Something I heard a lot during my recovery from OCD was the importance of finding ways to cope with the disorder. I would meditate. I’d try to find hobbies. I forced myself to go out more, even though I don’t enjoy it. And yeah — in the moment, some of the anxiety would fade. I’d feel a little better for a few hours. But then it would come back. Usually even louder and more disruptive than before.
It was an ongoing and unknowingly unhealthy cycle I created for myself. I’d wake up with my regular anxiety and fears, find any way to distract myself, feel horrible once I was alone, go to sleep, repeat.
At the time, it felt like I was doing everything I could, and I was borderline hopeless. But beneath it all, I was still operating on the same desperate logic: This feeling is dangerous, and I need to make it stop. And that very belief — that anxiety is something that needs to be silenced and solved, is the engine of OCD.
It wasn’t until I accepted I may never get better that I truly began to recover.
I stopped trying to control my thoughts and treating the anxiety like a fire I needed to put out. And weirdly enough, that’s when the flames started dying down on their own.
The thing about OCD is that it feeds on urgency. On the belief that something is wrong. Coping, even with the best of intentions, can become a form of compulsive avoidance — a way to say, “I can’t handle this, I have to escape it.” But what OCD needs more than anything is the opposite of that. Pure acceptance. The willingness to feel uncertain, uncomfortable, even terrified — and do nothing about it.
That’s when the thoughts lose their power.
So no, I don’t cope with OCD anymore.
And because I don’t treat it like a threat, it has almost completely went away.
If you’re trapped in the exhausting loop of coping, know this: you’re not failing. You’re not broken. And sometimes the most healing thing you can do is stop trying to make it better.
That’s where real recovery begins.
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