Three steps to declutter your mind when you have OCD

1. Question your urgency

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is like having a faulty fire alarm in our brains that can quickly escalate banal issues into emergencies.  When you have OCD, we can get a false sense that we “need” to do something in that moment or else something bad will happen.  For others, the urgency comes in the form of repetitive intrusive thoughts nagging us to perform some task and we almost automatically fold to this urge.  When we notice ourselves feeling any sort of urgency, it is important to step back and reevaluate if our impatience is coming from our OCD.   

2. Recognize overthinking

Unfortunately, the modern emphasis on mentally and verbally “processing” emotions and events, whether through journalling, therapy, or close friends, may fuel an unproductive spinning for those of us with OCD.  While we may feel like we are figuring things out, we may actually be stuck in a repetitive cycle of OCD that is not much different than opening and closing a door a dozen times.  We are not reaching any sort of new understanding through the compulsion of overthinking (also know as “rumination”), but rather are reinforcing our self-doubt. 

When we recognize overthinking, we must utilize mindfulness skills to redirect our thoughts, let go, and move on.

3. Reprioritize anxieties

While it is impossible to live an anxiety-free life, we may make an active choice to focus our anxious thinking on the more crucial aspects of our life  Those of us with OCD may actually be experiencing the vast majority of our anxiety around relatively meaningless details in our days.  For example, rather than thinking more globally about the health of our business, we are paralyzed with fear that we missed an invoicing error.  OCD tends to waste a lot of our time on minor details that do not have a long-term impact.  Our OCD is “sweating the small stuff” because those things are easier to control through compulsions like checking.  While we cannot always stop anxiety, we can at least actively redirect worry to more productive, more meaningful channels.