OCD Hope

So what's this drawing really about? and What the hell is it? This is one of my favorite drawings because it puts paragraphs, if not pages, of information acquired over many years of therapy and self directed discovery into one visual object.  It's easy to think of each of your obsessions as different. The subject of each obsession is different and provokes anxiety and fear from different sources or stimuli. For example if I have two obsessions, 'What if I were to drive over the yellow line?' and 'What if finding a woman more attractive than my wife means I don't love my wife?' then the subject matter will change between driving and my wife depending upon which obsession has the most power at the moment. The fear and anxiety that I feel and observe will be the same but the intensity and frequency of the fear and anxiety may be different. A problem with thinking of each obsession as different is that you now think each obsession must be tr...

The content of an obsession may be more or less fearful depending upon how it brushes up against what you value and/or what you fear. The level of fear you have of the content will result in a graduated experience of anxiety; how intensely and frequently you feel the anxiety. The intensity and frequency of the anxiety that you experience will result in the necessity of performing a compulsion. Mental compulsions are no different than physical compulsions.  How much you identify with emotions and thoughts and therefore how you experience them in your mind and body will be determined with the ownership that you take of the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.  How you relate to the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations will always have a direct result on the intensity and duration of the OCD loop. When you are able to be the impartial observer vs. being and owning the thoughts and emotions then they become something complet...

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?