I’ve talked about techniques to preemptively avoid OCD. These can be little things, like choosing in advance to read a chapter of a book without doing any rituals, or going for a walk or a drive that is free of OCD. The more practice you give yourself in not doing OCD, the easier it is, over time, to free yourself of the control the OCD seems to have over you.
When you have some success doing small tasks free of OCD, you may want to try a whole day free of OCD. Just like designating a certain book to be free of OCD, the key to an OCD-free day is to pledge at the very start of the day that it will be free of OCD. You can quite literally say, “I pledge to be free of OCD today.” It may be advantageous to start the pledge the night before (“I pledge to be free of OCD tomorrow.”)
By pledging in advance, you are giving your brain instructions before it’s too late — before it starts down some familiar OCD-laden neural pathways.
Throughout the day, you may need to remind yourself as you are tempted to do a ritual: “Oh yeah, this is my OCD-free day.” It’s less threatening to the ego to pledge to have one day free than to decide that you will never again do any OCD rituals.
At the end of the day, be sure to look back and reflect. Were you completely successful? If so, feel grateful! You want to reinforce that behavior with positive feelings. Did you slip up a bit? Be kind to yourself — you are leaning and growing along a road to freedom.
