Living with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can be incredibly challenging, especially when everyday situations trigger intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Triggers can often feel unpredictable, leaving you anxious and overwhelmed. This constant need for vigilance and recovery from the disruption of your nervous system is a burden that can feel like too much to carry at times. However, understanding your triggers and learning effective strategies to manage them can help you regain a sense of control. In order to best determine how to manage OCD triggers in your daily life, you have to understand what they are, how they impact you, and the various methods you can use to maintain a level of regulation and get back there when you’ve been triggered.
Understanding OCD Triggers
So what exactly is a trigger? OCD triggers are situations, thoughts, or environmental factors that provoke intrusive thoughts and the urge to engage in compulsive behaviors. Not all signs and symptoms of OCD are the same; these triggers vary widely from person to person, but some common examples include:
- Contamination fears: Touching doorknobs, public surfaces, or being exposed to germs.
- Perfectionism: Feeling that tasks must be done “just right” to avoid something bad happening.
- Unwanted thoughts: Experiencing intrusive, distressing thoughts that feel out of your control.
- Order and symmetry: Needing items to be arranged in a specific way to feel safe or prevent negative outcomes.
Triggers can arise from normal, daily activities, making it difficult to avoid them completely. That’s why managing how you respond to these triggers is crucial for maintaining mental health and reducing the impact of OCD on your life. There are various methods of OCD trigger management.
3 Ways to Manage OCD Triggers in Daily Life
- Practice Mindfulness:
OCD triggers can be very distracting and often dominate our daily choices and interactions. Practicing Mindfulness is all about bringing our attention back to the tasks at hand. The idea of being able to stay focused on what is in front of you might seem far-fetched, as your intrusive thoughts work to do the exact opposite. Those who have OCD often say that if they could be mindful and not get caught up in triggering thoughts, they wouldn’t need therapy. That is the whole point of the practice, and it can be done with effort and patience. It is a skill that our patients develop and improve in their Woodland Hills OCD therapy sessions. For example, if you are working on a project and a worry arises, mindfulness allows you to resume your project instead of getting sidetracked with concern over the future, or rumination about the implications of the past.
When practicing mindfulness, people often struggle to know the difference between distraction and redirection. When you are ignoring your OCD triggers, you may ask yourself, “Am I avoiding it?” or, “Am I distracting myself from sitting with the discomfort of my trigger?” While the answer is not always straightforward, the goal of mindfulness is definitely not to distract you but to redirect you back to what you said you were going to do. It’s not about avoidance of tough issues, but rather management of your thoughts and behaviors.
For example, when you walk into the kitchen, you may have Harm OCD thoughts when you see the knives or the scissors. Practicing mindfulness means you notice those thoughts, and you ask yourself, “What did I come in here to do?” In this practice, you aren’t pretending you didn’t have the thoughts. You accept that they occurred, and then you move forward.
A regular mindfulness practice is a great foundation so that when you need to use mindfulness to deal with triggers, you are in a relatively ready state. You can be mindful by setting aside time to meditate, such as listening to a guided meditation, or being still and quiet and connecting to your breathing. You can practice mindfulness by tuning into your senses, such as noting what you can hear, see, smell, taste, and feel. This enables you to be conscious in the present moment; it allows you to observe what is going on around you and prevents your mind from traveling to the future or the past with worries or regrets. Take time to connect with your breathing, taking note of the air moving into your belly. Check-in with yourself physically – note any aches, pains, or tension. Try to relax your body. Let thoughts occur and then drift away without judgment.
Mindfulness can also be used to help you re-regulate if you are overwhelmed by a trigger. Yes, ideally you will be able to manage most triggers so that you recover with relative ease. However, that won’t always be the case, and sometimes you will feel very heightened anxiety. This might lead to a spiral, where you are frustrated that you’re triggered and experiencing expanding discomfort about it. Being mindful about the state of your mind and body provides you with insight into your OCD, as well as some exposure to your fears. Utilizing mindfulness to regulate yourself can help you to build confidence in your ability to navigate future triggering events. Once you feel self-assured that, no matter how challenging, you can respond to triggers without compulsive behaviors, you will feel a decrease in your OCD-based worries and anxieties.
- Make Value-Based Decisions:
Making decisions that are in opposition to your intrusive thoughts might be one of the more difficult aspects of dealing with your OCD. The nature of the intrusiveness of your obsessions, and how quickly they can arise, likely leads you to compulsive decisions that lead to avoidance. Making value-based decisions is a tool from ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) where, when living with OCD, you want to focus on your values because OCD is all about fears, worries, and threats. It often miscalculates the threat and makes you think going to a party is a threat because of Contamination OCD or Relationship OCD. But making a value-based decision is thinking about how much you value connection or dancing and that you want to attend this event to live a value and purpose-driven life.
Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, you accept that your OCD thoughts occur; they have occurred, do occur, and will occur again. Rather than spending energy trying to deny, ignore, or change intrusive thoughts, you let them be. From there, you can focus on choosing behaviors that reflect your true nature.
One of the dangers of OCD is the way it can isolate us from the people we love and the things we enjoy due to guilt and shame about our struggles. Stigma surrounding mental illness in general is improving, but there are still challenges to be faced when dealing with OCD. Because OCD can interrupt our best intentions and bring up taboo thoughts and feelings, we may feel that we are letting others down or that we aren’t worthy of love and care. Value-based decisions connect us with our actual intent, reminding us that our shame isn’t speaking to us about who we really are or what we really prioritize. Managing shame is a major part of navigating OCD.
Most of us have a good idea of what our values are, but it is always helpful to take time to consider how you prioritize the people, events, plans, and obligations in your life. You may choose to keep a note in your phone or write somewhere you look every day. When you are trying to make a value-based decision, you can look at your list and remind yourself of what you have determined for yourself. This can be especially helpful when you are battling with an intrusive thought, as you can remind yourself that you made your list when you were feeling confident, relaxed, and self-affirmed.
Utilize your awareness of your values to be kind to yourself and cheer yourself on. If you are avoiding a party because of intrusive thoughts about contamination, but you know that one of your oldest friends will be there, consider how important it is to spend time with them. They may only be in town for a couple of days, and this is the only time you’re both available. How high are the stakes to you, when you consider going to an event in order to see your friend? Remind yourself of how highly you value friendship; where is it on your list of priorities? Give yourself time and space to decide: if you’ve got an hour to think it over and you’re experiencing unhelpful thoughts about it, wait for them to quiet.
- Attend Gradual Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP):
It would be great if you could go through life without ever having your OCD triggered, but that isn’t going to be the case. Eventually, you will have to confront your triggers and practice dealing with them. There is no way to safeguard against triggers in your day-to-day life, so the goal is to decrease their power over you. ERP is a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) that involves gradually exposing yourself to your triggers while resisting the urge to perform compulsions. Over time, this process helps reduce the impact that triggers have on you.
It is important to approach ERP with the support of a qualified therapist to ensure the process is safe and effective. As an OCD counselor in Woodland Hills who offers in-person and online OCD therapy, I know that the intricacies of ERP can be beneficial, but need to be handled correctly. If you have tried to expose yourself to triggers in the past, and had no success, you are not alone. Many people who struggle with OCD attempt some form of ERP on their own, whether they’re aware of this treatment or not. They might think, “I am tired of avoiding this, I’m going to confront it!” The difference is that ERP for OCD therapy is planned, guided, and supported by a qualified mental health professional. You can definitely experience success in the process if you do the work and are willing to be open and honest about your thoughts and feelings.
You may be wondering what kind(s) of exposures you’ll be dealing with – how can you be exposed to something that creates so much distress for you? In ERP, triggers can be real or imagined. Sometimes, you may start with imagining you encounter a trigger, and work on your feelings in response. This is how the process evolves gradually; you may begin by thinking of a trigger, then looking at a photograph of it, then a video. This process might be repeated over and over, and you may spend different amounts of time with each method of exposure; progress is not a straight line. You might revisit this imagined/depicted trigger over and over again in order to work up your courage to address it in reality. You may also continue to work on imagining the trigger if it’s difficult or dangerous to seek out. It might surprise you to learn how much progress can be made with imagined scenarios! When appropriate, of course, confronting triggers head-on can occur in order for you to have lived experience overcoming the issue and moving forward. This builds confidence.
The more exposure you manage without compensatory behaviors, the greater your skills will be. This is why addressing even your least worrisome trigger is good practice, even if you don’t feel like it’s much of a bother. Triggers of all intensity and significance impact your nervous system the same way, only to varying degrees. No trigger is too small to address, and no trigger is too big to tackle.
How you will best manage exposures to triggers can’t be known until you do honest and vulnerable work. When you have identified your triggers and are able to confront them, you can build a repertoire of tactics to utilize when you are triggered in your daily life. Ensuring that you are ready and willing to be honest with your therapist is how you ensure progress in the work of ERP for OCD. Choose a qualified mental health professional who makes you feel safe and understood.
Managing triggers is a main concern for those who see us for OCD therapy in Woodland Hills. It is important to understand and accept that your triggers can show up in a variety of ways that are individual to you. Don’t get caught up in trying to manage your OCD the way someone else might, but instead know that what works for you is what matters. Be mindful of your thoughts and actions, hold tight to your values and priorities, and do conscientious work in therapy to address triggers and behaviors. Remember that while a trigger can be distressing, it is also worrying about encountering triggers that create anxiety in your body. Knowing you can work through a trigger, even if it doesn’t always go as smoothly as you would like, makes the time you spend between triggering incidents easier on you, providing opportunities for fun, rest, and relaxation. You need these times in order to feel strong mentally and physically, and you deserve to experience them.
OCD Treatment in Woodland Hills
OCD goes beyond hand-washing or repeatedly checking if doors are locked. It can manifest in various areas of life, including relationships, driving, or the postpartum period. To gain a deeper understanding of the OCD cycle and learn effective strategies to manage it, consider working with our OCD specialist. We offer treatment in Woodland Hills or virtually, using evidence-based approaches such as ERP, CBT, ACT, and mindfulness techniques.
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