When scrolling through this page and listening to OCD therapists/coaches, you hear time and time again how you need to accept the thoughts in order for them to eventually lose their intrusiveness and become less frequent. This is absolutely true and I’m sure by now you have probably realized that fighting any thought and attempting to push it away just amplifies it tenfold. It’s a dead-end in recovery! What can happen though is that even when we believe we’re ready to accept our thoughts and welcome them in, our sensitized nerves have other plans.
Claire Weekes explains this brilliantly in Self-Help for Your Nerves and describes it as “delayed recovery” – which is just another one of those things we have to learn to get comfortable with. From suffering with the intense levels of anxiety that OCD gives us for so long, our nerves have become sensitized to the point that even the slightest thing sets off that pounding in our chest or the heart-in-our-stomach sensation. Even though we may be accepting of the presence of these intrusive thoughts, it could take time for our body and nervous system to catch up.
I have on many occasions, and still now, get very frustrated when I’m sitting with the thoughts, not fighting them off, and still experience that deep level of anxiety that I’m all too familiar with. Only now am I learning to see that this is just simply how my body is used to reacting and it’s going to take time for it to settle down just like it is taking time for my perspectives to shift.
Recovery is never going to happen overnight and chasing relief will just prolong the process further. It is vital we get used to anxiety playing up even when we think we no longer fear it. Really, how bad can it get anyway? We’ve survived every anxiety attack we have had so far. Uncomfortable and inconvenient? Yes. Awful? No.
I have focused a lot of the next stage in my recovery on letting time pass and letting feelings be. I don’t need to run from anxiety anymore, just like I have learnt not to run from the thoughts.