Skip to main content

Grief and OCD

I lost my sister in February. She was taken from us all way too early! She was a kind and gentle person that loved life and was not afraid to speak up for what's right or for people that don't feel they have a voice. 

I have no predetermine paragraph to write or story to share, rather a reminder to myself to try not to take things for granted. To not always listen to the loudest voice in the room or in my head. That I cannot control thoughts and I cannot control feelings and that's okay - the sooner I'm able to accept this, the sooner I will find some peace. I must now, and always for that matter, give myself extra grace and love for OCD is so hard on the person that it inhabits. Over the years, when things have gotten really tough, I continue to go back to a meditation that allows me to sit with what I'm feeling, unattached from the thoughts, and share intense kindness and love with me. 

Here's a link to the meditation from Kristin Neff: Soften. Sooth. Allow. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ROCD (Relationship OCD)

Relationship OCD is the term given to obsessions that focus on: fear of getting in a romantic relationship, fear that you are in the wrong relationship, fear that you don't love the person that you are with, fear that having romantic feelings for someone other than your significant other means that there's something wrong with the relationship you are in. By no means is this a complete list of fears but I hope you get the idea. Relationship OCD is something that really bothered me at one time. It still bubbles up from time to time but not with the intensity or frequency that it used to. I remember experiencing a lot of sadness and pain with this obsession. When it first started bothering me, my fiance meant everything to me and I felt so alone and helpless because I had been able to talk to her about what was bothering me. This was so different than other OCD obsessions because I could at least talk to her about them or let her know what was bothering me. With ROCD I felt that ...

Feeding an Obsession

Which comes first? Factually speaking the obsession comes first and is followed by compulsions. It's easy to know this to be true when not caught in an ocd loop, but when in the loop it can be hard to remember. What's in our control is not the obsession but the action, mental or physical, to act on a compulsion. We can't stop thoughts, and that's exactly what an obsession is. The compulsion may appear to be a thought, but it's a thought masquerading as a mental behavior. You may likely know all of this already - I'm writing this more to remind myself than anything else. So if the obsession comes first, is beyond our control, and is followed by compulsions what's a person to do? The answer is to stop doing the compulsion - often much easier said than done, but still very much possible. The perfectionist in those of us with ocd may attempt or try to stop all compulsions but I think this ends up putting more pressure on us than anything else. Do your best ...