to the toilet (from drinking too much coffee this morning)- Your brain tells you: You need to urinate- You act on the thought and go to the toilet.So far, so good (or bad). We are really acting on our thoughts.Now, let's try something else. Close your eyes (well, after reading this, duh) and think "If I can keep my eyes closed for one minute, something good will happen" (like, you are not what you fear you are). If I fail, something bad will happen (like, you are what you fear).What you likely will experience:You will feel urges, almost intense urges, to open your eyes. However, you will NOT, not even consider, doing it. The point with this exercise is not to create a new compulsion, but to illustrate that we aren't following our "urges". When realizing this, we are able to create distance between our OCD thoughts and reality. Which is very important.Another example (to illustrate the false urges). It may trigger, so maybe it's not a good idea to do it, but to explain why we get those false urges: Say, you got this task: If you are thinking about pink polarbears the next minute, something terrible, which we really fear, but not what we're having OCD about, will happen. For example, if we are afraid of harming ourselves, think that your best friend will die. You will experience that no matter how hard you try, the pink polarbear pop up in your mind.Our brain isn't used to NOT think about something when experiencing danger. If you are (rightfully) afraid of bears or lions, when going in the forests, it would be a very bad idea to NOT think about bears or lions, and even worse doing what you can to forget their existence. Your obsessions are just what the brain is doing to remind you of a danger that you have constructed by yourself. And here is what's important:And how does the brain respond?. If you fight back by increasing your compulsions, you go into a bad circle where you will feel more and more anxious and distressed.The obsessions will go away automatically when you stop your compulsions. Your false beliefs will go away automatically when you stop trying to solve them or thinking your way out of them.Of course, the pathological doubt is making itself known just here. We never trust 100% that we have OCD. We are potential murderers, suicidal, gay, cheating, abusive, depending on which OCD we are suffering from. To get rid of OCD, we must first trust that we really are suffering from OCD. Which is reasonable. If you are going to get rid of a throat infection, your doctor must know for sure you are suffering from a throat infection, not something else. I've been trying to treat my OCD by improving my quality of life (to make killing myself less likely). While it's nice to improve quality of life, it doesn't really help. You can't beat harm OCD towards your girlfriend by treating her better and improving the relationship. More likely the opposite, your fear will be worse because you have more to lose.So, my recommendation is, start today, by removing compulsions, one after one. Start with quitting compulsive behaviour towards the least scary thoughts (the fleeting images, for example). Soon you will learn that you didn't do any harm even if you didn't do any compulsions. Soon you can move further. And by all means, stop trying to think yourself out of this problem. It will eventually cause depression because you block out positive input to your brain and mind.Your brain will learn that you aren't really in danger. When that happens, you no longer suffer from Pure-O.Good luck