OCD Hope

By the standards of the society that I live in I've "succeeded" at making a life for myself. Before I go further with this, I want to assure you that this is not going to be an egotistical post about myself; far from it. So back to the "succeeded" part. This statement must be taken with a grain of salt for it depends upon the specific time frame that I'm focusing on. There have been many and will be many periods in my life in which I will feel that I have not "succeeded". Our ideas of what success means differs from one person to the next with no one person owning the right answer. Here's my idea of success. I have a mental illness and most of the time it doesn't interfere with my life. I have a full time job that allows me to provide for my family. Our bills are paid, the house is warm in the winter, we never worry about having enough food or water, we are able to purchase material needs and wants. We don't have to worry about our s...

Target is selling a sweater that has OCD plastered on the front of it. Below the letters it says 'Obsessive Christmas Disorder'. Really Target? You are that insensitive to sell something that completely trivializes and minimizes what OCD is and the devastating effects it has on the people that have it. Below is the email that I sent to them and the link to their website to contact them if you feel you'd like to do so. Link:  http://www.target.com/contactus/form My wife and I spend a lot of money shopping at Target, both in store in online. We use you pharmacy, buy your groceries, buy all the other things that you have to offer. We enjoy shopping at your stores.  It's extremely irresponsible and inappropriate that you are selling a sweater that trivializes OCD. People will say, 'it's just a sweater'. Well it's not. It's a decision, intended or not, by Target to make fun of and minimize a mental illness that causes severe pain and suf...

Just as our mood influences our perception of everything so does our perspective influence our ability to see things as they really are. On a day that I feel that I have a bit of perspective I'm much less likely to fall into the highs and lows of any given emotion. Even the good stuff that we like and try to hold onto.

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...