Something Is Not Right @purelyobsessional - Tumblr Blog

Inspiration from an Unlikely Source

I recently returned from a week-long “vacation” with four toddlers, two sets of parents, and two sets of in-laws. Not an unwelcome trip, but I wouldn’t describe it as relaxing. Indeed, I arrived back home feeling like I needed a break from my kids (and people in general).

*Trigger OCD*

As soon as I had that thought, I started spiking about whether I truly love my children, whether I will get (or already am) sick of them, whether I’m a good parent, whether it was a mistake to have children, and so on and so forth. I have had this spike theme before, but that doesn’t make it any less agonizing.

Part of what fuels my OCD is guilt. Big time, former Catholic guilt. So imagine my surprise when I found inspiration for dealing with my current spike theme in the autobiography of a Catholic saint. I wasn’t actually reading her autobiography, but another (secular) book written by a Jewish author that happened to talk about and quote the spiritual memoir of Saint Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul.

A distinguishing characteristic of Saint Therese, who died in 1897 at just 24 years of age, is that she achieved sainthood through the perfection of small, ordinary acts. There was nothing outwardly striking about Saint Therese’s life or death; she did not perform outstanding feats or undertake daring adventures. Yet, as discussed in The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (from whose work I also took the foregoing two sentences), she exhibited a way of being that translates beautifully into a kind of exposure therapy for OCD:

Therese intensely disliked one of her fellow nuns, Teresa of Saint Augustine, whom Therese described, without identifying her, as “a Sister who has the faculty of displeasing me in everything, in her ways, her words, her character.” Instead of avoiding her, Therese sought out this nun at every turn and treated her “as if I loved her best of all”–-so successfully that this sister once asked Therese, “Would you tell me . . . what attracts you so much toward me; every time you look at me, I see your smile?”

I read this and immediately thought that, as I am spiking about whether I really, truly love my children, I should turn toward them, not away (as instinct drives me). Turning away from a spike only fuels it. I know this from experience, yet I would be lying if I said it gets easier with time. With every spike theme, new or recurring, I have to consciously practice not avoiding the trigger(s). This is the work of exposure therapy. And it is indeed work. Unpleasant, unnatural-feeling work. But it’s the only reliable way out of an OCD spiral, however wrong it feels on an innate and visceral level to lean in to the thoughts that scare you.

#OCD #pure O ocd #intrusive thoughts #triggers

How to Understand the OCD Thought Process

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder have intrusive thoughts (or images) that bother them, leading to a cycle of behaviors.

The cycle of OCD begins with a trigger, which eventually lead to negative thoughts, compulsive actions, and avoidance.

1. Triggers: These are the events or stimuli that set you off. It could be touching something (contamination), leaving the house (something is unlocked, the gas is on), driving at night (I ran over something), thinking of sex (God will punish me, I will lose control).

2. Odd thoughts or images: You have some thoughts or sensations that you don’t like. “Why am I having those bizarre, sick, disgusting, unwanted thoughts?”

3. Negative evaluation of thoughts: You think there is something wrong with your thinking – as if you should have only pure and good thoughts and feelings. You have a lot of “shoulds” about the way you should think and feel. You think that now that you have the thought, you have a responsibility to get reassurance, get control, or get rid of it. Having the thought is equivalent to being SENT ON A MISSION. You have become THE THOUGHT POLICE.

4. Self-monitoring: You watch yourself like a hawk, looking for those thoughts. Of course, simply because you have to think about what you are looking for (“I am looking for that disgusting and dangerous thought”), you always have to find it. It’s like holding up a mirror to yourself and saying, “I am looking for a mirror. OH MY GOD! THERE IT IS!!!!”

5. Demand for certainty: You think you should know for sure whether you will act out, lose control, or are contaminated. Nothing short of perfection and certainty will suffice.

6. Thought-action fusion: You equate having a thought with committing an action. “If I think I will get violent, I will.” Or, a thought is the same thing as reality. “If I think I have cancer, then I must be a dead man.” Thoughts, actions and reality are all one – all in your mind.

7. Thought-suppression: Your first line of “defense” is to try to stop having these thoughts. You tell yourself, “Don’t think that.” It works … for three minutes. But your failure to permanently suppress these thoughts leads you to believe…

8. “I’ve lost control”: You now equate control in your life to eliminating unwanted thoughts. Now you feel more out of control as you desperately try to control your thoughts more and more. It’s like slapping the water and drowning.

9. Compulsions: You now perform some neutralizing ritual. Perhaps you wash your hands excessively, pray, repeat “No,” walk a certain way, wash a certain way, arrange things, go back and check, check again…. You find yourself frenetically doing these things until you have a…

10. Felt sense of completion: You say, “I can stop now because I feel I have done enough.” This felt sense of completion now becomes your new rulebook for rituals. “I need to do them until I feel I did enough.” You are hooked on your rituals.

11. Avoidance of triggers. You remind yourself, I wouldn’t have any of these thoughts if I simply avoided the triggers. So you avoid touching things, avoid public restrooms, avoid shaking hands, avoid movies with Satan, avoid people that make you have feelings that are bad, and disgusting feelings. Avoid, avoid and avoid. You are running away from the world.

Excerpted from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/anxiety-files/200906/how-do-obsessive-compulsive-people-think

#OCD #obsessive compulsive disorder #Obsessive thoughts #triggers

I have anxiety, and I believe I can speak for everyone with anxiety when I...

#anxiety #anxiety disorder #ocd

Is OCD a Mental Illness?

My mother recently forwarded a piece from The Guardian that questions whether OCD is a mental disorder, that is, a disease with organic, biological root causes: abnormalities in the brain. That's indeed what I have long been told by health professionals.

But what if OCD is not a biological reality? As the author writes, haven't researchers proved with neuroimaging that OCD brains are different? But what about the fact that a great many disorders show the same kinds of brain changes?

According to the neuroscientists quoted in the piece, psychiatric diagnoses are not based on biomarkers. Rather, they are subjective constructs. There is evidence that exposure to environmental stress is the leading determinant of common mental health problems like anxiety, depression, and OCD.

The author's takeaway is this:

This is what I think is wrong with the medical model: a failure to understand mental health in context. An assumption that a disorder is a “thing” that an individual has, that can be measured, independent of subjective experience. The trauma model can be just as reductive, turning healing into an individual consumer journey and ignoring the environmental conditions in which wounds form. This has empowered professionals to decontextualise distress from the lives of those who experience it; to create pseudo-specific taxonomies of mental disorders. Diagnostic manuals have for decades been giving well-meaning psychiatrists and psychologists the illusion of explaining the suffering of the patient sitting in front of them. This system has hurt none more than those facing social adversity: financial deprivation, poor education, racial discrimination and so on, who are pathologised as though their reactive stress, and not the things to which they’re reacting, were the problem.

I'm still mulling this over, but one thing I know to be true is that when the circumstances and contexts around me change, so do my OCD symptoms. They worsen, for example, when I'm living alone and/or feeling isolated.

#ocd #obsessive compulsive disorder #obsessive thoughts #ruminating #neuroscience

More Thoughts on Catholicism & Guilt

I recently came across something that rang really true for me and wanted to share it here:

The irrationality of the messages that we were told as children is irrelevant. Evidence and reason are powerless against Catholic guilt and shame, which is pervasive, vicious, and persistent. For those of us who grew up with this indoctrination, faith in God is optional; Catholic guilt, however, is not.

When it comes to OCD, the irrationality of the thoughts is likewise irrelevant. Like guilt, OCD is vicious and persistent, and rational thoughts do nothing to relieve its grip on you.

#OCD #obsessive compulsive disorder #catholic guilt #pure ocd #brain

On Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques For the Treatment of OCD

The quest to eliminate the spike is probably the greatest cognitive misconceptualization that people bring to the therapeutic process. Ultimately the goal is to manage the spike effectively, not to focus on its existence or disappearance. The same can be said about the experience of anxiety. Relief seeking increases our vigilance in being aware of its existence. Tolerating anxiety focuses on creating room for the experience. Making room for its presence allows the brain to focus on other information. Anxiety not focused on is anxiety minimally experienced.

Source: https://www.cognitivebehavioralcenter.com/cbt-ocd

#ocd #obsessive compulsive disorder #spiking #cognitive behavioral therapy

Staying with the Shakiness

Many years ago, when my OCD first began but I didn’t know that’s what it was, I looked for support and understanding in lots of places – especially books. After almost being hospitalized by a school clinician because I could not say with 100% certainty that I would not jump out my 17th-floor dorm room window between that appointment and my next one (I ultimately lied to get out of that situation), I learned not to talk openly about my obsessive thoughts. Even with family, such discussions were typically disastrous and only left me feeling more alone, crazy, and doomed than before I said anything. I’ll never forget one roommate telling me to just “snap out of it,” as if I didn’t wish more than anything that I could do exactly that. But I digress. What I really want to highlight in this post is the incredible writing of an American Buddhist nun that just about saved my life – and my sanity – those first few years when I suffered from undiagnosed OCD.

Pema Chödrön has written many books and given many talks, but back in 2001, when I picked up When Things Fall Apart, I had never heard of her. What drew me to the book was the title, since that’s exactly what I felt was happening to me, as well as the photo on the cover:

I found the cover art to be evocative of my desperate loneliness at the time, while simultaneously soothing and relaxing. (Nature always does that for me.)

#ocd #cbt #mindfulness #pema chodron

I’ve had thousands of problems in my life, most of which never actually happened. — Mark Twain

#obsessive thoughts #ruminating

Rethinking the Floating Head "Ideal"

When I first started this blog, its title was The Floating Head. The reason for this relates to something I touched on in my previous post about Catholicism, guilt, and OCD. In my tween years, I was indoctrinated to view the body as dirty, shameful, and problematic; in short, a source of trouble to overcome. I began to wish that -- and in some ways even live as if -- I didn't have a physical body. I wanted to be a floating head in the world.

Looking back these many years later, I see how misguided that thinking was. More than that, I've come to believe that the opposite is true: mental projections are at the root of our suffering. Our bodies are not a problem; it's what we believe and think about our bodies that causes suffering.

I'll write more about this in a future post, but I highly recommend The Work of Byron Katie for anyone who struggles with anxiety disorders like OCD. It has been transformational for me.

For those who are unfamiliar, here's a brief description from the website linked above:

A Simple Yet Powerful Practice As we do The Work of Byron Katie, not only do we remain alert to our stressful thoughts—the ones that cause all the anger, sadness, and frustration in our world—but we question them, and through that questioning the thoughts lose their power over us. Great spiritual texts describe the what—what it means to be free. The Work is the how. It shows you exactly how to identify and question any thought that would keep you from that freedom.

#ocd #byron katie #the work #projections #ruminating #obsessive compulsive disorder

Rethinking the Unthinkable

Dr. Steven Phillipson is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) of OCD. I first learned of him while doing online research about OCD. In fact, it was his article “Rethinking the Unthinkable” that caused me to realize that I probably had Pure-O OCD. I printed, read, highlighted, and made notes on this article over and over again. I carried it around with me in case I needed a reminder/pep talk whenever my OCD started acting up. Indeed, this article has been so important to me and to getting me on a path to healing that I wanted to make sure people reading this blog are aware of it. Here’s a link:

This article offers a comprehensive understanding of the condition known as “Pure-O” in terms of treatment and conceptualizing this subset o

#pure ocd #ocd #spiking #cbt

Why I Dislike Hotels (Even Fancy Ones)

I find hotels rather depressing, especially when I’m traveling alone. This is true even when I’m staying at really nice ones. It might have something to do with the fact that most hotels are high rises, and more often than not I end up on a floor above the “if I jumped from this level I would probably break many bones but not die” level.

Recently, I was staying on the club level of a posh hotel and found it a floor too high for my comfort. In an attempt to confront my OCD, I tried opening the window. I admit I was relieved to see that it opened only a few inches, such that I could not fit my body through it even if I wanted to (which OCD tries to make me to believe I do). Relief is probably the wrong response – I know I ought to try to get comfortable with being uncomfortable about heights – but I’m just being honest. Anyway, wouldn’t you know that the window got stuck and I had to call maintenance to come close it? Luckily no one asked me why I was opening my window on a cold and rainy day….

#ocd #obsessions #reassurance #obsessive thoughts

my-autism-adhd-blog

ADHD

OCD

Autism

Neurodivergent Insights

#ocd #autism #adhd

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. - Rumi

Snakes and Your Midbrain

Here is a diagram of the human brain. The midbrain is where you’d expect it to be — in the middle.

The midbrain acts as a kind of relay station for auditory and visual information. It's where the “fight or flight” response originates in our brains. For those of us with OCD, when the midbrain gets activated, it can make us physically feel as if the thought we’re having poses a real threat (think tight chest, racing heart, churning stomach, etc.).

Imagine you’re walking in a jungle and you “think” you see a snake. This is actually just a “pre-thought” (meaning it doesn’t rise to the level of consciousness), but it immediately triggers the body's alarm system. After that initial, automatic trigger, your conscious/thinking brain starts asking, “Is it actually a snake? Maybe it's just a twig."

Imagine if you then conclude, “Yeah, ok — just a twig.” You might think that at that point your conscious mind has prevailed and all is well. But your body and unconscious mind are already primed and reacting as if the twig really is a snake. It takes a while for that fear response to subside. Rational thoughts don’t help the process; the body has to release the fear on its own.

Putting this in terms of OCD, you can’t think yourself out of an obsessive thought. Trying to do so (that is, “ruminating”) only prolongs and intensifies things. Learn to trust that your body will release the fear caused by the intrusive, disturbing thought in its own time. Don’t try to think the thought away. It doesn’t work. Trust me, I've tried.

#OCD #ruminating #obsessive compulsive disorder #brain #fight or flight

Abnormal Processing of Guilt in OCD

While writing my last post, I googled “guilt OCD brain scan” and found this abstract of a study published in 2014 about the link between guilt and OCD:

Guilt plays a significant role in the occurrence and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Two major types of guilt have been

#OCD #guilt #obsessive compulsive disorder #MRI

Catholicism, Guilt, and OCD

Weighty title for a post. So weighty, in fact, I've been putting off writing about it. But it’s time.

I was raised Catholic, though not very observant. We attended Mass on Easter and Christmas (usually). Around the beginning of eighth grade, I started going to a youth group at a Catholic church that, for lack of a better term, brainwashed me. I went from being a relatively normal kid with good intentions and solid morals to one with zero tolerance for any divergence from what was “correct.” Back then, I thought that there was a RIGHT and a WRONG in every situation, and I judged both myself and others harshly for wrong actions — and even wrong thoughts.

Catholicism generally teaches that sinful thoughts are as bad as sinful acts. So, in my quest to avoid doing anything “wrong in the eyes of God,” I started trying to shut down all kinds of thinking. This practice started right around the time I was going through puberty, so you can imagine that thoughts of a sexual nature received extra censoring.

I was always into boys, but had never so much as kissed one at the time I started thinking in these overly rigid ways. I began wishing I didn’t have a body because I thought it would make life so much simpler (and me "better"). I’m sad to say that I was taught by the Church to view the body as dirty, shameful, and the source of most of the trouble in our lives. After all, the thinking went, if we didn’t have bodies, we couldn’t commit adultery, steal, or murder anyone.

Looking back now, more than 30 years later, it's hard to believe that I thought acting as if I had no body was a positive aim. But I did — very much so — for at least eight solid years.

I started to fall away from Catholicism during my third year of college. That process took a while and, even as the agnostic I am today, I have residual Catholic guilt. These days, however, I definitely DO NOT want to just be in my head. My mind can be a scary place and so much more threatening than my body when I’m caught in an OCD spiral.

I believe that my OCD has roots in the extreme black-and-white thinking I developed as a once devout Catholic. Whether or not that's true, I find it interesting that scientists have discovered a link between the guilt and OCD centers of our brain; the areas of the brain that light up in a scan when someone is experiencing feelings of guilt are the same areas that light up in a brain scan of a person with OCD. Go figure.

#ocd #catholiscism #religiosity #obsessive thoughts #catholic guilt

Thoughts of themselves have no substance. Let them arise and pass away unheeded. Thoughts will not take form of themselves unless they are grasped by the attention. If they are ignored, there will be no appearing and no disappearing.

— Ashvaghosha

Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash

#ruminating #ocd #sticky thoughts

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Something Is Not Right