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Resilience, Mindfulness and OCD

OCD can be one of the most stubborn and unwelcomed guests you'll ever run across. It's ability to take up so much energy in one's brain and to sabotage our awareness and perspective is what can make OCD so seemingly powerful. We can't change it's basic qualities but we can change how we respond.

The emotions that OCD evokes are almost always unpleasant and these are the emotions that we are hard wired to pay the most attention to. The stickiness and intensity of the unpleasant emotions can very easily spiral and make us feel depressed, anxious, and without hope. 

This all sounds very unfortunate and sad if we take it at face value but there are things working on our behalf that we forget about and things that we have the ability to build and strengthen. Resilience is a very powerful friend to us and can can cast away the doom and gloom picture we paint in moments rather than day or weeks.

One thing that has been scientifically proven again and again about Mindfullness is it's ability to increase resiliency in a person that practices it. Dr. Richard Davidson, the man at the forefront of scientific investigation and evaluation of mindfulness has said that there are a lot of things that we don't know about mindfulness, however we do know that it increases resiliency in those that practice it.

Increased resiliency is the difference between a bad couple of hours vs. a bad day or string of days. What we often don't realize is all the times we aren't bothered by a thought that we would have been all thanks to the effects that resiliency has on the brain.

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