Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can impact your sleep, nutrition, and exercise, so it’s important to pay special attention to your lifestyle habits. Building healthy routines can help you create a stronger foundation for managing OCD symptoms and engaging in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic mental health condition that can make it hard to take care of yourself. With OCD, every aspect of life can feel stressful—from your social interactions, to work and daily responsibilities. OCD symptoms can be exhausting, and may disrupt your ability to maintain healthy habits, such as getting enough sleep, eating regular meals, or exercising. But, failure to maintain healthy routines can in turn exacerbate your OCD symptoms—leading to a complicated stress cycle.
While exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy is the best way to break this cycle, it’s also helpful to engage in self-care practices. Read on for self-help strategies for reducing stress and managing OCD symptoms, such as mindfulness techniques, social support, and more.
Understanding OCD and stress
OCD is characterized by two main symptoms: Obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted and recurrent intrusive thoughts, sensations, images, feelings, or urges that cause distress. In response to these obsessions, people with OCD perform compulsions—repetitive behaviors or mental acts meant to reduce anxiety or prevent a feared outcome from happening. While compulsions may provide temporary relief, they ultimately reinforce fears, contributing to the OCD cycle.
These symptoms are, understandably, stressful. Intrusive thoughts cause anxiety, and compulsions may trigger feelings of shame—or simply be so time-consuming that they add significant pressure to your schedule. This stress, in turn, usually makes OCD symptoms worse. “Any changes at all can cause an uptick in OCD symptoms,” says licensed therapist Tracie Ibrahim, LMFT, CST. “Job transitions, health changes, moving, and break-ups can lead to OCD symptoms acting up.”
Compulsions vs. self-care routines
Before we dive into self-help techniques for managing stress, it’s important to note that self-care routines can sometimes resemble OCD compulsions. “What can initially look like healthy constructive self-care runs the risk of becoming a compulsive ritual,” says licensed therapist Taylor Newendorp MA, LCP.
So, how can you know the difference? Self-care should leave you feeling relaxed, whereas any relief you feel from compulsions is usually very temporary—ultimately contributing to exhaustion, frustration, and continued feelings of anxiety or distress. If you start feeling like a self-care routine is becoming compulsive, set boundaries around the amount of time you’re spending on the activity, and consider reaching out to a therapist for help.
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The best self-care strategies for OCD
While ERP therapy is the best way to address OCD symptoms, self-care strategies can be an important tool for getting a handle on things while you navigate therapy, or try to maintain the skills you’ve learned there. Read on for tips, keeping in mind that everyone is different, and some may resonate more with you than others.
1. Sleep
Many people with OCD find that their symptoms get worse at night. “That’s a common time to experience a flood of intrusive, unwanted thoughts and images,” says Newendorp. “Then there’s the added anxiety of, ‘oh, no, this is the time I’m supposed to be sleeping, and it’s not happening.’”
You can’t always ensure that you’ll sleep, but you can take steps to improve your sleep by keeping a regular sleep schedule and avoiding screen time before bed.
2. Exercise
Aerobic exercise, like jogging, swimming, or cycling, helps reduce stress, improve mood, and may even help reduce OCD symptoms. Many experts recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day—but, listen to your body.
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3. Eat regular meals
OCD can impact your ability to eat regular meals, as time-consuming compulsions may interfere with meal prepping or remembering to eat. OCD obsessions can also latch onto concerns about contamination, choking, or vomiting, making eating difficult. However, maintaining a consistent diet is important for overall health, as proper nutrition helps regulate mood, energy levels, and cognitive function.
If OCD is making it hard to remember to eat, try setting timers to remind yourself of mealtimes, or making time each week to prep balanced meals or snacks in advance. These practices can help create structure and reduce the stress of last-minute decisions.
If your eating habits are becoming a real source of concern, reach out to a primary care provider to assess potential physical damage, and contact an OCD specialist to start ERP therapy.
4. Connect with others
OCD can feel isolating, but support from loved ones and peers can help. “A lot of people with OCD want to feel close to family and friends, but find themselves withdrawing from those really important relationships,” says Newendorp. That makes it all the more important to “do the opposite of what OCD is telling you,” she explains.
Consider starting a dialogue with your loved ones about how you’re feeling, or joining a support group (NOCD members can consider these community groups). Peers can offer a sense of belonging, and share coping strategies and encouragement.
5. Practice mindfulness
Mindfulness involves paying attention to the present moment, without trying to control or judge what you are experiencing, and studies show that it can reduce OCD symptoms.
If mindfulness feels hard to access on your own, you might benefit from a mindfulness app, or meditation or yoga class. Working with a guide can help you learn to drop the habit of classifying thoughts as “good” or “bad,” allowing you to focus on how you respond to them.
6. Reduce substance use
Some people with OCD rely on substances like caffeine, alcohol or cannabis for short-term relief, but these behaviors can become compulsive, and make symptoms worse. Cannabis and caffeine have been found to increase anxiety in some people with OCD, and alcohol and caffeine can negatively impact your sleep. For all mood-altering substances, it’s vital to remember the difference between temporary relief and long-term improvement.
7. Prioritize joy
When you’re struggling to manage OCD symptoms, it can become easy to forget to have fun. But, incorporating activities that you enjoy can reduce your stress levels, and boost your mood. Because depression and OCD commonly co-occur, it’s important to take a proactive approach to your mental health by prioritizing the activities that bring you joy.
ERP: the most effective treatment for OCD
Self-care techniques like the ones mentioned above can be very supportive for people with OCD, but they’re not a replacement for treatment. In order to really feel stable, you need to reduce the time and energy your OCD consumes. ERP therapy is the most effective form of treatment for OCD, because it teaches you to resist compulsions, disrupting the OCD cycle.
ERP therapy is a specialized form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) designed to treat OCD. By intentionally exposing you to your fears and teaching you how to resist compulsions, ERP helps you learn to sit with discomfort and uncertainty. Your ERP therapist will work with you to create a structured treatment plan of exercises that is tailored to your unique needs, and considers your specific compulsions.
For example, if your obsessions center around sharp objects and fears of harming yourself or others, your ERP exercises might begin by imagining yourself holding a knife. Over time, you might move on to situations that involve interacting with sharp objects in real life, like cooking a meal—while resisting the urge to perform any compulsions, such as checking to make sure you haven’t cut yourself, or asking a friend for reassurance. Instead, you’d gradually build tolerance to the anxiety and discomfort these situations provoke.
Self-care during ERP
ERP can be emotionally demanding, so prioritizing your health while you engage in therapy can be especially important. Regular sleep, meals, and support from family and friends can help give you the energetic boost you need to complete your ERP exercises. These tools also become crucial once you start to see progress from therapy, and are more focused on maintaining your recovery.
“Effective self-care is all about supporting and maintaining your gains from treatment,” Newendorp says. “It’s the number one thing we recommend when you’re going into maintenance, because we know there’s a strong correlation between heightened stress and an increase in OCD symptoms.” Stress management can help keep your OCD at bay and prevent a spike in symptoms; it’s also a good approach for your overall mental health.
Key Takeaways
- OCD can impact daily routines, making it hard to prioritize sleep, regular meals, and other essential routines—and when you’re under stress, your OCD symptoms may intensify.
- By incorporating stress reduction strategies—like mindfulness and regular sleep—you can create the best possible environment for OCD symptom management.
- Self-care isn’t a replacement for exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, but it can help you move through ERP exercises with more success, and maintain your progress.