OCD Hope

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 would guess that some proven treatment methods will work better for some than others.  I've been regularly seeing a therapist, albeit several different therapists over the years, since I was diagnosed with OCD 22 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, min...

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 ...

We are so very hard on ourselves as it is. Add ocd to the mix and the grief and guilt that you put on yourself increases exponentially. All for what? Because your mind had a thought or multiple thoughts that cause anxiety, guilt or sadness. Are you your thoughts? If you think this to be true then you are discounting the fact that we as humans, all humans ocd or not, have many 'crazy' thoughts all the time. The book "Imp of the Mind" does a wonderful job of explaining why our brain and mind act as they do and produce the thoughts that scare us so much that we fear merely mentioning them to someone would be catastrophic. 

The words anxiety, compassion, and loving kindness are often tossed around in the arena of Mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).  I thought I truly understood what they meant but I realized this week it was an understanding of the definitions of the words, not what they felt like to really experience.  My mind is a Western mind and one that often takes things very literally and experiences very logically.  In a meeting with my therapist we discussed the words and what they mean, however this time they meant something more to me.  I'm sure many things contributed to this new understanding but what stands out is the simplicity of his definitions.   Compassion : not wanting to suffer.  Loving Kindness : wishing to be happy.   The simple definition of anxiety : our  response to something that seems like a threat.    Over the last couple of years I've read a few books about ACT and Mindfulness.  I started practicing ...

Why is it that we often feel the need to judge others?  I often catch myself passing judgement.  Is it a necessary condition of being a human?  There are very few things in life that are black and white, perhaps it's our attempt to create absolutes in a world often filled with grey.  There are absolutes that we live by however what do we gain by judging others?  When I judge someone am I not being selfish and discounting the person I've judged? 

I can be much too hard on myself and too serious about ocd and how I treat it.  It's easy to forget that ocd is a medical condition, a mental illness, one that I doubt anyone with ocd chooses to have.  I sometimes get too caught up in treating myself that I forget to laugh at myself.  When ocd is picking on me I initially get anxious and if the anxiety level does not drop to a "tolerable" level in some amount of time then my mood goes from content to sad or depressed or slightly depressed.  During this whole process it's easy to forget that my mood will go back up and my anxiety level will disipate and I'll bounce back.  I have to laugh at the things that go through my head for they are not real and often times very strange.  They may cause me a great deal of distress but they are also just thoughts and when I step back and look at them without becoming emotionally attached, I can see them as strange yet part of the normal human experience.  People wit...

You may notice that I don't capitalize ocd; there's a reason for that.  I don't believe it deserves the respect of being typed grammatically correct.  A therapist once told me that it's OK to get mad at ocd.  I have mixed feelings about using anger as a motivating factor but there may be some truth to what the therapist said. One of the great traps of ocd is to get you to think and think about what's bothering you; ocd is damn good at that.  My dad recently said to me, "you cannot rationally reason with ocd for it's not rational".  A good comparison is expecting a toddler to drive you to work and getting really upset at the child when they are not able to.  You could talk and talk to that toddler but nothing would change and you'd end up getting yourself even more worked up. I woke up this morning with an ocd obsession and started to try to think my way out of it.  We are thinking creatures so it's only natural that I'd do this.  I had ...