CBT for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Let's Talk About CBT

What are 'intrusive thoughts' (we all have them) and what has CBT for OCD got to do with a polar bear? People sometimes talk about being "a little bit OCD", but the reality of obsessive compulsive disorder is much more difficult than a tendency to line your pens up or be super tidy. 
Ashley Fulwood talks to Dr Lucy Maddox about his journey towards recovery from OCD with the help of CBT, and Professor Paul Salkovkis explains how CBT works.
 
Show Notes and Transcript
Want to know more? 
Websites
For more about BABCP check out: babcp.com
To find an accredited therapist: http://cbtregisteruk.com

Ashley's charity, OCD-UK is here, and there is a lot of useful information on their website: https://www.ocduk.org/
And another OCD charity, OCD Action, is here: https://www.ocdaction.org.uk/
Books
Break Free From OCD by Fiona Challacombe, Victoria Bream Oldfield and Paul Salkovskis
Overcoming OCD by David Veale and Rob Wilson
Transcript
Lucy: Hi and welcome to Let’s Talk About CBT with me, Dr Lucy Maddox. This podcast is all about cognitive behavioral therapy, what it is, what it’s not and how it can be useful. Today we concentrate on cognitive behavioral therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD.  

Before we meet this week’s interviewees I’d like you to try really, really hard not to think of a polar bear. Do not imagine a polar bear. What did you notice? Did you see a polar bear in your mind’s eye? We’ll come back to that later.  

For one of this episodes interviews I took a train up to Belper, near Derby to meet with someone who has had personal experience of OCD.  

Ashley: My name is Ashley Fulwood and I work for the charity, OCD UK. OCD UK is a charity founded by me and a colleague in 2004. We’re completely service user led. So everybody involved in our charity at the moment has been affected by obsessive compulsive disorder, either directly, sufferers like myself, or through a loved one.  

But it’s been good because through my work the charity is how I’ve actually made progress with my OCD and I’m now certainly on my recovery journey.  

Lucy: Life for Ashley now is really different from how it was at the height of his OCD.  

Ashley: I thought I was managing my OCD and it’s only years later when I started working with the charity that I realised, actually I wasn’t managing my OCD. I was able to go to work and hold a full-time job, so that’s why I thought I was managing it, compared to other people. But looking back, it tainted every aspect of my life, so it became a very regimented day. I would get up, go to work, avoid eating or drinking during the day. Obviously as a guy we can urinate without having to touch the toilet, so I could just about do that.  

As my workday ended at 6pm, my colleagues who I’d got on brilliantly with, they would all go off to pubs and restaurants and clubs and they would always invite me but I would make excuses because I knew that I’d have to go home and go through my rituals.  

So I’d head off home, I’d probably grab a takeaway or something to eat on the way home so that I was ready to use the toilet when I got in. I would use the toilet. By the time I’d finished doing my shower rituals it would be 9:00/10:00 at night, which is more or less time for bed and repeat-repeat-repeat.  

Lucy: Ashley is not the only person I spoke to for this podcast. I also spent an afternoon in Oxford speaking to the current president of BABCP board and international expert in cognitive behavioural therapy for OCD.  

Paul: I’m Paul Salkovkis, I’m the director of the Oxford Centre for Psychological Health, which includes various bits, but particularly the Oxford Centre for Cognitive Therapy and the Clinical Psychology Training Course.  

Lucy: I asked Paul to explain what OCD is.  

Paul: OCD is much misunderstood. What it is, is people experiencing really unpleasant intrusive though