Hey everybody!
Today's video is something you have been requesting forever ever
and that is pure O OCD
(Gasp) I know you've been waiting, and here it is!
*Intro Music*
So what is pure O OCD?
Well, it's just what it sounds like to be honest right
OCD is obsessive compulsive disorder
if we're talking purely O I mean that's
only the obsessive portion not the compulsions
and if you remember from my
OCD video which I will link here you go check it out
the compulsion is usually our physical like
I have to wash my hands a certain number of times,
I need to turn the light switch on and off a certain number of times
I need to make sure
I locked the door a certain number of times
or beat the car lock or they're gonna be
all sorts of different things and compulsions that I have to do to
alleviate the anxiety created by the obsession
however with pure O,
There are no physical compulsions and I'm using the term
physical because there are some cognitive ones that I'll get to later so
stay tuned for that but pure O really expresses itself in intrusive thoughts
that's what those obsessions are they are intrusive they just pop into your
head and like hey you know you really do this because it's really bad but the way
that works with pure O tends to be and this as always leave your experiences
and comments below
everyone's going to have their own unique and independent experience of
this I'm just reporting to you what I have researched and found and that's
just kinda from a professional side so I don't have to diagnose and treat it the
obsessions with pure O tend to go against what we believe morally ethically
religiously and really what we believe about ourselves an example that they
gave in one of the research articles i was reading is this guy would be driving
along and he would have these intrusive thoughts that would say oh I could just kill
a pedestrian on the side there is run her right over really quick I could just
do that, that could happen,
and immediately following that thought he's have this
whole other set of thoughts was like ''oh my god, why would I think
that that's terrible. Am I a bad person, oh my god I think I'm a psychopath, how could
I be a psychopath?'' and this honestly is how they feel
a majority of their day they will have all these intrusive thoughts and go
against what they feel they are and it can cause a lot of internal anxiety and upset
The interesting part about pure O is that these like intrusive thoughts,
these thoughts that pop up into our head tend to be aggressive or sexual in
nature and that is why they're so distressing it has nothing to do with
the person or who they are they're not psychopath but it leads to a lot of
those thoughts because it's really thought that they could never imagine
themselves thinking and they don't understand where it came from and it
feels really distressing because then they worried that they're gonna feel
compelled to do it at some point now although pure O can express itself in a
lot of different ways the three most common and I'm looking at my notes so
I don't get them wrong
our number-one intrusive thoughts just like we're talking about to unwanted or
inappropriate mental images so seeing something thinking of something having
it pop up in their head to be really distressing and three frightening
impulses that go against the person's beliefs like oh my god I almost did that,
I almost pushed that person over there, I almost did something that was really
terrible and so that is the way that usually presents itself most commonl.
As always, people going to have different experiences but that's what they know so far
Now like I said, pure O does not come along with those traditional physical
compulsions that we see in you know the regular OCD the traditional OCD but it
does come along with some cognitive compulsions a lot of people will do some
kind of mental avoidant behavior they will also show a lot of signs of
excessive rumination like I was saying before as soon as that pops up there
like oh my god am I a psychopath? No I wouldn't do that would never do that and
we can go around around around
about that horrific intrusive thought our image or compulsion that we felt for
just a second
more like oh my god and then we ruminate on that forever and so there are a lot
of cognitive compulsions that go along with this which is why pure O is not
actually a different diagnosis within the DSM.
The most effective treatment for
puro O OCD is CBT and I'll link here to the video that I did about CBT if you
want to learn more but it's cognitive behavioral therapy and it helps us change
those kinds of thoughts cycles that we get into. Also, I'm reading from my notes,
because this is not therapy that I do and I don't have a ton of information on it
but feel happy to ask your therapist or look around on the internet is
exposure and response prevention or ERP it's sometimes not as successful in pure O
because we don't have those like specific triggers like traditional OCD
may have but they is still find to be pretty effective and they also say that
cognitive therapy because with pure O, we don't have the physical compulsions all
the time we maybe don't need that behavioral component the C(B)T we
just need CT cognitive therapy also some people find SSRIs really effective if
that's something you're considering if you're in therapy and you're still
struggling with these intense, nasty, intrusive thoughts might be something
that you talk to your therapist and your referral out to see a psychiatrist just
to see if that might be a fit for you
and lastly they talk about ACT and it's a newer approach so I don't have much
information on it but it's been shown to help with pure O it's kind of, they call it
acceptance and commitment therapy, ACCT
If I find more information I'll link it below
but like I said it's a really newer type of therapy specifically for pure O OCD
I found this helpful I know you've been asking about it forever
and because we're always working to reach more people
and to remove the stigma associated with mental health
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and i'll see you next time!