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