OCD Hope

I train people for a living and the longer that I've been in the profession, the more I've come to realize that it's not what we know, it's what we do with what we know and how consistent we are in doing it. There's the adage that 'Knowledge is power'. I agree, but more accurately said, 'Knowledge is power when acted upon'. Searching and finding knowledge is now easier than it's ever been in the history of humanity. Not too long ago one would seek out knowledge by spending hours researching at a library or paging through encyclopedias.  Perhaps the downfall to the ease of finding knowledge is that we think that finding it is enough. Many times, perhaps it is. However, for the stuff that really matters in life, finding it is the first step. We must then act upon it. The majority of behavioural changes that happen don't occur simply because we know something, it's because we acted upon what we learned. Mindfulness is a prime example ...

It's been too long since I've posted to this blog. What would you like to see a post about? Please let me know by commenting on this post. Thank you!

I speak from personal experience and from the observations of people I'm close to; we are our harshest critics. The toll this takes on our emotional well-being is huge, however we seem to put up with it because we think that we need to be hard on ourselves to be 'better people', to 'learn from our mistakes', so that we can be 'successful'. The society that I live in embraces self-punishment as a form of  self-improvement.  We focus on feeling guilty rather than feeling remorse; different words with vastly different meanings. I think we fear that if we aren't hard on ourselves that we won't learn or get lazy and not improve. Modern psychology has definitively determined that self-punishment does not help us, in fact in often slows us or prevents us from changing or take a different course of action in the future. I can remind myself of this until I'm blue in the face but unlearning that self-punishment is not helpful is a tough thing to do an...

OCD can be one of the most stubborn and unwelcomed guests you'll ever run across. It's ability to take up so much energy in one's brain and to sabotage our awareness and perspective is what can make OCD so seemingly powerful. We can't change it's basic qualities but we can change how we respond. The emotions that OCD evokes are almost always unpleasant and these are the emotions that we are hard wired to pay the most attention to. The stickiness and intensity of the unpleasant emotions can very easily spiral and make us feel depressed, anxious, and without hope.  This all sounds very unfortunate and sad if we take it at face value but there are things working on our behalf that we forget about and things that we have the ability to build and strengthen. Resilience is a very powerful friend to us and can can cast away the doom and gloom picture we paint in moments rather than day or weeks. One thing that has been scientifically proven again and again about...

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.