Coping Skills for OCD: 6 Types & How to Use Them

What Are OCD Coping Skills?

Coping skills for OCD involve specific practices that a person learns to manage their symptoms of both obsessions and compulsions, such as mindfulness skills and journaling. When people have good coping skills, they are able to live their life with ease and not let the symptoms of OCD dictate how they live their lives. A skilled therapist with experience in OCD can help someone develop the best coping skills for managing their specific obsessions and compulsions.

Why Are OCD Coping Skills Important? 

Without effective treatment and coping skills, OCD can be quite debilitating.¹ OCD has two particular components that need to be addressed: Obsessions and compulsions. People diagnosed with OCD need to gain specific skills and approaches tailored to calming both their obsessions and compulsions in order to support themselves during flare-ups.

6 Effective OCD Coping Skills 

Coping skills for OCD should involve ways to manage specific obsessions and compulsions. A person will need a number of coping skills, as there is no one right way to manage OCD. When people with OCD have more healthy and adaptive strategies for managing, they do much better and are likely to decrease their anxiety and related symptoms.²

Here are six coping skills for OCD:

1. Psychotherapy (Specifically Exposure & Response Prevention)

Meeting with a licensed mental health clinician is the first line of treatment for OCD. A psychotherapist will be able to make the proper recommendations based on the symptoms that the client presents. Exposure and response prevention is the gold standard treatment for OCD, which involves the client being exposed to their triggers while preventing themself from acting out their compulsions. Therapy for OCD, especially when combined with medication, is more effective than medication alone.³ Make sure you find a provider you really trust, as the relationship between the therapist and client is the biggest predictor of how effective the therapy will be.⁴

2. Journaling About Your Obsessions, Compulsions, & Triggers

Journaling about your thoughts can be a helpful way of getting the thoughts and feelings out of your head and expressed. Journaling is useful for OCD as it is a tool to turn to when you feel triggered by an obsession or compulsion. Journaling is useful because a person may not even know what their intrusive thoughts are until they write them down. Journaling is also a way of expressing thoughts and feelings versus keeping them bottled up or repressing them.

3. Mindfulness Practices

Mindfulness is a great tool for OCD. It essentially helps people observe their thoughts and feelings without judgment. It also encourages people to move to a more present, self-compassionate state, and can be practiced any time.

4. Iyengar Yoga 

Iyengar yoga is a type of yoga that focuses on classical poses, sequencing, alignment, and overall health. Iyengar yoga is specific in its instruction and demands a person’s full attention in the present moment. The practice of yoga stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, cueing the relaxation response and helping slow down an over-active mind.

5. Meditation 

Meditation, a practice of focusing the mind using different techniques, has been shown to be beneficial for people with OCD. A recent study showed that meditation for OCD in conjunction with medication was more effective for treating OCD than those who took medication alone.⁵

6. Regular Exercise

Exercise is gaining traction as a major support for OCD. In a 2019 study, people diagnosed with OCD who exercised reported an increase in mood, less anxiety, and reduced urges to engage in their compulsions.⁶ There isn’t a specific type of exercise or duration that has been proven to be most beneficial, so it is really up to the individual. The most important factor is to start moving your body.

When Should OCD Coping Skills Be Used?

While these coping skills for OCD are helpful, they really should be used in conjunction with treatment from a licensed therapist. It won’t hurt anyone to use these coping skills, but when used as a way to support OCD symptoms, a mental health professional with experience in OCD can help you determine which coping skills will have the best likelihood of working. They can also help you learn how to keep track of whether or not the specific OCD coping skills are helping mitigate your symptoms.

Coping skills for OCD can also be specifically targeted for particular times. For example, if someone is ruminating with obsessions, it could help to move the body and to journal until they subside. If someone feels the urge to act out on the compulsion, it can be useful to meditate and slowly learn not to act out on the compulsion.

How to Know If a Coping Skill Is Effective Vs. Ineffective

Figuring out if a coping skill is working for you will involve a combination of both subjective and objective information from you and your therapist. A good way to find out if a particular coping skill is effective or not is to commit to the skill for a week at a time and gauge how your obsessions and compulsions have been during that period of time.

Another effective way to gauge if a certain OCD coping skill is effective is to keep a daily log that records your moods, obsessions, and compulsions. This way you can see over a period of a week or a month what skill or new habit you have implemented and how your moods and symptoms have changed as a result.

Here are a few signs that a coping skill is effective for you:

• More stable mood and fewer feelings of anxiety
• Fewer obsessions
• Fewer cravings of compulsions
• Easier ability to not act out on a compulsion
• Feeling more patient with yourself and your progress
• Starting to feel relief or a lifted mood
• Becoming more comfortable with your uncomfortable feelings
• You turn toward the coping skill instead of acting out on an obsession or compulsion
• The coping skill is woven into your life as a way to manage difficult obsessions and compulsions

When to Seek Professional Support

A good time to seek professional support is when you feel either your obsessions or compulsions are too much for you to manage alone. When you start to change your daily life to avoid things that trigger you, that is a sign your OCD symptoms have become unmanageable. Often, people feel an increase in anxiety and distress about their compulsions, and that is another good time to seek professional support. A person can find a therapist for OCD through an online therapist directory or through online OCD therapy services. If you’re interested in medication on top of therapy support, online psychiatrist options can also be an excellent way to start seeking help.

Common treatment options for OCD include:

• Exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP): ERP for OCD is a type of therapy that treats anxiety. In exposure therapy, the client is exposed, with the support of the therapist, to the stimuli that cause the anxiety. The purpose is that with exposure in the supportive setting, the client’s anxiety will decrease.
• Medications: Medication for OCD, in conjunction with therapy, is an effective treatment for OCD. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are often the first line of medication treatment for OCD.⁷
• Gestalt therapy: Gestalt therapy is a present-centered approach to therapy where the client and therapist look at how the person continues their pattern of obsessive thoughts and compulsions and finds alternative ways of meeting the client’s needs.
• Group therapy: Group therapy can be effective in working with OCD because so much of OCD is based on irrational fear. The power of the group can help to break down some of the fears and help with reality testing for the client.
• Eye-Movement-Desensitizing and Reprocessing (EMDR): EMDR for OCD is an effective type of treatment when the OCD has been trauma-induced. This therapy involves reprocessing traumatic memories by using either tapping or eye moments.