Re-Scripting Mental Imagery in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
PROJECT OVERVIEW
BACKGROUND
As humans, we have this wonderful capacity for imagination. We can almost travel back or forward in time and simulate what we would see, hear or feel in that moment…
…We call this mental imagery. And our brains can respond to mental images as if they are real… they provoke real emotion, along with physical reactions and actions.
For people who live with obsessive-compulsive disorder, their OCD can generate some really scary, bizarre, or even repulsive mental images… these are unwanted, uninvited and unrelenting.
A person will end up in compulsive rituals just to feel better.
But the relief (from rituals) is temporary, and the images feel relentless.
THIS PROJECT
David Cooper, PhD Student
My research explores how we can help people deal with these “OCD images”.
Psychologists can already help people with recurring nightmares. They sort of “re-write the script” of that nightmare - using imagination - to something more manageable. Maybe we can do the same for OCD imagery.
To test this, I’m running a series of online experiments that involve audio-guided activities. They sound like mindfulness meditations. But they guide people through an “imagery rescripting” process.
If you were doing this, you would close your eyes and bring that awful image to mind. Then you would change it into something less awful, something you can remember without such intense emotion.
In these experiments, we randomly split participants into groups. Some do this imagery rescripting, and the others listen to other audio tracks we’re using for comparison. And we’re measuring emotions before and after these activities.
PROJECT STATUS
When people rescript this imagery, their painful emotions decrease.
So far, we’ve found that when people engage in imagery rescripting about images based in the future they’re emotionally activated. This is not the same as peaceful meditation! The audio guidance stirred up the imagery and provoked some real emotion. Fiction feels like fact.
Here’s the best bit: when people rescript this imagery, their painful emotions decrease.
This is great… but we’re not done. We now plan to test whether these new images make the original OCD images less vivid or frequent. And we need to test whether people find that they’re less driven to do their rituals as a result.
LOOKING AHEAD
If it all works, we can add something that’s accessible, engaging and empowering to the treatment toolkit for OCD. This could be added to online treatment courses or be given as something to practice between therapy sessions.