B is for Behavioral Therapy
OCD is a mental illness that can be treated but not cured, at least as of 2021. So you can treat the symptoms, but not make it go away entirely. I have good days and bad days, but my OCD will never go away entirely. The two main ways to manage it are through medication and therapy. Some people don’t take medication at all and just do therapy. But if you are taking medication, you will probably be doing therapy as well, because it’s generally regarded as the best place to start.
Therapy is not at all like it’s depicted in the media! For one thing, “talk therapy” is not really used anymore. You won’t delve into your childhood or try to blame people for being the way you are. There’s no looking at “daddy issues” to explain your mental illness. There are many different forms of therapy, but the one that’s commonly used for OCD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT.
CBD is “a type of psychotherapeutic treatment that helps people learn how to identify and change destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on behavior and emotions” (VeryWellMind). Essentially, you learn to look at your thoughts and decide whether or not they are rational or helpful, then you substitute them with alternative thoughts. My therapist gave me an “Alternative Thought Record” or ATR for me to keep track of my intrusive thoughts (more on these for the letter I). Here is an example of CBT in practice.
My thought: “I got a B on this math test, so I am a failure as a person.”
Alternative thought: “This is all-or-nothing thinking. One test does not dictate my worth.”
My thought: “If I don’t step on this crack in a certain way, then my family will die.”
Alternative thought: “That’s probably not true. There is always a possibility that it’s true! But you can tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing.” (More on “uncertainty” under the letter U.)
There are certain cognitive distortions that show up a lot in CBT, and we will talk more about those later in the month. CBT is used for other mental illnesses as well, such as anxiety and depression, and it has helped me immensely in those areas as well. (I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and have also suffered from Major Depressive Disorder in the past. Ah, college days. More on co-morbid disorders later in the month.)