For anyone living with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), life is a series of challenges. The good news is that modern mental health practices have developed OCD coping tools that help patients manage their symptoms and improve their quality of life.
Mental health professionals sometimes group these coping mechanisms into three categories: cognitive, behavioral, and other. The following paragraphs provide a brief description of the kinds of activities that fall into each category.
Coping Tools Category #1: Cognitive Strategies
Mental health professionals divided cognitive coping strategies into three types of tools, as described below:
- Restructuring Cognitive Thinking – The first OCD coping tool is based on the idea that OCD sufferers strive to mentally challenge intrusive and unwanted thoughts by restructuring the underlying belief system associated with the OCD. Clinical therapy, known as restructuring cognitive thinking, requires the person with OCD to replace their cognitive distortions with more realistic beliefs and rational ideas. The clinical goal of restructuring cognitive thinking aims to alleviate the anger, feelings of anxiety, depression, stress, and trauma that result from the intrusive thoughts without the application of OCD’s compulsive rituals.
- Exposure and Response Prevention – This clinical theory, known more popularly as ERP, gradually exposes the OCD sufferer to the feared triggers and intrusive thoughts without the OCD compulsive responses. In this way, the OCD patient learns to gradually reduce or eliminate compulsive behaviors.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) – OCD sufferers who struggle with ERP therapy sometimes find ACT therapy more helpful. ACT therapy instructs people with OCD to accept intrusive and negative triggers without responding by activating the compulsion rituals. ACT therapy teaches OCD sufferers to think of intrusive or negative thoughts as separate from actions. The goal is to make the person more flexible psychologically and eliminate the need to respond to the triggers.
Coping Tools Category #2: Behavioral Strategies
Therapists divide behavioral strategies into four types of OCD coping tools, as described below:
- Ritual delay – involves delaying the compulsive behavior response while the OCD sufferer challenges the necessity for the ritual.
- Compulsion reduction – involves gradually reducing the rate or potency of the compulsive ritual behavior over time. For example, checking light switches a fewer number of times or washing hands with a soft cloth instead of a hard brush.
- Habit reversal training – involves replacing compulsive rituals with healthy behaviors, such as deep breathing.
- Structured Daily Routine – involves creating a structured daily schedule of activities that avoids certain triggers and reduces the chances for OCD symptoms to occur.
Coping Tools Category #3: Other
The following OCD coping tools do not neatly fit into one of the above categories. They are described below:
- SSRI medications, anti-depressants, can lessen the severity of OCD symptoms.
- Support groups made up of other OCD sufferers who understand the challenges people with OCD face help support and validate members of the group’s feelings.
- Self-care, including getting enough sleep, eating healthily, exercising daily, and participating in relaxing activities, can help reduce the severity of OCD symptoms. Engaging in activities that elicit joy, happiness, or creativity, such as art or writing, or music, is an important part of self-care.
More OCD Tips
- Every person with OCD can take initiative-taking steps to help alleviate anxiety from their OCD symptoms. Educating themselves about the symptoms of OCD, the triggers, the compulsive responses, and the various treatment options available is a cost-effective pursuit and not time-intensive. Educational activity becomes a retreat from OCD pressures.
- Practice patience. Managing OCD symptoms takes practice and patience. Do not grow discouraged if OCD coping skills do not immediately fix your symptoms.
- Stay positive. OCD does not define who you are, and when you develop coping skills, find activities that make you happy, and make your life purposeful.
- Every person challenged by OCD owes it to themselves to research and select a mental health professional who can diagnose and treat their mental health disorder, considering their personal needs and mental health goals.
Hope for OCD Recovery
While it is true that for many sufferers, OCD is often a lifelong condition, hope for OCD recovery blooms thanks to therapies like ERP, ACT, and restructuring cognitive thinking. In addition, scientists discover new medicines, like the SSRIs, which bring a significant reduction in symptoms for people with OCD. These new classes of medicines mean hope that OCD sufferers can attain a fruitful life.
Recovery from OCD requires a combination of cognitive therapies, medicines, and personal emphasis on self-care, as well as a connection to support groups and faith communities.
Living with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Anyone living with obsessive-compulsive disorder may truncate the name of the disorder to OCD. That part is easy. It is not as easy to shorthand the symptoms or the work required to learn to manage the disorder.
First, everyone living with obsessive-compulsive disorder should seek professional help from a licensed mental health provider. Therapists have tools to help reduce OCD symptoms, such as Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and ERP. Those therapies are a crucial component of managing OCD. In conjunction with those therapies, medicines like SSRIs help sufferers manage the symptoms.
Second, everyone with OCD must cope with the obsession component. To have a chance at recovery, the person with OCD must realize that obsessions, the triggers, cannot cause actual harm. OCD patients can learn to challenge the intrusive, negative thoughts when they come into their minds and then refuse to act on them. One helpful way to react to intrusive thoughts is to engage in prayers, think of a favorite song, or relax with deep breathing exercises. At its heart, intrusive thoughts cause anxiety. These activities engage the mind, relax the body, and lower the intensity of the anxious feelings.
Third, everyone with OCD must learn to manage the compulsive component, those ritual acts intended to stave off the potential harm threatened by the obsessions. Some OCD sufferers find it possible to limit the number of times they activate the rituals. Learning to manage compulsions means reducing the rate of engagement with the rituals and lowering the potency of the rituals. ERP therapy helps accomplish this goal.
Fourth, everyone with OCD must learn to identify their specific triggers. Learn what new social situations trigger obsessions. Circumvent rituals by developing healthy ways to manage fear and anxiety. Seek support where you can find it. It may be group therapy, or it may be staying connected to your faith community. Through it all, remember that you are not alone.
Fifth, focus on staying connected to family and friends, to social relationships. Do not withdraw. That is the way to develop feelings that you are alone in the battle. OCD sufferers must educate their social connections to encourage their understanding and support during and after recovery. Ask your social connections for their patience and ask them not to enable compulsive behaviors (rituals).
Life After OCD
If you or someone you know seeks professional advice dealing with OCD’s anxieties and delaying compulsive rituals, please contact us today. Our friendly and efficient staff is happy to schedule a free, initial consultation with one of our experienced therapists to review your situation. Your therapist will demonstrate how Refinery Counseling Services LLC can help you take control of your mental health.
Refinery Counseling Services stands ready to prepare a personal counseling treatment plan for you based on your goals and personal needs. The practice provides individual or group therapy on topics such as:
- Anxiety, depression, stress
- Trauma
- Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Suicide survivor support
- Veteran post-service mental health issues, such as re-entry into civilian life, combat trauma, and sexual trauma
For example, group therapy sessions consist of a small number of participants who struggle with OCD and help each other by sharing their experiences.
In addition to group therapy, our practice offers a wide range of psychotherapy services, such as:
- Individual psychotherapy – also called talk therapy
- Family therapy – strives to bring family relationships back into harmony
- Child and adolescent therapy – supporting young minds traumatized by violence or sexual assault
- Couples therapy – sorting out divisions in fractured romantic partnerships
Founded by a black, disabled, female Veteran, our firm has a practical grasp of the issues impacting military families, women, and members of societal minorities. Our approach is faith-integrated with a Christ-centered lens. We treat the whole body, mind, and spirit.
Our counselors support the mission to provide compassionate care to everyone in our care and to engage the appropriate community for each client. Our stated mission is to empower every client to grow into the best version of themselves that they can be and to heal their mental health at their own pace. Our therapists commit to supporting each client in their mental health journey and to aligning them with the resources they need to succeed.
For additional Information
If you are interested in additional information about coping tools for emotional issues, we invite you to read our August 21, 2025, article entitled “How to Create Emotional Anchors as Life Speeds Back Up.”
You may also enjoy our September 22, 2025, article entitled “Coping with Emotional Overwhelm: Simple Practices to Regain Stability.”
