Schematic Model of OCD
Read below about each aspect of the process.
Instinctive Response
-
Relief Seeking
-
Exerting an effort, cognitively or behaviorally, to neutralize the threat
-
Reassurance seeking
-
Reacting with intolerance toward being anxious
-
GET AN ANSWER!
Subconscious Mental Processes
-
The brain's natural tendency to process information on a sub conscious level and send this information to conscious awareness when a significant association is made
-
Internally or externally triggered automatic thoughts
-
Unanswered and/or ambiguous information tends to be identified and prioritized
Anxiety Center of the Brain
-
Affective experience of tremendous jeopardy and imminent threat
-
Physiological processes are preparing for potentially life threatening situation
-
Fight or flight response activated
-
Emotional mayhem
Extinction Response
-
Choosing to accept the possibility that the risk is valid, yet not seeking escape
-
Making an allowance for one's own brain to create these upsetting ideas
-
Creating mental space and tolerance toward the persistent nature of the unwanted thoughts and experience
-
"Letting it be there"
-
Focus on management strategies
-
Not relief seeking!
Conscious Awareness
-
Becoming unavoidably aware of a threat which experientially and viscerally demand immediate attention and resolution
-
Being aware that the threat has a thought component
-
The mind is highly motivated to find resolution
"Spike"
-
Pay more attention to this spike and related themes
-
Biochemically reinforces hyper-sensitivity to this theme
-
Lessening the brain's sensitivity to these and related thoughts
-
Reduction of bio-chemical sensitivity to this theme
Automatic and spontaneous cognitive associations are linked with physiological experience of distress.
-
Choosing to go against one's own natural instinct
- Turn your back on greatest temptation
