What Causes OCD To Flare Up: Identify Your Triggers
If you have a mental health condition called obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), it is really important to become aware of what causes OCD to flare up. You have got to clearly identify triggers. These can be people, places, situations, past unresolved trauma, or it can even be some other mental health condition (such as generalized anxiety disorder) that’s impacting your OCD. Understanding these triggers and then having an action plan for when they happen can help your ocd experience to be milder and more manageable.
You would think that, if a person is living with OCD, they would know all about it. Yet, you’d probably be surprised how many people can only identify one or two triggers but miss others. In this article, I’ll help you understand the best way to identify all your triggers and get yourself a clear action plan that you can put into action whenever you encounter a trigger. In this way, you can manage your symptoms of OCD better.
The cause of OCD typically can be some event or experience in your past where you began to notice a lack of control and you have a need to do something to establish some form of control. An example would be experiencing ongoing emotional abuse from a parent and searching for coping mechanisms to help reduce your stress levels. Other family members may try to get you to stop your compulsive rituals but this only causes more stress which leads to more OCD symptoms.
What Is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
So first of all, let’s get really clear about what OCD is. Some people immediately think that if you’re OCD, you clean a lot. Most people don’t realize that the term OCD is an umbrella term for lots of different unwanted thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Some of these are:
- Contamination OCD: this is all about avoiding bacteria and being afraid of what will happen if you infect someone you love. People in this category tend to compulsively clean and sanitize things.
- Perfection OCD: people who suffer from this form of OCD need to check things over and over again. Examples would be checking to see if the door is locked ten different times, constantly rearranging things, rewriting reports over and over again, etc.
- Sexual OCD: this can cover a wide range of intrusive thoughts, ranging from “Am I gay?” to “Am I really sure she consented to having sex?”. People in this category can also have obsessive thoughts about why they find certain people sexually attractive.
- Harm OCD: constantly thinking about harming someone (either yourself or others), either intentionally or not.
What Are Your OCD Symptoms?
Typically, there are four stages to the ocd cycle. They are:
- Obsessive Thoughts: OCD thoughts are typically upsetting or distressing thoughts that you just can’t seem to stop. They repeat over and over again.
- Strong Feelings: These upsetting thoughts create strong feelings, usually a feeling of anxiety or significant distress.
- Compulsion: When you have these feelings, your motivation is to do something to soothe them. Most people use repetitive behaviors to soothe their distress.
- Temporary Relief: Because you get a “payoff” by doing your repetitive behavior, (you do get that temporary relief), it makes sense to you to do it again when you feel the onset of ocd thoughts.
What Are OCD Triggers?
OCD triggers are whatever triggers your OCD. Each person’s specific triggers can be different. In general, it’s whatever causes you stress or anxiety, or strong emotions. This can trigger those uncontrollable thoughts and once the cycle has begun, it will probably result in you engaging in your compulsive behaviors in order to calm the strong feelings you feel.
Stress can be caused by a specific person, a place or situation, major life changes, or a traumatic event that seems outside your control. Most OCD sufferers would say that their repetitive behavior stems from a desire to get back in control because they feel out of control in some way. Typically a major life event will trigger high levels of stress which, in turn, can lead to the sudden onset of symptoms.
To get to know and understand your triggers, I would suggest, as a first step, keeping an OCD journal in which you write down every trigger you experience. It doesn’t take a long time to do this. I would suggest writing down what you remember triggering you during that day, at bedtime. It need only take five minutes (maximum). Having this journal can be of great help to any mental health professionals that you attend. The reason is that triggers are personal to you. Your triggers will not be the same as another person’s.
Self-Hypnosis Audio To Calm Your OCD
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you focus on the present moment and let go of the desire to do your compulsion.
What Are OCD Episodes?
OCD episodes are also referred to as OCD flare-ups. This is where something happens that makes your unpleasant thoughts go wild. This can result in you immediately needing to start doing your compulsion, whatever it is. For example, if your compulsion is excessive hand washing, on a normal day, you might wash your hands three times one after another. When stressful life events happen, and this fare-up happens, you might go to ten or fifteen times.
If you trace it back through the OCD cycle, the compulsion is caused by the strong feeling. The stronger that feeling, the more intense your ocd episode will be. For example, you could be mildly triggered by a teacher who has a loud commanding voice. Then you go home and now you hear the loud commanding voice of the person who subjected you to sexual abuse for the past three years. Traumatic experiences (like this) that aren’t resolved can cause strong feelings even many years later.
How Long Do OCD Flare-Ups Last?
For the person who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, a flare-up can last anything from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks. There is a direct correlation between how strong a feeling you experience and how long the flare-up lasts. The good news is that most ocd patients can learn how to manage their symptoms much better and reduce the length of time that a flare-up affects them. You may need professional help from someone experienced in cognitive behavioral therapy, especially in a subsection of CBT called exposure and response prevention (ERP for short).
Self-Hypnosis Audio To Calm Your OCD
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you focus on the present moment and let go of the desire to do your compulsion.
How To Calm An OCD Flare-Up
The first thing to realize is that you are in control of what you do. If you are getting more and more stressed, you must do something to calm yourself down (other than your compulsive behavior). Here are some tried and trusted ways to reduce your stress levels:
- Deep Breathing: There are numerous breathing exercises you could do. The simplest is to breathe in slowly (much slower than you have been breathing). Then breathe out equally as slowly until there is nothing left in your lungs. Repeat about seven times until you notice your stress level has reduced significantly.
- Be In The Moment: Remind yourself that even though you’ve been triggered, everything is actually ok.
- Self-Belief: Tell yourself that you are amazing and that you have all the resources you need to deal with this situation. Do not engage in self-criticism.
- ERP: Learn about exposure and response prevention and incorporate some of the exercises into your daily life. You may need to be trained in how to do this initially by someone specializing in cognitive-behavioral therapy.
- Self-Hypnosis: Download my “Calm Your OCD” hypnosis mp3 and listen once a day every day.
How To Break The OCD Cycle
The first thought that ocd sufferers have to get their heads around is the idea that there are always uncertainties in life. The very nature of OCD is striving for control, but the absolute fact about life is that it is random. Things happen that you weren’t expecting to happen. For most of us (those who don’t suffer from OCD), we have learned to take the good with the bad. We realize we have the resources we need to tackle bad things when they happen. We also look at the good things that can happen as exciting.
If you are going to reduce the frequency and intensity of your OCD episodes, you have to challenge your mind when it tries to make you believe that uncertainty is all bad. You also have to accept that, depending on the severity of your OCD, it may be necessary for you to take medications like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Finally, (and in my opinion, the most important step) you must find a therapist that specializes in a branch of CBT called ERP (Exposure & Response Prevention) and work with them.
Self-Hypnosis Audio To Calm Your OCD
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you focus on the present moment and let go of the desire to do your compulsion.
Self Hypnosis For OCD
In my opinion, self-hypnosis can be a very helpful aid along this journey. Remember what one of the major triggers for OCD is – stress! Regularly listening to a self-hypnosis recording can help you reduce your stress levels and train you to have a less severe reaction to common triggers. By visualizing yourself acting in a calmer fashion in the future when a trigger happens, you are, essentially, rehearsing the future. When you do this regularly (for at least 30 days), you’ll find that when that situation happens, you’ll have a different, less severe reaction.
I always caution people not to regard hypnosis as a “magic cure”. Your OCD will probably not go away by listening to the recording. However, if you listen to a 25-minute-long recording for at least thirty days and that calms your OCD down, wouldn’t that be a worthwhile investment in terms of time? I’ve had people come to see me who would tell you that their OCD was 50%-75% better by coming to see me.
That is why I recorded a powerful self-hypnosis recording entitled “Calm Your OCD” which you can download right now and listen to at home. If you’re not sure how you should listen to a self-hypnosis recording, have a look at my helpful blog post entitled “How Do I Listen To A Self Hypnosis Audio?“.
Author: Paul Hunter
Although thousands of people read his blog every month, Paul's path to success was not an easy one. Click here to read his amazing story "From Unwanted Baby And Adopted To A Respected Self Help Blogger". If you want to send Paul a quick message, then visit his contact page here
