OCD Hope

The mental act of checking to see if a thought or feeling still 'bothers' you is very common for everyone and becomes a compulsion for someone with OCD. The checking is done because you want it (thought or feeling) to go away and you want to feel good. Checking is a self-defeating and dangerous loop to get into.  Acceptance means that you are willing to be present with the thought or feeling regardless of whether it's pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Checking is done because you're not willing to accept the presence of the thought or feeling.  Lack of acceptance means you are placing value on and energy towards the thought or feeling. Trying to make it go away only moves you further away from acceptance; also giving this otherwise meaningless thought or feeling energy. Your brain literally places great importance on the thought or feeling and the thought or feeling then becomes much more powerful than the other thought that you just had about wanting a cup o...

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. ...

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...