6 Best OCD Exercises to Try Today
Takeaway: Managing OCD takes practice, and the right exercises can help you live a life that’s not controlled by intrusive thoughts and compulsions. These therapist-recommended techniques will give you practical ways to navigate OCD, starting today.
"I know it doesn't make sense, but I feel like I have to do it.". I hear some variation of this exasperation with every client that has obsessive compulsive disorder. They have usually been in therapy before. They have reasoned and analyzed their fears and actions. Yet, their symptoms tend to take over at times and can completely ruin a day.
If this sounds familiar, you have found the right place. At Cope & Calm Counseling, we specialize in all things executive dysfunction. This has lead us to seek IOCDF aligned trainings to inform the unique approaches required when treating this disorder. The founder, Amber Young, LPC, is a member of IOCDF and trains each of her clinicians in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy and iCBT and the importance of not treating OCD like any other anxiety disorder.
You aren't being dramatic. You aren't making it up. Your distress is very, very real. We can teach you how to respond to that dooming sense of urgency, learn how to inhibit compulsive behaviors, and reframe those obsessional thoughts.
6 OCD activities to try at home today
Are you ready to reduce OCD symptoms in your daily life? Below are exercises for OCD that you can implement at home to help reduce stress.
OCD exercises for beginners
1. Identify the patterns
First you have to identify the obsession that correlates to your compulsive rituals. It is important to know the core obsessive fear, because that it what we are treating. We intervene at the compulsion with response prevention, but we are really treating the distress associated with the obsession. Take some time to get clear on these dynamics. It is ok if they do not make sense to anyone else. What matters is knowing what worry you are trying to calm or silence when performing compulsions.
How to do it: Make a list of as many compulsive behaviors that you can think of. They can be mental rituals, problematic behaviors, or compulsive avoidance. Any action that leads to temporary relief for significant distress. Then complete the sentence "If I don't (enter compulsion here), then .....". The feared consequence is the obsessional thought or doubt. Sit with it a minute. There can be layers of rationale that pop up before we get to the true core fear.
Example scenario: "If I don't count calories, then people will think that I do not care about my health. People will think that I am lazy. That will mean that I am lazy. That will mean that I am bad. If anyone knows that I am bad, they won't accept me."
How it helps: The compulsions tend to get a lot of focus. We can identify those with a lot more ease. Engaging in this exercise helps bring to light the function of your fear. This way we can sympathize with the rationale and lean into self-compassion when we practice exposure therapy.
2. Ask your support system for help.
Many times those with OCD will inadvertently bring in other people to their compulsions. This might looks like seeking reassurance from family members or asking someone else to check the door you checked precisely 4 times. They want to help you, but telling you that "You're okay" or twisting that door knob they are reinforcing the urgency of your obsessional thinking.
How to do it: Show them your list from step one and ask them to refrain from providing reassurance or offering certainty around those subjects and to not engage in the rituals.
Example scenario: You ask your mom if you have too much food on your plate or if you are eating the "right" foods. Rather than saying "You're fine" or "Yes, you are making good choices", she can say "There is no way for me to know that. Listen to your body" or "I know this is a stressful decision for you. What are you excited to eat first".
How it helps: When we engage in a compulsion we are fortifying the obsession. We are immensely social creatures and learn from modeled actions. Providing reassurance or checking something for a loved one validates the obsession simply from the compulsive evidence. But it gives added authority to the obsession, because others are doing it too.
3. Learn about Exposure Therapy
Exposure works. The brain learns fear responses through experiences. This is why a young toddler will try to run into a road or stick their fingers in the outlets, they haven't yet learned what the potential consequences are of such actions. In order to retrain fear responses and reduce anxiety we have to give the brain new opportunities to experience the fear and have the fear resolve without engaging in the compulsive behaviors. This is the basis of exposure and response prevention as a behavioral therapy. This will show the brain that A) The scary thing didn't happen, even in the absence of the compulsion and B) Even if the scary thing does happen, I made it to the other side and can handle it.
How to do it: Do some research using reputable sources. Read articles about ERP. Watch videos of someone doing an exposure. Learn about the fear center of the brain, the amygdala.
Example scenario: Below are a few options
How it helps: Learning about this treatment method can help you maintain motivation when building and engaging in your treatment plan. It can feel scary and/or irresponsible to not engage in a compulsion. Learning the purpose of ERP makes response prevention feel worthwhile when faced with a trigger.
4. Self-care!
It is helpful to think of ways to manage your wellness in a global fashion. When we are taking care of our mind and body holistically, there is more energy to challenge severe distress and overcome OCD. Think about ways to promote your overall mental well being.
How to do it:
Movement
Practice mindfulness exercises.
Try some CBT techniques to identify those unwanted thoughts and which repetitive behaviors they motivate.
Example scenario:
walk, yoga, pilates, intuitive stretching, whatever movement works for you!
examples of mindfulness practices are mindful meditation on Youtube, 5 sense grounding, body scans.
Maintain a consistent sleep schedule.
How it helps:
Engaging in physical exercise is incredibly regulatory, especially for those unpleasant physical sensations that are associated with fear.
Mindfulness is a practice of attending to the present moment. Similarly to our fear response, our selective attention can be trained. Many people have highly distressing, irrational thoughts everyday, but some are able to dismiss them by shifting focus. For those with OCD, that shifting needs practice
CBT techniques allow you get a better understanding of how your internal processes work together to influence your behavior.
Intermediate exercises for OCD
5. Make a SUDS list
Subjective units of distress scale (SUDS) is a way to measure the intensity of a persons response when prompted with a trigger. Making a list of your triggers and indicating how it impacts you is an exposure within itself, so this will prime you for more intensive action later.
How to do it: Refer back to the list made of your obsessions and compulsions. Take a breath and bring your awareness to your body. Pick a scale and determine what the low and high end feel like. I like to use 1-100, but some prefer 1-10. On the low end, totally fine and cool as a cucumber. One the high end, imploding then exploding from fear consecutively. Then rate the trigger. After, identify a compulsion and how much distress you would feel if you could not engage in this behavior.
Example scenario: You are thinking about that stellar breakfast you had this morning, when you question "Did I turn the stove off?". This thought might have a SUDS of 80.
Obsession: Fear of harming self and others
Compulsion: Leaving work and going home to check -->Response prevention SUDS 80
Calling your partner and asking them to check. -->Response prevention SUDS 50
Or having a ritual in place of checking the stove knob exactly 4 times and taking a picture of it to view later when the need to check arises later on. -->Response prevention 70
How it helps: This allows you to get a better idea of what type of impairments you are struggling with. You can also use this scale to inform what an exposure therapy hierarchy might look like.
Advanced mental exercises for OCD
6. Explore exposure options and attempt small changes
ERP is best managed in the care of a trained mental health professional, but in order for the improvements to stick you have to practice these actions outside of session as well. It can be helpful to brainstorm a list of potential triggers that you could face and choose to prevent a compulsive response.
How to do it: Review your SUDS scale. Identify which obsession that you would like to address first. Then brainstorm ways this stressor will present naturally in your life or how you can approximate it.
Example scenario: Fear of harming self and others.
Potential triggers/prompts:
write a sentence in the following format "My favorite person (name) gets into a horrible, fiery crash and dies.
watch a video or view a photo of a house fire
use a large knife to prepare a meal with a loved one nearby
The trigger will vary person by person. Find what elicits distress for you and decide which you will experience and NOT engage in the compulsion. Remember, it is key to have a prolonged exposure in order for the body to change its fear response and retrain the brain through behavioral therapy and cognitive restructuring.
How it helps: Exposures give your brain the opportunity to recode a perceived threat more accurately. It helps to moderate the fear intensity associated with a particular thing. So engaging in these exposure challenges will eventually lead to more freedom and anxiety reduction. Also, OCD tends to be a shape shifter. We might be worried about harming a loved one and refuse to hold knives around them, master that fear, and then develop compulsive avoidance of driving with loved ones in the car. So, it is helpful to practice building these skills so that you can intervene in your day to day life as these symptoms change.
Overcoming common challenges when doing OCD activities
Exposure and response prevention is an effective treatment for managing obsessive compulsive disorder. However, obsessive thoughts can get really loud and lead to an OCD cycle. When doing an exposure exercise, it can be really hard to not engage in a ritual or compulsive behaviors. Your mind knows from previous experiences, that when you do the compulsions your anxiety fades.
Also, you aren't making up that strong sense of urgency driving the obsessive thoughts and compulsions. It can feel wildly irresponsible, negligent, or even dangerous to be presented with a trigger and literally respond with nothing.
This is why seeking professional support for OCD is incredibly beneficial. A qualified therapist will be able to provide Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), inference based cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT), and ERP. They will help you maintain motivation to persist through uncertainty and distress when in an exposure.
When at-home exercises for OCD aren’t enough
The suggestions listed above are all evidenced based, but do not replace treatment. In fact the advanced and intermediate suggestions are the most effective and should only be considered in conjunction with OCD treatment with a therapist.
It is really hard to manage obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms on your own. You are literally working against your most innate survival system. Without a supportive, informed provider there is a chance that you will simply spin your wheels and reinforce the obsessive thoughts with different compulsions overtime.
If your Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is more than just anxiety provoking and is causing impairment in your life, seek help. This professional guidance will make your current efforts more impactful.
Final thoughts
We can't think our way out of OCD symptoms. We have to give our mind opportunities to think differently about perceived threats by not succumbing to dysfunctional beliefs about the necessity of compulsive action. Cognitive behavioural therapy is effective for other anxiety mental disorders, but is not sufficient enough to overcome OCD. In fact, this treatment on its own can exacerbate symptoms through inadvertent rumination that reinforces intrusive thoughts.
We may be a good fit for you if:
You want an IOCDF aligned therapist
A therapist who is specifically trained in the treatments of OCD
A therapist who is willing to go in the trenches and do an exposure with you when needed
A therapist who can explain to you that you are just engaging with survival mechanisms that are so deeply ingrained for survival that we are literally wired to not ignore them. You're not being "too much"
Take Client A's story. Client A presented with a few overlapping mental disorders, with OCD being one of them. Her OCD impacted her ability to eat, for fear of eating the "wrong" foods. It impacted her relationships, for fear of being rejected. It took her sense of confidence leading her to write and re-write all of her assignments until they were "good enough/perfect". It prevented her from driving, getting a job, and living life on her terms.
Within the first 2 months, she was driving. From there, she gained autonomy with food and movement. Now she has a highly desired job and is looking forward to the next stages. She knows that life won't be easy and that her OCD will always be a factor in her life to some degree. But she also knows that we are with her ready to tackle whatever comes.
Give us a call if you are ready to reclaim your life and overcome the hold OCD has on you.
