Tip: What Would Future Me Want Me to Do?

One of the toughest things about OCD-related anxiety is how powerful it can feel in that exact moment you are in. You feel like you have to attend to or solve the “problem” immediately. And the especially tough part of OCD is that attending to or trying to solve the problem actually makes the OCD worse as by paying so much attention to it, you are giving the thought/worry fuel and strengthening it. It is a vicious cycle as you feel like you need to pay attention to the thought in order to tell yourself it is not a true part of you, but by worrying about it, you make it worse! OCD is just the worst.

So what I try to do in these situations is to ask myself what would future me want me to do? Because I have so much experience with distressing OCD thoughts, I have had a lot of practice treating them the “right” and “wrong” way. And so I can sort of fall back on that experience even when the anxiety feels like it is at dangerously high levels. And so when one of these thoughts arises, I know that instead of wrangling with this thought and trying to disprove or invalidate it in my mind, I have to just leave it alone. Because in almost every OCD situation I have had, the anxiety will fade in a couple minutes or hours once I leave the thought alone and I will look back on the moment and be like, wow that was so dumb to get so worked up over. In every situation, future me would tell me to just let the terrible OCD thoughts be there as once I get past that initial anxiety rush, the thoughts will eventually dissipate. But if I try to “solve” the thought, the anxiety will be prolonged and future me will be disappointed that I am giving him a ton of anxiety too. And I try to keep my future self happy.