OCD Hope

A thank you to the people that reintroduced me to mindfulness and continue to teach me and guide me. https://www.headspace.com/blog/view/220/ headspacer-stories

We are programmed to approach anxiety and fear in one of three ways.   One way is to try to ignore it ('it' refers to both anxiety and fear from this point forward in this post). Ignoring it may be done through distraction, whether that's always thinking about the future or the past so that you don't have to face what's presently going on in your life or numbing yourself from the present by watching lots of TV, playing on your phone all the time, spending too much time working, abusing alcohol or drugs; the list goes on but you get the idea.   Another way is to buy into it. We think about it by trying to reason and rationalize with it. We then apply logic and reasoning in an attempt to solve it or make it go away. We fool ourselves into thinking, 'if I just think about it one more time', or 'I haven't really thought about it long enough', or 'I have to solve it to find peace in my life'.  And yet another way is to to resist it...

I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, however my life experiences have helped me become quite an expert on treatment options for OCD.  I've been regularly seeing a therapist, albeit several different therapists over the years, since I was diagnosed with OCD 20 years ago. The treatment of OCD has come a long way since then but there's still tremendous room for improvement and the integration of mindfulness.   Let's get a better picture of what I'm talking about when I say treatment methods. Here's a list of what I've used over the last 20 years with various therapists: ERP (exposure response prevention), CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), talk therapy (this is not a viable method of treating OCD so stay as far away from it as you can because it will only make your OCD worse), ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy), medication, and last but certainly not least, mindfulness. Exercise is not typically viewed as a treatment method but I swear by it. ...