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Moving on from Bad OCD Days
One of the most difficult things about OCD is slipping backward and having a “bad” day. You feel like you’ve made progress, put the rumination and the rituals behind you, and something or someone triggers a ritual, and you feel like you’re back at square one.
When this happens, there are two important things to realize:
- the slippage is temporary
- there is nothing you can do to change the past
The second point is vital, not only for dealing with relapses, but for moving past any difficult event in your life. The past is unalterable. If you slipped up, reverted back to some old rituals, it’s okay. Understand that the only thing you have the power to change is your behavior in the present moment.
Meditation for OCD
Ironically, there are all sorts of fears that can crop up when attempting to meditate. Am I doing this correctly? Will meditation make my OCD worse? How can I possibly sit with my own thoughts when I’ve been strategically avoiding them for years?
One of the best ways to get started is to just take a few deep breaths, turn on the parasympathetic nervous system and give your mind a break, even if just for a few moments.
- Breathe in through your nose for four seconds
- Hold for four seconds
- Breathe out through your mouth for four seconds
- Hold for four seconds
Do a few rounds of that style (call square breathing) before meditating to get your body and mind to relax, and to introduce a separation between your daily life and your meditation practice.
And remember, don’t stress about meditating “the right way.” If you can’t sit still for more than a few seconds, that’s okay. Sit for as long as you can and build stamina from there.
OCD Book Recommendation
The main point of this post is to recommend a fantastic book on OCD by Jonathan Grayson, called Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
It contains information that will allow you to understand the disorder as well as an action-based, self-directed treatment plan so that you have tools to recognize ritual or ruminative patterns of thinking and strategies to combat them.
Additional EMDR Healing Resources
- Read up on our guide to how to self-administer EMDR
- Check out what EMDR is and how it works
