Читать книгу Anxiety Toolbox: The Complete Fear-Free Plan - Gloria Thomas - Страница 36

Graham was a 30-year-old graphic designer who worked for a number of large websites. He had been diagnosed with OCD in childhood. At an early age, he developed a fear of contamination and used to clean himself and his surroundings obsessively. His obsession and anxiety was so great that he would take his clothes off to eat his meals because he believed that otherwise his food would be contaminated. The last straw came when he and his family went to friends for dinner and he stripped off and sat in his underpants throughout the entire meal.

In a regression, we discovered that Graham’s concerns about contamination stemmed from an experience that he had when he was 9 years old. He found a snake and started to play with it. However, an adult screamed at him that the snake was poisonous, took it from him and duly killed it. Graham felt a great sense of responsibility for that snake and developed a belief that in some way he had been poisoned because of it.

Graham responded well to the TFT algorithm for OCD (see chapter five) and we intervened in his OCD strategy and installed a new way of thinking so that he felt satisfied with his cleaning rituals.