OCD is a tyrant. It will control you with threats of the most horrific consequences if you don’t follow its commands.

“Don’t touch that or you’ll get sick and die.”

“Go back and check the stove five…no, ten…no, fifteen times or the apartment building will burn down and it will be your fault.”

“Don’t hug your niece. If you put your hand in the wrong place, she’ll be scarred for life.”

“That bump you felt while you were driving was a body. The police will arrest you for a hit-and-run and you’ll go to jail for the rest of your life.”

“You had a bad thought while you were in church. If you don’t repeat the prayer the right way, you’ll go to hell for eternity.”

Who wouldn’t be terrified by such thoughts? They may seem preposterous to people who don’t suffer from OCD, but to those who do, they’re grimly familiar.

To break free from OCD, you have to refuse to follow its orders. Its demands are unreasonable. You may think you can appease it to arrive at an uneasy truce. But unless you say no to the rituals, OCD will keep escalating its requirements and make you its prisoner.

So you have to stand firm. Push back. Do the opposite.

Terrifying? Yes! But it’s a tactic—called “response prevention”—that works.

In his book, Stopping the Noise in Your Head: the New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry, psychologist Reid Wilson outlines specific steps you can take to break free from the tyranny of anxiety. One of the messages he drives home is that OCD worries are NOT ABOUT THE CONTENT despite what  OCD is brainwashing you into believing.

So if you’re doing rituals to protect yourself from contamination, repugnant or blasphemous thoughts, or the risk of being responsible for harming others, you can shift your perspective instead of blindly following OCD’s orders. Don’t try to convince yourself you’re protecting yourself from the content of your fears; instead, remind yourself you’re doing compulsive behaviors to eliminate doubt about something that feels threatening.

Practice moving towards those feelings of uncertainty, and you’ll be on your way to freeing yourself from the stranglehold of OCD.