The term Pure O or purely obsessional was coined by Dr Steven Phillipson in 1988 to help those people who didn’t have obvious physical compulsions get diagnosed as having OCD. The term has proven very useful in raising awareness around intrusive thoughts, and mental compulsions being part of OCD. No doubt countless lives have been saved because of this term. It does need some explaining however, as the term can also confuse some people. OCD is made up of obsessions and compulsions. So the term Pure O unintentionally implies people are ‘purely obsessional’ which isn’t true. They have compulsio ..read more

We can navigate through life by our values. Sailors used to use the North Star to navigate. The North Star was used to find true north. So no matter how lost they felt they could find the North Star and use it to chart a course of travel in the direction they wanted to sail. In the same way in life we can use our values as our North Star. When our internal seas are stormy, it’s dark and we feel lost, look up at the nights sky and look out for your values. Values are what drives you, what are important to you as an individual, what make your life meaningful. We always have a choice. Many in f ..read more

Compulsions can be hard to stop. So in therapy one approach is to initially set a more achievable goal which can look like delaying the compulsion. If a particular compulsion feels far too challenging and scary to stop right now, delaying that compulsion can be the first step. If delaying by 10 minutes is too much, try 1 minute. If that’s too much try 10 seconds. Find what is manageable, achieve that and then increase that time from there. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can delay long enough that you lose the interest or need to do the compulsion. At this point, your brain is learning ..read more

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1946) founder of logotherapy, which was used for OCD many decades ago long before exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP) shared this powerful view of our ability to make choices: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” In OCD terms, if we imagine the stimulus as the trigger and the response as the compulsion, the space between these two is our ability to choose. To choose if we do that compulsion or if we make a choice towards our val ..read more

It’s really hard and uncomfortable to make space for our internal experiences: urges, sensations, feelings/emotions, thoughts. Because it’s tough to feel them we avoid and push them away. This is called experiential avoidance. Experiential avoidance doesn’t work in the long term. In fact, it increases the chances of getting more of these internal experiences. So what’s the solution? Well, one solution is to make space for these uncomfortable internal experiences. We make space so that we can free up attention, energy and time to engage in the relationships and activities that matter. That we ..read more

We often look at people who seem fearless and take risks and go after what they want as brave and courageous. As therapist Jonny Say said on episode 334 of the podcast, “if they aren’t scared, it’s not courage” (paraphrasing). Courage is feeling afraid and doing it anyway. So don’t worry if you are afraid, you can be both afraid and courageous. But you can’t be courageous without fear.  Here are some quotes on courage: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” Mark Twain “Without fear there cannot be courage” – Christopher Paolini  “Courage does not alw ..read more

OCD symptoms are hard. Difficult. Painful. Challenging. Agonising. Terrifying. So they are already those things, why add to it? OCD is pain. Learning to nurture and grow a compassionate voice within, to meet that pain and suffering won’t remove the OCD symptoms but it will make them more bearable, and give you the support to keep going in treatment, therapy, day to day life.  Would you rather have a parent/coach/manager who shouts at you telling you how you are failing, how you should be better, how you should…… OR would you rather have a parent/coach/manager who puts their arm around yo ..read more

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) can sometimes be referred to as exposure therapy. This is misleading. As it’s way more than that. ERP works because our brain learns something new. How? It learns through our behaviour change i.e. changing from doing compulsions which tells our brain that in fact these thoughts and feelings are dangerous so our brain learns to give us more of them, whereas, not doing compulsions and our brain then learns that if we are not reacting to the perceived danger then there must be no danger, and our brain calms down (this can take time but that’s the process ..read more

The scary part of OCD is the theme: contamination, religion, sexual orientation, violent or sexual, relationship worries etc (The list is endless). But the theme (mask) is not important. It of course feels it is, and this is exactly why we end up doing compulsions. But the key word here is FEEL. It feels important, but that does not mean it is. In OCD therapy we want to treat the OCD, the core processes behind the theme. These core processes run across all themes, as that’s the issue, the theme is just a mask, an illusion your brain is using to get you to act and protect you from the perceive ..read more

I stumbled upon this poem a few years ago by M Truman Cooper called ‘See Paris first’: Suppose that what you fear could be trapped, and held in Paris. Then you would have the courage to go everywhere in the world. All the directions of the compass open to you, except the degrees east or west of true north that lead to Paris. Still, you wouldn’t dare put your toes smack dab on the city limit line. You’re not really willing to stand on a mountainside miles away and watch the Paris lights come up at night. Just to be on the safe side you decide to stay completely out of France. But then danger s ..read more