Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Mindfulness

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Self treatment of OCD

Yes, it sounds like you’re dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD is defined in Wikipedia as ‘a human anxiety disorder characterized by involuntary intrusive thoughts. When a sufferer begins to acknowledge these intrusive thoughts, the sufferer then develops anxiety based on the dread that something bad will happen. The sufferer feels compelled to voluntarily perform irrational, time-consuming behaviors to diminish the anxiety.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder affects roughly six million Americans. Its symptoms, ranging from repetitive hand-washing to preoccupation with sexual, religious, or aggressive impulses, wreak havoc in people’s lives, and often cause severe emotional and economic loss.

Sufferers often try to keep their compulsive behaviors hidden from others, often to avoid embarrassment, humiliation or being seen as strikingly odd or different. If the condition is not realized by an undiagnosed sufferer, they may scold themselves in frustration as to why they are thinking or acting the way they are. Although the acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and come across to others as psychotic, an OCD sufferer is able to recognize their thoughts and subsequent actions as irrational, which is what makes the illness so distressing. The psychological self-awareness of the irrationality of the disorder may be painful; a sufferer may be plagued by doubt and uncertainty regarding his or her own feelings and behaviors. A principal challenge faced by OCD sufferers is learning to manage their own behaviors without constant reassurance from others.’

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to have beneficial effects for OCD sufferers. You might look for a CBT therapists in your area.

Medication is also an option. For help here, you may want to visit a local psychiatrist.

The other option is mindfulness training. Mindfulness has roughly 25 - 30 years of empirical research to back it up as sound treatment for a variety of disorders (depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, borderline personality, and more). Mindfulness has been around for roughly 3000 years and is adopted from the Buddhist tradition, but is not necessarily Buddhist in nature. One may practice mindfulness without being Buddhist.

While there are several types of mindfulness, in essence mindfulness is as simple as the following…

1.Focus your awareness on your breath.

2.When you notice your awareness is off your breath, simply return your awareness to your breath.

3.It’s about awareness. It’s not about the breath.

4.Simply observe the thoughts and feelings in your mind. You don’t need to judge them as good or bad. They just are.

Please note that mindfulness is simple but it’s not easy.

By practicing mindfulness and acceptance of the obsessive thoughts, the power is gradually taken away from the thoughts. By looking at the thoughts with curiosity and openness, the thoughts eventually become boring and not as emotionally charged.

There are a number of free guided mindfulness talks at http://www.audiodharma.org/talks-guidedmeditation.html

I also write about mindfulness, ways to manage negative emotions and thoughts, and ways to cultivate more positive emotions at http://drjohnblog.guidetoself.com.

There are also some articles which may be of interest to you at http://www.guidetoself.com/publications.htm

Hopefully, you can find some relief from these suggestions.

I have done mindfulness training with continuation high school students and found it to be very helpful to 90% of them, including one with severe OCD.

All the best,

Dr. John Schinnerer

Positive Psychology Coach

Guide To Self, Inc.

Topics:  psychology

Answered by John Schinnerer on July 13, 2009

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This entry was posted on 13. July 2009 at 20:48 and is filed under Hope, Awareness, Curiosity, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Mindfulness, Managing Anxiety, Anxiety, Tips to help anxiety, Emotional management, Guide to Self. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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