R is for Reassurance
“Do you think I’m a bad person?”
“Of course not, sweetie.”
Harmless, right? My mom and I had this conversation lots of times when I was a teenager. Earlier in the month I told you about how my OCD had me convinced I was actually a terrible person, and it made me feel guilt about it all the time. So I would go to my mom, the person I trusted the most in the whole world, and seek reassurance from her. She did what any good mom would do and told me that no, I was not a psychopath and I was actually a completely normal 15 year old girl. But minutes after that reassurance, the doubt would creep back in.
Neither her nor I knew then what we know now: Reassurance just feeds the OCD spiral.
The obsession is that something is uncertain:
Car door is unlocked
I am a bad person
Left the oven on
What if I don’t really love my family?
The compulsion is seeking reassurance:
Double checking car lock
Asking someone what they think of your character
Looking at oven burners
Mentally reviewing past encounters with family
Remember how ERP works? You have to resist the compulsion and sit through the resulting anxiety. In this case, you have to resist asking for reassurance.
Sometimes this falls to the family member. Even if the OCD sufferer asks for reassurance, the family member has to refrain from giving it. I’m sure this is excruciating for all parties involved. It can be helpful for family members to read about the disorder, or talk with the therapist, to get a better understanding of why reassurance isn’t helpful. It seems counter-intuitive, right? You want to make your loved one feel better, so you want to reassure them. But it won’t help them in the long run.
Instead you can sit with them through the anxiety of their exposure. You can remind them that seeking reassurance isn’t what they really want. You can offer phrases like “I know this is really hard right now” or “I’m here for you no matter what.” My fiancé hugs me through the worst of my OCD and just feeling him there is the biggest comfort I can imagine.
It’s hard not to reassure. But it will just feed the beast.