Quick Tip: Try to Break Established Rituals

One of the more interesting insights that I garnered from therapy was that I had a ton of mini-rituals or compulsions that I didn’t even notice because they were so ingrained in my everyday life. Every time I closed my wallet, I would say the name of the card in each wallet slot to make sure they were all there. My tooth-brushing routine was always in the same order of metal pick, water flosser, toothbrush, mouthwash. Whenever I was in the shower, I counted to ten while washing each part of my face and before I got out of the shower, I counted down from twenty. And while these actions may all seem rather innocuous, they still were examples of OCD affecting my life. And so while obviously, the ideal end goal is to not do any compulsions at all, it was pretty tough for me to just quit all of these compulsions cold turkey (even though I hadn’t even really realized I had been doing some of them). So what I would try to do is alter some aspect of them or change them in some way in order to disrupt the ritual. So, I would try to just look at the cards in my wallet without saying their names before I closed my wallet. I switched up the order of my dental routine from night to night. And I tried counting to a different, random number every day in the shower and then just getting out of the shower before I had finished my countdown from twenty. Although these tweaks were subtle, they helped to break up the pattern OCD had established, and eventually it made it easier for me to eventually limit and eliminate their presence in my life entirely.

The best thing about these subtle tweaks is that you can make them yourself. Just try to do a little less each day or do something a bit different from one day to the next in order to reduce OCD’s hold on you. I like to think of OCD as some plaque on your teeth. While you may need a professional (dentist, therapist) to help remove it entirely, you can still chip away a big part of it by yourself. OCD operates through rituals and patterns, and by removing as many of these unnecessary ones from your life as possible, you are actively weakening OCD and helping to create a better life for yourself.