Turn Your OCD Exposures Into a Game (Levels, Points, Lives, and Loot)

Your current scoreboard is rigged

You do an exposure, your anxiety hits an eight out of ten, and you walk away thinking "well, that was bad." Or it barely touched you and you think "that was a good one."

If anxiety is the score, the hardest exposures always look like losses. But those are actually the ones that help the most.

Every game has levels and you don't start on the final boss. Your levels are the things OCD makes you avoid or do compulsions around.

Write down five or six of them. Next to each one, give it a number from zero to ten. How hard would it be to face this right now?

You don't beat a level once and move on. You replay it until it gets a little boring. Then you move up.

You earn points for two things: doing the exposure and not doing the compulsion after. How anxious you felt doesn't change your score at all.

A hard exposure where your anxiety spiked and you stayed can score more than an easy one that felt fine. That's the whole point.

You do a compulsion anyway. Give yourself some grace, and then mark it as a lost life. You don't lose the game. You don't go back to level one. You respawn and pick up where you left off.

This matters because OCD loves all-or-nothing thinking. You did a compulsion, so today's ruined. You might as well do all of them.

In a game, losing one life doesn't mean you start the whole game over. You come back from the same spot.

Right now, all your exposures are earning you is anxiety. No wonder you want to stop.

This comes from something called a token economy. You earn points and those points cash in for real rewards. Pick a few things you actually look forward to and give each one a price.

Two rules to keep loot from backfiring. Rewards get earned by doing the work, never by feeling calm. And the reward cannot be reassurance. If you finish an exposure and then ask your partner "but are we okay?" that's not loot. That's a compulsion. You opened the wrong chest.

As an adult you can usually just go buy the thing you want. That's the point. Making yourself earn it adds weight to the work. When you finally get it, the exposure that paid for it will feel a lot more worth it.

Play your first round today

Check your page. You should have at least one level circled, your point rules at the top, and one reward with its price next to it.

Then do one exposure. Score it. Write it down. Try not to do the compulsion.

Next time an exposure hits a nine and you feel wrecked, check your score before you decide how it went. If you stayed and skipped the compulsion, you won that round. Anxiety doesn't factor in at all.