Mental health articles

Getting Over Obsession With Someone Helping someone to overcome obsessions and compulsions

Exposure and response prevention

This type of treatment is based on the principle of exposing the person to the obsessional thought or

situation that triggers these thoughts but preventing him from carrying out the compulsive behaviour. The

person will experience the anxiety associated with the thoughts, but by resisting the response he will

overcome the anxiety and learn how to cope with the thoughts appropriately. Let us take a common

compulsion, that of hand washing, to illustrate how this treatment works in practice.

• Ask the person about the situations that lead to hand washing. For example, he may say that whenever

he sees any dirt in the house, he must wash his hands.

• Explain the treatment to him, especially that he will feel tense during the procedure. This is to be

expected and is part of the process of getting better.

• Ask him to find some dirt in the clinic. When he does, ask him to resist the urge to wash his hands. He

will feel tense, but this tension will always lessen.

• After he has done this, explain that this is how he should prevent his behaviour when at home.

• See him again in a week to check on how he is responding; if he has not been able to do it, find out why

and try to get him to try again.

Getting Over Obsession With Someone Treating obsessional thoughts alone

Some people experience only the distressing thoughts without any compulsive behaviour. Such people

often use mental rituals to distract themselves or avoid thinking the distressing thoughts. The principle of

treatment remains the same: by repeated exposure to the feared thoughts and by resisting any mental

rituals, the condition will gradually improve. The key, as before, is regular practice, particularly at home.

The steps are:

• deliberately thinking the thoughts for a preset time period, say a minute, and then gradually increasing

this time period;

• writing down the thoughts repeatedly;

• preventing any mental rituals or distraction from interfering with thoughts;

• thought-stopping.

Getting Over Obsession With Someone The last, thought-stopping, is a technique where the person practises thinking the obsessional thought, and then firmly says stop in her mind. Instead, she thinks in detail of an alternative thought or scene that is interesting or relaxing. Before starting this treatment, she should make a list of as many obsessional thoughts and alternative thoughts as she can come up with. As with the other treatments, this should be practised first with you and then for fixed periods of time at home until she is able to stop the obsessional

thoughts at any time.

Tags: obsession