Tip: Don’t Get Too Frustrated Over Backsliding

Backsliding in OCD lingo means that someone, in response to an OCD worry, engaged in mental or physical compulsions more frequently or intensely than recommended (by their therapist usually). This is a very common and understandable process. OCD is really hard and for me, I backslid even when I knew exactly what I was supposed to do and what the consequences of not doing so were. The anxiety can be so powerful in the moment that you feel like you just have to address the concern in some way in order to try and convince your mind that you are ok, even though you know this whole “attending/addressing” mechanism will actually make the problem worse. For example, two of my more common OCD concerns were fearing that I sent inappropriate emails or looked at my coworkers inappropriately. And I knew from all my practice during therapy and similar past situations, that when I had an OCD thought concerning one of these two topics I just had to let it be there in my mind and I needed to avoid “checking” it. But sometimes I just couldn’t as my mind was screaming at me that I had sent an inappropriate email and I had to go and double-check that I hadn’t, even though logically I knew that I had not sent anything inappropriate. But nobody ever said OCD was logical.

This “failure” was especially frustrating as I knew what I needed to do in order to keep progressing in my OCD therapy, but sometimes I just couldn’t do it. I knew what my future self would want me to do, and yet I still let him down. And OCD loves to prey on any sort of frustration like this as that kind of mental toxicity is a breeding ground for more OCD attacks. So, I would exacerbate the problem more times than not by being so upset at the way I initially handled the problem. And so, after talking extensively with my therapist about this, I learned that actually, backsliding is very common and totally normal. As in the rest of life, it is just simply impossible to be 100% perfect. The key is to realize that you are going to backslide as OCD is just too difficult to deal with flawlessly and so minimizing the impact of both the backslide and your reaction to it is important. Rather than letting an extra check or two send you into a tailspin for the rest of the day, be kind to yourself and accept the fact that you can’t be perfect and treat the backslide as just a small bump in the road. The end goal of everyone with OCD is to reduce OCD’s impact on everyday life and by treating backsliding as a understandable occurrence rather than a disastrous situation, people with OCD can reach that end goal in a much healthier way.