Common Misconceptions About Anxiety & OCD Treatment

Posted by in ACT, Anxiety, CBT, ERP, Mindfulness, Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), OCD, OCD - General, OCD - Treatment, Treatments People new to OCD treatment often walk through the door with more than a few misconceptions. Here are some common ones: Misconception 1: Anxiety is bad. Actually, anxiety is a normal, functional, biologically-based phenomenon that every person is capable of experiencing. The only people who are truly anxiety-free are dead people. The rest of us (the living ones, at least) will find that anxiety will be a part of our lives, at least to some extent. Some anxiety is good and can be helpful. For example, it’s probably good to have some anxiety when you’re studying for a test. This anxiety can help motivate you to prepare sufficiently. Similarly, it’s probably good to have some anxiety about doing dangerous things, such as driving too fast — this anxiety might just save your life. Of course, not all anxiety is good or functional. Some anxiety spikes occur for no good reason and don’t have an upside. These false alarms make us feel bad for no good reason. Panic disorder is the perfect example of this. In panic disorder, your fight-or-flight system gets continually reactivated in situations where it isn’t warranted. Treatment of panic disorder involves learning to disregard the danger messages attached to your panic symptoms. The goal of OCD treatment (or the treatment of any anxiety disorder, for that matter) is not to eliminate anxiety, but rather to recalibrate your anxiety system so that there are fewer false alarms, and anxiety is again serving a useful purpose. When you finish OCD treatment, you’ll still have anxiety. It just won’t be standing in your way like it is now. Misconception 2: Avoidance is an effective solution for anxiety. There is no denying that avoidance is an effective solution for reducing anxiety. However, the anxiety-reducing effects of avoidance are short-lived and come at a great cost. Reliance on avoidance as a coping strategy may reduce your anxiety in the short-term, but it dramatically increases anxiety over the long-term. If avoidance is left unchecked, anxiety often grows to a point where it becomes debilitating and interferes with our functioning. Why does this happen? In essence, avoidance brainwashes us to believe that if we didn’t avoid, the worst would have happened. Let’s examine this in relation to a common contamination OCD thought: “Germs are everywhere. If I don’t touch the dirty doorknob, then I won’t get sick.” Avoidance of the doorknob prevents anxiety...
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