OCD Hope

Short post today. My wife shared a quote with me that moved her and does complete justice to the difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy's easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commercials. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. Empathy is getting down on your knees and looking someone else in the eye and realizing your could be them, and that all that separates you is luck. -Dennis Lehane

We spend a lot of time wishing things were different than they are; small stuff and big stuff alike. For example, we may wish that we had a 'better' or different car, better or different job, or we may wish that it wasn't raining right now and that it was sunny out instead. "I wish I hadn't eaten so much", " I wish that the I had gone to bed earlier", "I wish that I was happy today". We may phrase this differently than "I wish", but it's the same thing. It would be nice if I were better at writing...same thing different words.  We tend to become so caught up in this vicious cycle that we rarely ever appreciate how things are. If I'm honest with myself, most of the time I cannot change how things are. I can make decisions that will impact and shape tomorrow and perhaps days to come but what I'm wishing for to be different resides in the present and not in the past or future.  Think of how much of your life is wa...

1971 is the year that Prozac was invented. It wasn't until 1987 that it first became available for public use. Eli Lilly did not develop the drug for depression, rather it was developed as a drug for the treatment of high blood pressure. This never happened because they couldn't duplicate the results viewed in animals when human trials of the drug were done. Plan B for Lilly was to use Prozac as an anti-obesity agent which also proved to be a failed option. They next decided to market it as a drug to treat those hospitalized with depression; yet another failure. Finally they tried it on a few people that were mildly depressed and it appeared to help them. By 1999 Prozac provided 25% of Eli Lilly's revenue; a whopping 10 billion dollars per year.  I am not anti-medication. I take multiple medications and they have helped me and continue to help me. Prozac happens to be one of them.  What I am is disgusted.  Disgusted at the lack of attention and money focused on treati...

From my experience with intrusive thoughts, the kind that go against what we value, they can cause so much anxiety, sadness and guilt. You may be feeling depressed because the thoughts that bother you so much are wearing you down. That's what happened to me. I bought into the thoughts and assumed that they had some value about who I am and because of that, buying into them, I'd taken ownership of them and they were no longer chemical reactions but something that I needed to be concerned about, to worry about, to fix. I grasped them so strongly in my hand and wouldn't let go. The ironic truth is that those thoughts are like hot coals that we hold onto. We try to fix them when what we really need to do is let go of them. Why would one purposefully hold onto something that hurts them so much?  You are giving energy and power to thoughts that occurred in the past and projecting how they may impact you later, the future. All we have is the present, the now.  OCD thrive...

I strongly believe that people should help one another and that people are always more important than money. I've become sickened by the lack of compassion and ethics that some companies in this country believe is acceptable.  I ran across a story about a hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri. The hospital is now called Mosaic Life Care and was formerly known as Heartland Regional Medical Center. They are the only hospital in the region so people that need emergency care really have no other choice but to go to them. What they have been doing to their patients without health insurance is atrocious. The whistle blower for what's happened at this non-profit hospital is an investigative journalism piece by Pro Publica; one of the few truly objective, data and fact driven journalism organizations in this country.  I'll link the full story below. Mosaic Life Care (AKA Heartland Regional Medical Center) has been going after the working poor by garnishing their...

Is mindfulness mediation or is meditation mindfulness?  Mindfulness is a type of meditation. When I was first trying to wrap my head around what is commonly mixed up I used the analogy of an automobile and body types. You can purchase a sedan, a coupe, a crossover, a truck, a van; all automobiles just a different structural layout. Although thankfully you don't have to purchase mediation, you can practice different types such as mindfulness, transcendental or Zazen (sitting).  Mindfulness meditation has received so much attention in the West because of the scientific study it has received. Scientific study has proven that mindfulness is very beneficial to one's mental and physical health and that it does change the brain in ways that benefit us; yes neuroplasticity is real.  So if you are practicing mindfulness you are meditating. Whether you choose to explain the nuances of your practice to someone that asks what you're doing is up to you.

If you have OCD, the question of 'what if?' pops up in your brain quite a bit. So often that we become unaware of the chatter it's creating in the background. The last post, 'The Other OCD', briefly mentioned some of the thoughts that people with OCD experience. The list is far from comprehensive. A common reaction to the intrusive thoughts (obsessions) mentioned in the previous post is, "what if I'm the exception and I'm really a bad person?", "what if I'm one of the few people that feels horrible about these thoughts but I don't really have OCD?", "what if I secretly like having the thoughts?", "what if I seek help and the therapist reports me to the police?"  An example of a very common intrusive thought is "what if I were to harm someone?". It's an intrusive thought that isn't an OCD thought, it's a human thought. All people, those with OCD and those without OCD, have intrusive...