Reddit reviews Stopping the Noise in Your Head : the New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry

That's honestly a really difficult question, and I can tell you what worked for me, but I do think it's important you search for your own answers as well. Maybe see a therapist if possible, or find someone to talk to as I'm certainly not a professional. But anyway, back in high school, I was essentially the picture of depression: I was eating without care, doing nothing unless it was necessary, and essentially just not caring about my life. It was really only because a major lifestyle change was thrust upon me that anything really began honestly. The summer after college my family moved to Arizona and I was forced to go to college here. This was totally against my wishes, but it did do me the favor of getting me out of my habits long enough to notice what was happening. and when I did, I became really angry at myself, for treating my body like shit and wasting my high school time, and I wanted nothing more than to change it. Although, it wasn't until another major lifestyle change was thrust upon me that I actually made any headway, as I was suddenly living in a dorm, and if I lived with the level of effort I previously had, I would die. So I began doing stuff like walking to get food and go to class and began taking care of myself (by which I mean brushing my teeth and showering regularly, which was actually a big change for me). It also just so happened that 2 of my 3 roommates were also gay and that kinda forced into my mind the idea of what would happen if I didn't change. I was honestly so scared I would die alone and sad that I turned towards some extreme anger, and that anger was what really got me going to work on my body (however I cannot stress enough that this was terrible for me and I hope you don't follow that same path as it only made my mental issues worse in the long run). So for my first semester of college, between having meals at the dining hall which ended up being healthier than my eating habits at home, an extreme (for my body at the time) cycling regimen of 50 miles a week, and a whole lot of self control that I kind of mustered out of nowhere, I managed to begin improving myself. Eventually I kind of realized that this anger towards myself wasn't really helping anymore, my weight loss had stagnated and I was only getting mad at myself for still being single and feeling ugly, like a failure, that sort of thing. I had sort of developed a perfectionism complex, to the point where if I, say, missed a question on a test, it was enough to make me cry in my room and want to hurt myself. And honestly, that's how it stayed for a while. I was making progress on my social skills (high school was also not great for that) due to some amazing friends I was lucky enough to make my freshman year, along with many other things that I needed to catch up on but aren't worth listing. However, I became dependent on them for positive feedback, they became the only people in my life I would get positivity from as I certainly wasn't supplying it to myself. At the same time, I found myself bending over backward for them, pushing myself to be as nice as possible no matter the cost. So ultimately for a while, my depression had only changed form and though I was looking better I had really made no progress. So what changed? Well, two things; for one, I began seeing a therapist. I've been on and off with a few for the last couple years and it's helped a lot. The second thing was just trying my best to break my habits at every turn, something that was very hard and slow, but the more I denied my bad thoughts, the more I was able to slowly push them back. I'm still not done with this journey. I'd like to lose a bit more weight, but more importantly, depression still has a bit of a hold on me and I'm pushing every day to move past it. I hope you can do the same someday. This book was also a good read for me, but I'm not sure it would apply to you.

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Tl;dr 1. A lot of luck and circumstance 2. Therapy 3. Very slowly working to break my bad habits

Stopping the Noise in Your Head : the New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry https://www.amazon.com/dp/0757319068/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_rZARCbYDB1X5Y

I'd add Dr. Reid Wilson's Stopping the Noise In Your Head. It's not tailored to OCD specifically (though he includes a number of case studies involving OCD patients, and adapts his advice for OCD sufferers when appropriate), but it's been a tremendous resource for me.

I'll also second the Mindfulness Workbook for OCD as a tremendous resource - I find it particularly valuable because it has chapters devoted exclusively to certain OCD subtypes (HOCD, ROCD, POCD, harm, etc.), which makes it easy to relate to.

I'm currently reading Brain Lock. While I really like his method (the "four R" approach), as someone with "pure-O", I find this book harder to relate to. I think that may be because most (if not all) of his examples/case studies involve the more "traditional" manifestations of OCD - contamination, catastrophy, checking, etc. Granted, Brain Lock was first published back in 1996, and the field has developed considerably in the past 20 years. Last year he published a 20th anniversary edition; not sure what's changed. Nevertheless, I'd still recommend this book to anyone with OCD, just for his approach to treatment.