3 Lessons I Learned When I Started Recovering From OCD

What would it be like to recover from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)? As someone currently living in recovery, I can say it’s hard to quantify just how much my life has changed or how much I’ve learned from the process.

When I started to notice that treatment was improving my OCD symptoms, that things were getting better, it felt like I’d been living in a dark room for so many years but the walls were finally beginning to crack. As I learned more about OCD and how to conquer it, little by little, the light started to come back into my life until eventually, the walls crumbled and everything was illuminated. It was that climactic.

My hope is that hearing about the lessons I learned from recovery can motivate you to keep moving forward in your own journey so that one day, you too will be able to look back and see how much you’ve learned and grown.

1. You can feel all the feelings, even the “hard” ones

Everyone who goes through OCD treatment will spend a different amount of time in it, depending on the themes or subtypes they’re experiencing. For me, it took a while—7.5 years to be exact. The way I see it, though, I’m always in treatment, at least in the sense that I never stop practicing the skills I’ve learned.

I remain mindful of all of the ways OCD can affect me, even today, and when it tries to trip me up, I use all of the tools in my arsenal to combat it. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always get it right, but that’s okay. Even on my most difficult days, life is so much better than it used to be, and I know that as long as I keep moving forward, I’m still living in recovery.

But that’s not to say that living in recovery can’t feel bittersweet. I empathize with the version of myself that suffered for so long with untreated OCD, and at the same time, I recognize that who I am today was shaped by some of my deepest pain. I suspect that others who’ve struggled with mental conditions or other forms of suffering can relate to this feeling, and I think it’s helpful to remember that all of our varying emotions can co-exist—it doesn’t have to be “either-or.”

I can feel saddened by what I went through while being angered by the lack of resources available to me during the times I needed help the most. I can be heartbroken over lost time and still be grateful for the time I have left. I can grieve missed opportunities and at the same time, celebrate everything I’ve gained. I can choose to make meaning from the OCD experience—and in doing so, I can hopefully help others at various stages of their own journeys find solace and hope.

2. You can handle discomfort—and change your response to it

Before treatment, life was almost constantly uncomfortable, as the primary emotions I felt were anxiety and fear. I spent the majority of my time trying to avoid these feelings but ironically, “anxious and afraid” still felt like my permanent state of being. What I would soon find out, though, is that this wasn’t ironic at all.

As I began to learn more about OCD during my time in treatment, I started to see all of the ways avoidance played a part in my life. I learned that by avoiding the emotions that made me uncomfortable, I was inadvertently fueling OCD. This helped me understand a lot of my past experiences. As uncomfortable as anxiety felt for me, it was familiar. I knew how to appease the anxious thoughts. Same with OCD: I knew how to calm its storm—at least temporarily.

The unknown, on the other hand, was scary. There are emotions I wasn’t allowed to experience as a child and when they came up in my adulthood, I didn’t know how to handle them. I’ve had to learn how to manage these new thoughts and feelings instead of sidestepping them. It’s a work in progress, of course, but it’s all part of the broad spectrum of recovery—the process will look different for everyone and yet, there will also be some commonalities.

One of those commonalities is the distress intolerance that tends to be prevalent among people with OCD. This means that we often have a great deal of difficulty experiencing distress or anxiety. I always say that while no one likes these feelings (or at least no one I’ve ever met) people with OCD will go to much greater lengths to avoid them—that is, until they learn that they can manage them.

And that’s where one of the biggest lessons of the recovery process comes into play: learning that you can feel these tough emotions and move through them. When you’re learning how to manage your OCD symptoms in therapy, you’re also learning that you are not responsible for “doing” anything to get rid of emotions—they can just be present while you live your life.

So if recovery could be summed up into a single theme or concept, I would describe it as the ability to tolerate all emotions. With this ability comes the recognition that thoughts do not have to have any meaning. They can just be static, no longer interfering with how we live our lives.

3. You deserve to show yourself kindness

Recovery continues to be a process of separating my identity from OCD and practicing self-compassion. We are so much more than our mental health struggles or the diagnoses we’ve been given, but when our symptoms are at their worst, we can be harsh on ourselves and may lose sight of this important truth. Finding effective treatment can help clear this fog, allowing us to rediscover who we are outside of OCD and grow our appreciation for this new self.

A key part of showing yourself kindness is recognizing that the recovery process takes time and looks different for everyone. Progress is not linear, and there will likely be many ups and downs. It is so imperative that you, as the person experiencing OCD, do not judge yourself or compare your journey to anyone else’s—you are unique and so is your recovery.

While it can be helpful to read about or listen to other people’s OCD recovery stories to gain perspective and hope, it’s important that these stories are used only as a useful tool or guide and not as a roadmap for your own recovery. The destination of our paths to recovery may be the same, but there is more than one route to any given place. The terrain that each of us will have to navigate can vary.

Another important part of practicing self-compassion during your recovery is celebrating your wins along the way. At the beginning of treatment, the smallest of victories might be major sources of celebration. This is a good thing—in fact, I encourage it! As time goes on, however, despite the fact that the successes often become bigger and bigger, you may lose sight of your progress and stop celebrating these wins as much. Even though you are doing things you never thought would be possible, you may forget how difficult these things once were for you.

I encourage you to honor every moment of progress during your recovery and to recognize that you’re doing something powerful and important: taking back a life that was once imprisoned by a very debilitating disorder. Never forget that. At the same time, don’t live in the more difficult periods of your life, either. Allow yourself to move forward.

How can I begin to move forward and live in recovery?

If you’ve been struggling with OCD and considering taking the first step in your own recovery journey, I would recommend looking into exposure and response prevention (ERP). ERP is a form of therapy that’s considered to be the gold standard in OCD treatment. It’s helped thousands of people take their lives back from OCD, myself being one of them.

ERP can help you understand that you are so much more than just a person with OCD. You may experience symptoms of OCD but you are still you, the same person with the same values that you had before OCD entered your life. OCD doesn’t have to define how you feel about yourself.

In ERP, you’ll learn that the thoughts, feelings, and urges of OCD do not need to have meaning. They can just be background noise. You can learn that you’re able to tolerate the distress that these thoughts can cause and that eventually, any feelings of discomfort or anxiety will pass. In fact, when you don’t give in and do a ritual or a compulsion, your brain actually learns that there was no danger in the first place.

If you’re struggling with OCD and want to learn how to take the power away from intrusive thoughts in ERP therapy, NOCD can help. Our licensed therapists deeply understand OCD and are specialty-trained in treating OCD with ERP. We work side-by-side with the OCD experts and researchers who designed some of the world’s top OCD treatment programs—which means the best care for our members.

To learn more about NOCD Therapy, please book a free 15-minute call with our team. On your call, we can answer any questions you may have and help match you with a licensed OCD specialist.