[Video] Dr. Reid Wilson on Handling OCD

[Daniel E.]

The "winning strategies" mentioned in the video by Dr. Wilson, co-author of Stop Obsessing!:

1) Do NOT pay attention to your content. ("This is where everybody gets stuck.")

2) Accept obsession when it pops up. ("It's fine I had that thought.")

3) WANT to be anxious and stay anxious ("It's about purposely choosing to feel the generic sense of uncertainty and anxiety.")

Anything that is resisted will persist; therefore, the best perspective is a paradoxical one: When facing a problem, one must go toward uncertainty and distress.

"Courage first; comfort last."


More info on his website:

The Four Challenges of Recovery

What to do During Obsessing

Stopping your Compulsions


Dr. Wilson on exposure & response prevention (ERP):

The gold standard of treatment with OCD is exposure and response prevention, but it is very difficult to do that work in an outpatient basis. So what I help people do is to begin to manipulate symptoms as opposed to having to get rid of them altogether. For instance, we might have someone who is a hand washer out of fear of contamination wash his hands as long as he wants, but every three minutes stop and dry his hands off, walk out of the room, come back in and wash again. There's a series of ways to break these patterns down and interrupt them in a way that's not too terribly threatening to the patient, but begins to open up their mind to the possibility of change. We can work incrementally instead of full-force with exposure and response prevention, and that reduces resistance.

Interview with Reid Wilson

 

[Daniel E.]

Tables & Figures from Dr. Wilson's book Stopping the Noise in Your Head: the New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry (2016).

Free video series for the book.

2017 podcast interview: Stopping the Noise with Dr. Reid Wilson