OCD3: What is Harm OCD?

[Music] harm OCD is also one of the most common subsets of OCD where sufferers have natural associations of the potential that others around them might be they're sort of unwitting victims so it's not uncommon that a spouse might have thoughts of taking a knife and stabbing their partner or strangling their partner the idea is that the sufferer gets a very natural human association of stabbing someone perhaps pushing someone in front of a train and the concern is that us humans are not always capable of fending off impulses to act in a way that's out of control and so the idea is that the patient becomes very concerned about their need to prove to themselves that they're not capable of harming loved ones or strangers so a person will engage in a tremendous amount of rumination and preoccupation with trying to figure out whether they're capable of acting in this way persons with harm OCD often become very preoccupied with their character you know they don't understand it's very natural for all humans to have these harmful associations harmful thoughts and so they think that because they're having these thoughts there's a greater likelihood that they might actually act on these thoughts and then they become preoccupied with the idea and the question of well if I'm having these thoughts doesn't that say something about me as a person is being good or bad we're violent and so they become very focused on and sometimes engaged a lot of reassurance to try to establish and confirm that they're not really a bad person because they have these Long's persons who have pom OCD are in a never-ending desperate search for confirmation that they are in no way responsible for the harm of others they are endlessly seeking proof that they're not a bad person or they're not capable of acting in an impulsive violent out-of-control way the most common symptoms of persons with harm OCD are to hide objects that might be used to harm others around them they may hide kitchen knives they may hide Forks utensils they may engage in a lot of checking to make sure that they haven't put poison in other people's foods and so they also engage in a lot of reassurance seeking they may go online and investigate criminals who actually have harmed others and try to develop a profile of contrast to prove that they don't have the same characteristics as someone like Jeffrey Dahmer who was a serial killer [Music] I think the greatest misconception around harm OCD is the idea that having these thoughts might actually speak about a person's character and so persons who have the condition don't know typically that these associations are very common to humans it basically 85% of the population reports not having OCD that they still have these very very common associations that are harmless and they're meaningless and so the misconception is that without that knowledge they think there's something unique about themselves for having these associations that speaks about their character in a negative way also the idea that persons with harm OCD might be in some ways more likely than others who might not have harm associations to actually act on these thoughts and I tell persons on a regular basis that you know I would leave them in a room with a knife and my children for a weekend and I would be more concerned about their safety than I would my children safety persons who are aware of a family member or friend who has harm OCB it's really important to not engage in reassurance it's common that people would say hey I've known you for a long time you've never heard anything couldn't hurt anything and that this type of reassurance has no benefit because the sufferers brain has paired the malfunctioning emergency signal with this topic and that part of the brain has no language skills having fun with the topic can be beneficial to to joke about it can be very therapeutic because laughing at an emergency signal from the brain in a way can actually short-circuit the brain's desperation and so to encourage the sufferer you know around loved ones who are trustworthy to share the association's in a light-hearted and even potentially comical way can become very very effective adjunct to treatment or to sort of dialing back the intensity of the condition [Music] treatment for harm OCD utilizing exposure and response prevention often might involve having the patient carry different implements of increasing threat so a patient might start off carrying just a plastic fork or a plastic knife in their pocket and then purposely create the association that they might use that device to harm others around them and so we build up on that such that a patient might carry more and more threatening knives in their pocket or in their backpack and so pairing with that dangerous object is the idea that okay I might act now spontaneously out of control and these people might be in danger to engage in self exposure that basically repeats the exact associations voluntarily that their brain is producing involuntarily demonstrates to the brain the meaninglessness of the Association one of the important misconceptions is that the goal of treatment is to show the patient that they're not actually a danger to those around them and in fact that's not really the goal of treatment the goal of treatment is the attaining of what's called habituation whereas when we take a stimulus from the brain and purposely and repeatedly expose the brain to that stimulus the brain then shuts off its preoccupation and emotional Association to those topics recovery for harm OCD would look like a person's associations naturally with harmful thoughts not producing an emotional tsunami of distress the idea is we're actually not trying to make the thoughts go away which would be a mistake since all humans naturally have these thoughts the idea is that through this very aggressive exposure therapy the sufferer would no longer have the emotional distress signal being a burden or periodic Asian [Music]

Channel: MadeOfMillions

Views: 46,381

Keywords: mental health, anxiety, ocd, ocd therapy, ocd treatment

Id: Kfh4uwpakN0

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2017