OCD, Obsessive-compulsive Disorder, Obsessive Thinking
OCD, Obsessive-compulsive Disorder, Obsessive Thinking
From all the clinical data, body language and energy awareness available to me, everyone expresses some forms of obsessive-compulsive behaviors due to their obsessive thinking. If you think of something over and over again, you are obsessing. Most people suffer from obsessive thoughts and false beliefs.
How to Manage Your OCD
If you know some of the thoughts that are causing your OCD that is the place to start taming your thoughts and shifting into your body and emotional feelings. If you need to become more conscious of the unconscious thoughts that could be hurting you, pay attention to your thoughts during the night and day. The degree of your OCD and how much it interferes with your daily life can vary from having to fold your clothes just right to severely crippling behaviors that ruin your enjoyment of life.
Many OCD people are high achievers and brilliant. If you are OCD you are in good company. Many famous people, such as Lucille Ball, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin were OCD. So, don’t judge yourself as mentally ill, instead take note of any behaviors that interfere with your performance and drive you crazy.
Traditional psychologists work hard to stop the OCD behavior in anyway they can, using Behavior Therapy techniques such as desensitization and flooding. As a holistic psychologist, I am not satisfied with stopping your OCD behaviors. This is a bandage job at best. If I were your therapist, I would not attempt to stop you from performing obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
Why not? You need those behaviors for the moment. Your rituals are serving a function and fulfilling a need. I discovered this psychological truth when Dr. Joe Wolpe referred one of his favorite clients to me for therapy in 1980. Joe liked her so much she was working at the Behavior Therapy Institute where I was also working and just starting my private practice.
Unfortunately, Dr. Wolpe’s Behavior Therapy approach did not work with this client. Joe and his staff tried all the behavioral techniques, relaxation therapy, natural anxiety reduction, desensitization and assertiveness training with her and her family to no avail.
Working with Dr. Wolpe’s Behavior Therapy failures helped me look elsewhere for answers. I was also working at the Feminist Therapy Collection at the time and beginning to study the effectiveness of touch and body awareness with women in my workshops and groups. I was surprised at how fast women accessed their emotions and feelings with a self-hug during imagery work healing their inner child. With a self-loving touch, years of defensiveness melted away and rapid empowerment occurred with effective Feminist Therapy.
As I worked privately with Dr. Wolpe’s client, I empathize with her as I did with my clients at the Feminist Therapy Collective. As I felt her reality, together we explored her feelings and emotions. What we discovered was that she needed her obsessive-compulsive behaviors. She was using them to feel safe and separate from her controlling brothers and father.
From this moment on, I have never tried to take any behavior away from a person who is using it to feel safe. You need to feel safe before you can become more self-confident and emotionally healthy. To stand on your own two feet, you must separate from your parents and family members so that you are not controlled by them. Therefore, as a holistic psychologist my goal is to empower you. My goal is not to “fix” you or make you stop any behavior.
Obsessive-compulsive behaviors tell me that you are anxious and using your OCD to “bind” your anxiety. Everyone “binds” his or her anxiety, so do not judge yourself or think that you are weird. Binding your anxiety could mean that you stay busy all the time. Do you read all the time? Watch sports all the time? Pick up your phone as soon as you sit down? Talk too much?
You are binding your anxiety when you do anything that keeps you from directly experiencing your anxiety and fear. Anxiety and fear are both empowering experiences most people have several times a week. If you don’t feel anxiety and fear as you move through life, you are binding your anxiety and keeping it unconscious.
To be mentally healthy, you need to experience reality directly and move through uncomfortable feelings and emotions all the time. This happens naturally and normally as you become more accepting and loving of your emotional self and body.
Back to your OCD behaviors. Unfortunately, none of your obsessive-compulsive behaviors keep you safe. However, you think they do. Your belief and comfort is extremely important to keep in focus if you want a positive outcome. Your obsessive thoughts and behaviors are not bad or wrong. They are simply not productive. Your rituals don’t empower you or keep you safe. But that’s ok, you can use your rituals, which humans have used for centuries, to break free and become stronger as you learn to reduce your anxiety naturally and become more assertive.
What you need to learn to give up your OCD are more forceful and powerful behaviors that keep you safe in relationships. These behaviors will help you self-actualize as you separate from your parents and family. For example, you feel much safer and stronger when you have the ability to say, “No” and “Yes” anytime it is needed to anyone at any time. Yes, this assertive behavior is hard to do and takes practice through out your life. Begin now, start small and get better and better at it!
If I had to pick one skill set that everyone in the world needed, it would be hard to choose between learning how to relax and learning how to be assertive. You need both skills to be mentally and emotionally healthy. Children are trained not to be assertive. Yet, every adult needs to be assertive in order to be effective and powerful in the world. So when you grow up you must get the education you need by taking Assertiveness Training courses often to stay in tune.
Once you know how to cope effectively with anxiety, you will be able to use your OCD behaviors to help you desensitize your irrational anxieties as they occur, in real life. Once you have learned to reduce your anxiety naturally in the moments of your life, you have the ability to face your real fears. Enjoying life is a process of learning how to stay relaxed in this sexist, racist, classist world we live in.
To Get Started:
Study the one hour tele-seminar Tame Your Thoughts Audio
Use your Inner Knowing to pick which skill to learn first:
