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When you're really anxious, panicking, or in the middle of an OCD flare up, you feel strongly compelled to do something. A compulsion, a ritual, a safety behavior, reassurance seeking, an escape. It feels like you're doing something important. In this episode I explain why I call all of that theater. It looks and feels like you're accomplishing something, but all it really does is change how you feel in the moment.

I start by walking through the anxiety and OCD cycle and where anxiety disorders branch off from regular garden variety anxiety. Then I talk about imaginary connections, a concept you'll recognize if you know the inferential confusion model of OCD. A thought about an apple is not an apple, and if I start biting the air because I'm craving one, you'd look at me funny. Your fear of death, insanity, moral failure, or being overwhelmed works the same way. The fear is not the actual outcome, so the things you do to calm that fear have zero impact on the outcome itself. Powerful emotions can make those connections feel completely real anyway.

I also acknowledge that wanting to feel better is not a crime or a failure. I wanted to feel better too. But recovery relies on the transient nature of all internal experiences. Feelings come and go on their own, and calming down tends to happen when we do less about how we feel. That's why so many recovered people look back and say, "I can't believe I used to do that."

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

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If you have OCD, you've probably heard that it can never be cured, only managed. That can leave you wondering what happens if it comes back. This week I talk with Jess Marriner, an OCD therapist in the UK who also has OCD, about what that actually looks like and what she does when it happens.

A few days before we recorded, Jess had a morning where she fell down the rabbit hole of ruminating about one of her classic themes. She's open about that because she doesn't want anyone with OCD to think they're failing when it happens to them. The way Jess sees it, when people say their OCD is back, what's really going on is they've started doing compulsions again. Looking at it that way gives you some agency, because compulsions are something you can choose to stop doing.

We talk about why OCD tends to flare up during times of high stress, how to recognize when you're in the rabbit hole, and how physical sensations can be a clue that you're ruminating. OCD will try to tell you those sensations are proof that the thought matters. Jess shares her rule that no rumination is good rumination, the difference between problem solving and problem spinning, and why accepting the presence of a thought is different from accepting what it might mean. We also get into measuring recovery by impact. An hour down the rabbit hole is a very different thing from months of your life.

Find Jess on Instagram at https://instagram.com/jessmarrinertherapy and at https://www.jessmarrinertherapy.com

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/355

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

"How do I stop scanning and checking myself all the time?"

If you struggle with anxiety or OCD, you've probably asked some version of that question. Scanning your body for sensations. Scanning for bad thoughts. Checking whether a thought or emotion is the right one. I get asked how to make it stop almost every day.

In this episode I tell you the honest answer. You can't turn it off. Even my therapist brain scans and checks. I get migraine aura, and while I've learned to carry on with my day when it happens, my fully recovered anxiety expert brain still spends hours afterward scanning for signs it might come back. I know logically that it's over. My brain scans anyway.

That scanning function is normal and it serves a purpose. It's thinking that happens outside our awareness, and it naturally goes after the things that matter most to us, like safety, health, identity, and what we value. So the work in recovery is learning to recognize that process running and let it do its thing without making it the most important thing in the room. That takes practice with attention and a willingness to act courageously when your brain is telling you something is wrong. Over time, your brain may learn it doesn't need to scan as much.

I also talk about why this simple strategy is so hard to put into practice, and why you aren't failing when the scanning kicks in.

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/354

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.