Self-Help Program: How To
Please note: The content on this website is no substitute for psychotherapy. Please seek professional help immediately if you feel that the exercises/meditations are triggering you too much, or if you experience any unwanted side effects.
Before you start: It is not realistic to overcome OCD in one go; instead, it is better to take small steps towards your goal. It is often recommended to write down all situations in which OCD bothers you, and assign an 'anxiety ranking' to each item*, so that you get a hierarchic list. For example: 1) Touching a photograph of a contaminated object: little fear; 2) touching a surface close to a contaminated object: medium fear; 3) touching the contaminated object: extreme fear. And so on.
Do not try to directly tackle the items with a high anxiety ranking, but pick out one - and only one! - on the lower end of the list which you want to work on during the next 14 days. Then, the next step is to find out what it is that you want to achieve: in the above example, if we take the first item (touching a photograph of a contaminated object), the goal to achieve could be: "I want to be able to touch photographs of contaminated objects without having to wash my hands afterwards."
Doing the meditations: The self-help program which you will find in the next section consists of 14 guided meditations; you will do one each day. Each meditation session begins with a small introduction called Warming Up the Heart; because the CWSL teaches that you can work on yourself only when you feel confident and strong. This introduction deliberately has the same wording every day, and it is recommended that you do not skip it, even if you find it 'boring' to hear it repeatedly; it is a form of autosuggestion, to help you keep up a positive attitude and to give you courage before you start the actual meditation.
The guided meditations will then take you on a journey into your ‘inner ocean’. You will dive deep down into your subconscious and find there a seed in which you see exactly that which you are afraid of and which triggers your compulsion. Then we will work on this seed in order that the scenario inside of it bothers you less and less.
Important: Please do the meditations exactly in order, because the content of each day builds on the previous day.
After the meditation: In addition to the meditations, you can visualize your state of mind before and after the meditation in a pre-printed mandala coloring journal (available for download at the bottom of this page) and compare whether anything has changed. This is a way for you to record your progress (and end up with lots of pretty mandalas to hang on your wall if you like ;-)). The idea is that you realize that you are not a victim of your emotions, always at the mercy of your brain, but that you can actively influence how you experience your reality with the help of a few simple mental exercises. If you like, you can combine this with ERP practice; follow the instructions on the first page of the pdf to see how to do this.
*Drummond, L. and Edwards, L (2018): Obsessive Compulsive Disorders. All you want to know about OCD for People Living with OCD, Carers, and Clinicians. Cambridge University Press.
Safety: Confronting anxiety is not easy, and so it is possible that you may be excessively triggered, or experience unexpected side effects during the mediations. Should you need help in an acute situation, you can follow these links to look up emergency mental health helplines:
United Kingdom: Where to get urgent help for mental health - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
United States: APA Crises Hotlines
Australia: Mental health helplines | healthdirect
New Zealand: Mental health services | Ministry of Health NZ
DOWNLOAD: The mandala coloring-journal which you need as supplement to the meditations is available here. You can download it and print it out, or you can use the digital version. Follow the instructions on the worksheets to record your kusala : akusala ratio before and after meditation. Have fun :)