In this final section, we shall be getting into the thick of things. We shall learn how to do some exposures, and we shall also talk about a few ways to handle our compulsions. Since there is truly no end to the number of compulsions one can engage in, in ROCD, and...

When you do your exposures start with the ones that would cause you the lowest anxiety if you had to not do them. If the lowest compulsion in your list causes you an anxiety of 2 or 3, you can move on to larger ones. You could try picking out some compulsions that...

What we have discussed so far about ERP, about how it is done, is called in-vivo exposure. In ERP, the combination of in-vivo exposures and imaginal exposures yields the best results (Gillihan et al., 2012). In ERP, in-vivo exposure means doing the exposures by...

Sometimes it is not going to be possible for you to expose yourself directly to your trigger. For example, one of your obsessions may be ‘What if my partner is cheating on me?’ In order to expose yourself to the trigger in-vivo, since you cannot actually get your...

When you are anxious, how do you know? You know it through some physical sensations in the body. You may have breathlessness, palpitations, chest pain, choking, dizziness, tingling feelings, hot/cold flushes, sweating, faintness, and/or trembling (Clark, 1986). When...

In this chapter, we shall discuss what makes an exposure correct. When you have decided to get into ERP for getting your ROCD under control, you should also know the correct way of doing your exposures. Doing your exposures incorrectly will make you feel like you are...

After you have completed your exposures, the next step is to fill in the Reflection column with your experience. This is the feedback to yourself about how your exposure went. Say, you step out believing that it would not rain. But it does rain and you get drenched....

Sometimes in the midst of our exposures, we end up doing some sneaky compulsions without realizing that we have done the compulsions. Again, it is impossible to provide all scenarios given the complexity of the disorder, but I shall provide two examples to offer some...

Let us now discuss the reassurance compulsion a little more in detail, as this is an important element of OCD (Haverkampf, 2017) and one of the most deceitful compulsions ever. First, identifying reassurance is difficult. Well, not as difficult as it is confusing....

You know that reassurance seeking is a compulsion. Yet, reassurance seeking is...well...reassuring. When your friends understand that offering reassurance seeking is unhealthy, they may learn responses like 'You know the answer to this' or 'You know you're seeking...

One of the sneakiest features of OCD is the backdoor spike. When you get into therapy, you learn to handle these doubts. You also understand that your doubts are not rational. The fact that they cause anxiety is an indication that these thoughts are irrational. With...

Obsessions cause anxiety. Anxiety is the reason why you start doing compulsions. You want to relieve the anxiety and, in the beginning, doing compulsions seems like a good way to relieve anxiety. But after a point, the compulsions do not seem to relieve the anxiety as...

Relapse prevention is not to be confused with response prevention, which we have been practicing so far. Relapse prevention is the set of processes that are aimed at maintaining the progress achieved during therapy.  When you reach the end of your anxiety...

This is the last chapter of this course book. Thank you for making it this far. In this chapter, I am just going to leave you with a few thoughts. If you have followed this course book through, you may be able to get a grip of your ROCD to a large extent. However,...