im so gladd you exist man. you are the only person that has made me see all this so clearly. thanks for what you do you are truly making a difference in lot of peoples life. at the very least you have done it for me. from the bottom of my heart thank you man.
I usually don't ever comment on videos, but I just wanted to let you know that your videos have helped me so much. Thank you for taking the time to make these and give advice, they have made me feel so much better and get me out of my head and self hatred. So again, thank you! :)
Good reminder. It's like the OCD themes video, we can all have different themes, but they are all inherently the same behavioral pattern. Gotta admit I had been engaging in rumination and reassurance without realizing it.
Yeah! I think my trouble lately has come from the fact I still engage in the OCD behavior pattern. I think I convinced myself that I needed to figure out and reassure myself that I was doing the correct recovery-related things because it was about recovery. But you can still engage in OCD related behaviors about recovery. Actually recovering is recognizing that that is a compulsion like any other. Your reminder to keep recovery simple and this video also reminding me that OCD is very much the same no matter how it superficially appears were important to hear!
Thank you Mark for this. It makes so much sense. Its crazy how compulsions begin to infiltrate our whole lives and we don't even realize it. I started brain school last week. Its helping me work on not expecting myself to be perfect (another compulsion I never realized) and start all over when things go wrong. I always want things too fast, too soon and I realize now it's a journey. Thank you again for all the time, dedication, work and ideas you share with us. It means a lot! =)
+Ashley Elyse They do! They're so sneaky like that. That's great you've started brain school. I'm working on the next course now. Keep up the awesome work of taking steps! It can seem slow sometimes but it's amazing how far you can travel by making one change each week for a year.
the body and mind are connected and one always effects the other. I sometimes try so hard to control my thoughts and try to stop unwanted thoughts, then I realized that I can help to calm down my intrusive thoughts, by paying attention to my body. So I find what works for me is when an intrusive thought comes, I focus on not allowing my muscles to tense up. I allow myself to breath and keep the same facial expression. I don't allow my body to react and my mind then follows and understands that I am not in any danger. 😊
Mark, your videos are very helpful. I've watched several and will keep going. Thank you so much. I love your teaching style and how effectively you use metaphors to get an important message across. Powerful stuff, keep up the great work.
Since a week ago i started again with cutting out the compulsions, cause every time they slip in silently. My whole body is lightly anxious and want the checking so bad, but i keep saying i'm not going to do it. The results are that i've got a 'lot' more energy on the end of the day. On some days cutting out the compulsions feel more difficult than other days (because of tiredness etc) and than you don't really see clear why you should not do the unhealthy action. But well, that isn't strange after learning the wrong habit for five years, i think. Mark, just like the last time i said it, I really hope that the energy you put in this, will be payed back in a sort of way. I'm from Holland and i really know not any (online) experts who can explain it so well and are so intrinsically concerned with us. Thank you man :).
+William Beunder Thanks for the kind comments, William! That's great you're seeing the benefits of cutting out compulsions! Keep those in mind. It's so useful to remember that you know not doing the compulsions makes you happier and healthier, especially when you run into those difficult days, like you mentioned. Keep taking awesome steps!
Is trying to stop compulsion a compulsion in itself? Because one of my obsessions is obsessing over and trying to overcome my thoughts and my OCD, and so I continuously ruminate and try to figure out ways to stop compulsions, only to engage in even more compulsions as a result, but, when I just ignore the urges to do compulsions I don't actually do them, while when I constantly "hit myself in the face" with these thoughts and ruminate without going anywhere my anxiety levels rise incredibly.
+VideogameDemocracy That's a very common one. That's one of the reasons I find it helps to quickly shift your focus to where you want to go and what you want to do. If your focus is only on beating OCD, then you need to keep OCD around so you can beat it. So it can help to do the things you value and if compulsions come back or not, it doesn't really matter, because you have the skills to recognize them and you're not going to spend time and energy on them anyway because you're focused on putting your time and energy into the things you value.
+Mark Freeman But what if my mind can't stop thinking about my OCD? Like, I would be working on a project, and then I would be thinking about that time I ate a really good pizza (it's an example), but then my mind would quickly shift to what was going on inside my brain while I ate the pizza, if I had any obsessions or compulsions, it's kinda like my brain always finds ways to make me pay attention to my obsessions and make me steer off course.
Very true what Mark says here. If you only focus on beating OCD, then you cannot beat it, because you need OCD around to beat it. It‘s like trying to stop thinking by thinking thinking is bad.
Thanks God you commented such thing , It's what actually has been happening to me all this time doing ERP and my therapist knows it i've told her , she's very good at this , but somehow sadly i started to avoid EPR knowing that it sucks because is actually helping me , it's hard , now i'm trying to get back into it , i feel like a coward , i know what i have to do but is very painful , you know let them be ( my intrusive thoughts) without compulsions .
Mark i really love the way you think so i gonna need your help with something.I do psychoanalysis for 2 years now i have too much anxiety and irational thoughts.I catastrophize all the time.When i get anxious my mind goes "you cannot do it,this time is different,if you have an anxiety attack at work you will never make it go there again and you ll end up forever in your home afraid do anything"i also have obssesive thoughts that i try to figure out what's wrong with reality.Is it something happening that i dont know?why he talked that way?who talks that way? that's too strange for someone talking this way.Why this happened?What are the odds?Why this coincidence happened?Is it something wrong? You are thinking for so many years this way that your brain is broken now.You never gonna be normal again.Who thinks this way?My mind has changed,i am so weird now and i search answers and reassurance everywhere.Try to figure out what's wrong with you.What if you have agoraphobia and you end up broken.Then i leave the house and my mind goes,omg you have it,and i freak out.The strange thing is that everytime when all this pass and i forget all these thoughts,i dont think them at all and i realize that it was just irational worries.I feel that all these thoughts have chenged me forever and i am not me anymore.I see everything and everyone suspicious and try to figure out if my thoughts about it are true or not.I think you are paranoid!Only paranoid people think that way.Last when i have too much anxiety my body gets numb and i try to accept it but the fear is to intense that my mind always checks if the fear left.Now that i am writing i think "what if mark tell you something and you obssess about everything even more so you ll make it everything worse".Psychologists here in Greece cannot diagnose you,only psychiatrists can.So i dont know if i have ocd.I really appreciate your time Mark.Thank you :)
I need your advice/opinion on all this thing that i wrote.I don't know if i have ocd so f i use your techniques with the compulsions my mind will go,yeah but you don't even know if you do compulsions so these techniques will not work for you.
I have very strange compulsions like look similar to hitting yourself like your hammer! so i got your point instantly. the solution its so easy ( to learn to put the hammer down ) yet its hard to .
One thing that helps me tackle my checking OCD is remembering that the majority of the population go about their lives without checking constantly and nothing bad happens! The same could be applied to fear of contamination - other people are just fine without constantly washing their hands etc.
The thing I would watch out for there is the reassurance component of that. Lots of bad things do happen. Through my work, I often have people sending me messages that basically go: "I had OCD in the past and I got over it by seeing that my thoughts were irrational, but now this [insert fear of your choice here] has actually happened! And it's REAL. So I can't stop thinking about it and I'm doing compulsions all of the time..." Reassurance will always work until it doesn't, so I find that working on the fears and the consequences we're afraid of and showing our brain that we can handle those consequences is much more useful for long-term resilience and mental fitness.
@@everybodyhasabrain Right, I see what you mean. I guess what I'm saying is, it's reminding myself that I am a capable adult and I should be able to lock a door and walk away just like other people do. My OCD seems to be tied to some kind of feeling that I'm not capable...maybe it's responsibility OCD too. For example, right now I'm looking after my neighbor's house while they're away and this sends my OCD into overdrive because I'm responsible. I'm much more concerned about checking her front door is locked than my own.
Dear Mark, how do you cope with bad therapist experiences? Although I'm now with an OCD-Expert, I had two therapists before that made my condition worse - now I engage in self-pitiful rumination on how much easier treatment would have been, if I'd had gotten the right therapist from the start.
Mark i have started working on how to make myself more mentally fit and whenever a thought poped up i said to myself that "i have more important taks to do instead of focusing on how to remove this i will focus on the skills i want to build for myself. But as a result of this my Anxiety has increased.The thoughts have increased.Was it a compulsion?Why my thoughts have increased instead...
I'd define great mental fitness as having any thought or feeling while living our lives. So I wouldn't see it as a problem to have thoughts and feelings. It also wouldn't be a useful goal to try cleaning them away. That's a big part of what compulsions are all about. If you're working on building mental fitness, why are you concerned with having more thoughts and feelings. That would be like saying you want to build physical fitness, and then getting upset that there are weights in the gym. It's completely natural to experience an increase in unwanted thoughts and feelings when we cut out a compulsion. The brain will throw up anything to chase more compulsions. These video explains some more: th-cam.com/video/yRSa0R_1aiA/w-d-xo.html
But how do I know wether I just have Harm OCD or I am just straight up evil? I spend AGES trying to figure out which is the case, and I guess trying to to reassure myself is a compulsion after the intrusive thoughts, but I still feel like it may not be Harm OCD, that worry is still there. How would you differentiate a sadist or murderer from someone with Harm OCD? Please help.
Trying to figure that out is the compulsion. I don't find it useful to trying judging or discriminating between the stuff in my head. It's all just stuff in my head. You always have a choice to act according to your values. If a thought pops into your head that you're a llama, you can let that thought be there and continue doing the things you want to do in life.
Zedo I appreciate that it might seem like providing reassurance that a person isn't evil might seem helpful but that's just participating in and enabling the reassurance-seeking compulsion. By trying to engage with the fear logically, you can actually set the person up to get even more trapped in the fear because it implies that finding evidence to back up the fear would make it true.
I disagree. You told them a couple of times that they're not evil. That's what reassurance is all about. By doing that, you reinforced a common pattern at work in OCD. You said that they're being so obsessive that they can't be evil. That's the typical IF X THEN Y pattern that fuels OCD. It feeds the logic of OCD because when you say, IF X (you're being obsessive) THEN Y (you're not evil) that means they can use the exact same logic to say, IF X (I have bad thoughts of harming somebody) THEN Y (that means I'm evil). By trying to engage with OCD using a logical framework like that, it only reinforces the problem. They might feel good to get rid of that uncertainty, but then their brain will just give them very rational-sounding evidence as to why that reassurance doesn't matter or it'll come up with a new thing to worry about, which then requires somebody else to reassure them the new uncertainty isn't true. I completely respect the urge to help. It's very difficult to not provide reassurance. But I can't encourage it or condone it.
I think of it like an alien egg from the movie alien, the little egg wants you to look “oh I should check what’s in there” and then BAM it jumps on your face and plants something inside you that grows and grows and busts right out of your chest! That’s a good visual for consequences hahaha
Hi again Mark! Love this video. Could you share some ideas about binge eating? Like behaviors we do before that makes then almost impossible to say no? I have been struggling with this. Thank you so much!! Best, Mariana
This is a great area to explore! Getting comfortable with and not reacting to feelings that push us into binge eating is the same as getting comfortable with and not reacting to other feelings that push us into compulsions. It can be very useful to explore how we eat and why we eat. In terms of behaviors, it could be useful to look at judgments and beliefs and desires. If we judge a feeling as something we need to react to or control, or if we believe that binge eating will resolve some feeling, then it's very natural to keep struggling with this stuff. You can even look at something like checking your phone--if we constantly react to urges throughout our lives, then it's very difficult to handle them in situations that are more challenging.
Mark Freeman Great advice!! Your book is awesome by the way, is helping me uncover mpre compulsions and gives me hope that I can be happy and live a fulfill life eventhough having ocd! :)
I was wondering if I could get your perspective. I am 21 years old, have had many different OCD obsessions currently and in the past, but there is a certain obsession that is starting to get me very troubled. I get very anxious driving, so I've even avoided getting my license. I always fear that I will run someone over/ make a huge mistake and that I just cannot drive. I even stress out when I'm driving slower because I think the person behind me hates me. I've driven before but am in a constant state of judging myself when I drive that I end up doing the things I fear because I am so distracted. For example, I always think that somehow, I will not see the stop sign and keeping going, and then it happened to me! My biggest fear is just not seeing a pedestrian or a car, and hurting someone. So I mentally test situations in my head, to see if I would see the person. But you'll probably realize that that is a silly thing to mentally test because you can never win that situation in your mind. How do I get over this? I can't seem to get myself to "just drive" because I think that the alternative, hurting someone, is something that I shouldn't take lightly, is it worth hurting someone to get over my fear? In my mind, I am convinced that I will. It's distressing because I need to start driving and find it embarrassing that all my friends have been driving for years.
+amber n These are very common OCD obsessions/compulsions. But the thing I always emphasize with overcoming OCD is to start small and build your way up. The compulsions that are bothering you the most are usually the last ones I recommend a person tackle. Even though they might be the ones you want to deal with immediately. Building great mental health and fitness is no different than building great physical health and fitness--it's a process of gradually increasing the difficulty, duration, and intensity of the exercises. So you might find it useful to work with a therapist that's experienced with helping people recover from OCD and it can help to be open to tackling other compulsions first. You mentioned judging yourself thinking about others judging you--those are really helpful insights. As you look at all of the compulsions you deal with, it's very likely you'll notice that many of them involve judging yourself, judging others, and the fear of others judging you. You might also notice a bunch that connect to the fear of death or harm. All of those are connected. As you begin to learn how to practice non-judgment with the easier compulsions, that will help build up skills to make it easier to overcome those fears when driving. Happy driving on the road ahead!
Hi Mark, ur videos are great and they have helped me try to adopt a more effective approach towards mental health. But I soon realize that sometimes I'll go back to watching ur videos to feel confident and motivated to beating OCD. How should I approach your videos in a manner that don't end up in a compulsion?
This is useful to recognize! Whenever you see a pattern of a compulsion like this, you can see it like a path that you're walking over and over again. What you can do is put a sign in the path to help you change direction when you find yourself walking it again. You could put a note on your computer or in a convenient spot to remind yourself of something you want to do that you value instead of rewatching videos to chase feelings. This also helps to shift the focus away from beating OCD and towards living your life. If we need to beat an enemy, then we need the enemy. It's a way that OCD traps people in OCD. So it also helps to have that valued action/activity prepared in advance. For instance, if somebody wanted to read more, they could have the book sitting in an easy-to-reach spot so the moment they get the urge to go and look at videos, they can grab the book and enjoy that instead.
Mark Freeman Thanks your advice seems logical! Sorry to bother you (I really appreciate that u take the time to answer repetitive questions from us ocd sufferers :P) but could you advise on one more question about compulsion: When it comes to resisting mental compulsions, you have said to accept the intrusive thought and then shift the focus to whatever I am doing at the moment. How can I tell whether I am accepting the intrusive thought or whether I am just distracting myself from the thought by shifting my focus to what I'm doing? Accepting or denying / distracting from a thought seems to be a very gray line.
There are probably other compulsions packed in there, which is why it's difficult. When people ask about this, I suggest considering why you don't spend all day trying to figure out whether you're accepting or denying/distracting yourself from the clouds in the sky. Why aren't these thoughts you're dealing with just like clouds? What changes can you make so that you accept them in a way similar to how you accept clouds?
how to identify a compulsion if its something like watching old pictures. I wanna look at pictures I haven't seen in a while but i feel i have to look at it. Its like am driven by anxiety. At the same time this action is completely normal. So should i do it or not! and when to know if such things are not a part of an obsession.
+wendy wends I identify compulsions as anything I do to cope with, check on, or control uncertainty, anxiety, or other feelings I don't like. If an action is fuelled by fear or anxiety or the desire to get rid of some feeling, etc, then it's only natural that it will lead to more fear, more anxiety, more stress, more of the urges, etc.
Is indeciciveness related to ocd? To me nothing ever feels right. I never feel like I've chosen the right path. Always doubting. I'm thinking of doing this deep brain stimulation which is supposed to help. But I'll read about it first !
+1Kilili I would approach this in a slightly different way. I'd begin by asking: Why should things feel "right"? If you want to feel a particular way, your brain is going to give you the opposite feeling so you can try to get rid of it and get that feeling you want. I think it helps to see OCD as an addiction to feeling certainty. The more you want to feel certain and the more you like getting rid of uncertainty, the more your brain will give you uncertainty, so you can get rid of and get that thing you want. It's just like with an addiction: your brain makes you experience withdrawal so you go chasing that feeling you want. But eventually, you can't get that feeling at all, no matter how much you engage in the compulsions. The way out of that is to accept how you feel and do healthy things. So that's going to involve feeling indecisive and feeling uncertain. Trying to get rid of those feelings and wanting to get rid of those feelings is the problem. And something that really helped me was recognizing that there is no such thing as the "right" feeling. It's just made up. It's a label we invent. It would be no different than somebody saying that they want to feel a unicorn before they make a decision. You can't feel a unicorn before you make a decision anymore than you can feel "right" before you make a decision. You can pretend that you do, but that would only be something you make up. By all means, explore whatever options you'd like for recovery, but there are some easier options than getting implants. If you choose to chase a feeling, it's only natural that you won't experience it. It's no different than somebody choosing to chase a particular drug high. And, although it's difficult, it is possible to accept what we're feeling and not engage in compulsions to chase that high any longer. That's something that's entirely within your power now.
+Mark Freeman Viewing ocd as an "addiction to feeilng certainty" is very helpful I think. It is helpful to simplify these things so we don't miss the forest for the trees. I think I knew that inside, but also believed that there is an inner compass that somhow says "right direction" when I'm in the right direction. I started going to a new University last week and I felt miserable after 3 days. I couldn't figure whether this was ocd or a hint from my heart that I am on the wrong path. You know it's like you lose your intuition. But maybe that's part of it... it's weird doing something that does not somehow feel right :) But I get it !
hi Mark! your videos have helped me a lot in the last few hours, as I've just discovered them! would you say feeling the need to confess is a compulsion? if I think about something I would label as bad or wrong I feel the need to confess but afterwords after my confession I feel as if the person didn't understand how bad it really was so I have to confess again...
Hey Mark question, why is it that people who react negatively to situations seem to do it daily and feel no different yet us people with anxiety can't seem to shake off the negative emotion?
I just find that every time I react to a situation "negatively" even if it's the way I feel my anxiety goes through the roof and lingers and I'm not sure why?
That's very normal. Correcting and controlling are compulsions. For example, some people have a compulsion to fix things they feel are out-of-place or misaligned. So they see something as "wrong" and they want to fix it and get it "right". Maybe they go into a dining room and they want to fix all of the cutlery on the table. But that just tells the brain to find more things to fix. It's like an addiction. So then they get bothered by something else "wrong" and fix that and then another thing and another and another. That's why you notice your brain trying to judge more when you start trying to correct and control. It helped me to recognize that I don't control other people and then to explore how to apply that understanding in my actions
Sorry for the late reply thanks. I agree it is like an addiction. The thing is that I believe alot of my frustration comes from the fact that these intrusive thoughts affect the way I perform in my everyday tasks and lately that's what I've been experiencing. Not just judging if I did a good job or not but having to constantly accept my anxiety and how it affects my life. Does this monster ever really quit? lol
Hey Mark! Thanks as always for your videos :) I would like to ask you a question. Don't you think that having some compulsion is human and healthy? Sometimes I find myself thinking: "is this a compulsion or not?" And I have the feeling that this just fuels ocd. If my mind tells me: "move your leg", if I do it it's a compulsion, but if I don't do it, my leg is kind of stuck. The same goes for swallowing, clearing your throat, moving fingers, checking the door or my alarm clock. If sometimes I do it and sometimes don't I feel good, but if I always don't check or don't do these 'compulsions' I feel stuck. Thanks
Yeah, so I always encourage people to build around where they want to go. It's just like physical fitness: you go to the gym to build skills. So what are the things you value that you can build and create around?
When you say you're compulsion free, does that mean you still have triggers and obsessions but you treat them like air ? With me I did often experience thought plus immediate emotional response, i mmediately it felt like somebody poured hot coffee into my brain. I hate that feeling, and I am wondering if it is part of the symptoms or if only the obsessions are the symptoms and the believing into them and the feeling are not. In other words did you learn to live with the thoughts without having this hot coffee experience all the time or do you have to accept both in a package ?
+1Kilili I view "triggers" as compulsions. Consider why you're not "triggered" by clouds? It can help to explore what happens when you interact with a "trigger". The hot coffee emotions are like the pain I talk about in this video. It's totally natural to have those emotions after engaging in compulsions.
Hi Mark, does accepting uncertainty also include uncertainty itself? As in the sense me and many other OCD-sufferers have this intrusive thought that there may be this „perfect proof“ which (in the OCD mind) is believed to disprove the core OCD fear. As you explained in one video the OCD brain just continues to throw a bigger and more abstract uncertainty at you if you happen to „logically solve“ a prior uncertainty. In that sense this process would go on forever unless one opts out of doing compulsions/certainty seeking behavior. But although this is true, I think one must also accept the uncertainty of „perfect certainty“ may or may not being existing - although the above is an oxymoron, I believe that for all practical purposes one must accept at least the theoretical possibility of a perfect proof. What is your opinion Mark?
Yes Mark, you are absolutely right. It is somehow truely fascinating that once one starts cutting out compulsions, the OCD-brain comes up with truely imaginative intrusive thoughts in order to keep oneself in the cicle of rumination, checking, "prooving" and so on.
hey mark I get anxiety attacks. even though I go for therapist and think positive and have faced my ocds attacks r still there. will it be all my life ? because I get attack for a small trigger or for no reason at all. I am really confused how to deal wit it? can u help me?
It can help to cut out compulsions. There are many that fuel anxiety attacks. They can be mental compulsions and overt compulsions. Trying to be certain that a bad experience won't last forever is actually a common one. We engage in that by doing things like seeking reassurance online but it can also be a part of the cycle that builds up to an anxiety attack as we start to judge how we're feeling, and then we start to worry about whether that feeling will last or get worse, and then it does get worse because of those compulsions, and then we engage in more compulsions to try to fight the feeling, which makes it worse, which leads to more compulsions, and so on. Ideally, your therapist can help you overcome this. These are issues you can overcome, but it requires some big changes. I'm not aware of how thinking positive would help. In fact, one of the most helpful things I've learned is to show my brain its ok if it has horrible terrible thoughts. I am not my thoughts so it doesn't matter what thoughts are bouncing around in my head.
thanx a lot mark for the reply I was waiting for it. I feel really alone in this cause I live in india. no one to talk abt this. I have to work outside but attack scare me dnt know how long I have to live like this.
Change #1: stop wanting to stop anxiety attacks. If somebody didn't exercise because they hated it and wanted to avoid sweating, eventually everything would make them sweat. The more you want to avoid anxiety, the more anxiety you'll experience. Change #2: Practice non-judgment. If you're constantly judging things as bad, then it's only natural to be anxious, but that comes from your judgments, not the things or experiences.
Hej Mark, i love your video's. I suffer from ocd for about 4,5 years. I have defeated a lot of major things that bothered me. I do have one problem. i cannot stop rumminating. I try to write down every thought that comes to my mind. Now i have a question wich nobody can seem to answer. I can keep myself for about a week to accept whatever comes in my mind. i say to myself: Thoughts are just thoughts and after one week i seem to weaken in my actions and ocd seems to get worse. generally after week 2 i collapse and go to a low point where i loathe and hate myself. how do i keep accepting everything without losing my strenght to keep doing that?
+chrizmeister1992 When it comes to writing down every thought that comes to mind, were you identifying that as a compulsion? Because doing something like that would only encourage ruminating and more obsessions and more anxiety. Another compulsion that can be very useful to cut out is loathing and hating yourself. It's very easy to get caught in an addictive cycle of hating yourself and feeling, then cutting out compulsions and feeling good about that. If you feel good about cutting out compulsions, then what does your brain need to do to help you get that? Give you more compulsions and give you all of those feelings you dislike, so you can try to get rid of them again. It can really help to see healthy things as just the things we do. If you engage in a compulsion, that's fine. Recognize it. Go back to doing healthy things again. In each moment, we have the opportunity to do healthy things aligned with our values.
+Mark Freeman thx for the response mark. ive maybe put it wrongy so i noticed i have automatisch compulsions in my brain that just come tot minder after a thought so i tell myself just once : its an obsession andere leave it at that, no further rumination, nothing. a second later it Pops another obsessieve thought and i respons the same: it's an obsesive thought, just a thought and after a while my brain just relaxes and does not respond for a while. at the start of each day i write down without judging whats on my mind. for example i had an obsesive thought about death and leave it at that. in the Evening i do the same. but i somethimes forget to do that:)
+chrizmeister1992 Those all sound like compulsions. Reassuring yourself that it's just a thought or just an obsession is only going to encourage your brain to give you more so you can reassure yourself that it's ok. It creates an addictive loop. So that's probably why it keeps giving them to you. Thoughts are like clouds. Do you need to reassure yourself throughout the day about the nature of the clouds in the sky? You can just let them be there. If you started to write down your thoughts on the clouds each day, in the morning and at night, it wouldn't be strange if your brain started thinking about the clouds all of the time. It might help to consider that you've already judged the thoughts as important and worth paying attention to if you're choosing to write them down. Of all the things you experience during the day, if you're choosing to write about one of them, then it's only natural that you would spend lots of time ruminating on that one experience.
+Mark Freeman your probably right but when i say to my brain its aan obsessieve thought. i pops up with the questionwhat if it's not an obsesive thought? and i just say thats also an obsession and i do nothing with it i DONT rumminate on it. i just started doing this for the last 2 weeks. usually i just kept rumminating on the thought trying to Find meaning or to know exactly of its right or wrong ....now i just acnoledge its a thought and if stress lr panic comes up i DONT change the way i respond. i don't try to fix things annymore i just take the risk that it a thought. so im kind of confused since im actually forcing myself to say thats to myself it prevokes more anxiety not reliëf to say its an obsesive thought
+chrizmeister1992 That's great you're not ruminating on it and it's actually a great sign that it's causing anxiety when you don't ruminate. You can accept that feeling. It doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe consider if you're still afraid of the consequences of those thoughts. Sometimes, when we reassure ourselves that it's just a thought or just an obsession, what we actually mean is: "It's just a thought (so it won't actually happen)." What that does is reaffirm to our brains that the topic of the obsession is something we should be afraid of. We're implying that if it wasn't a thought, then we should be TERRIFIED! Personally, it's helped me to practice accepting ALL thoughts as thoughts and it's also helped to accept the consequences of my fears while I do healthy things aligned with my values.
@@everybodyhasabrain I'm happy to say that nothing has helped me more than your videos. For two months I was suffering severe OCD about real past events. The anxiety went through the roof, up to the point of vomiting. I then decided to be irrational and stop trying to think my way out of it and thus started to cut out the compulsions. The first day was like a nightmare. I felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, because my ego realized that it won't ever get reassurance and that it is doomed to living in uncertainty. The second day was even worse, but the third day felt like a tipping point. I'm in my fourth day and I can feel things going for the better. Much less intrusive thoughts, with less anxiety triggered. I still don't feel like exposing myself to triggers as I feel that could pull me back a few steps, but I know that eventually I'll have to listen to that song that triggers my anxiety, or visit that place, or... Thanks a lot Mark. I've really learned more about the mind that I've learned in 20 years of studying various philosophies and trying out different meditation practices.
Hey Mark, can reading self help books and watching self help TH-cam videos be a form of compulsion? I used to have symptom or thoughts and immediately run to google and self diagnose a disorder and that brought me so much pain. Is watching these videos going to do the same to me? I'm uncertain if i should be here if I want to relieve my compulsions
It's why or how a person does something that makes it a compulsion. Hand-washing is a great example of this. When I struggled with OCD, I would wash my hands compulsively. Now I still wash my hands but I don't do it compulsively and it never causes me any anxiety. You can do anything as a compulsion. Many people develop compulsions around exercise, eating, or meditation--all things that can be useful supports or they can be ways to practice making our mental health worse.
The first step is to do the Mental Fitness 101 course you can find here: brainschool.markfreeman.ca/ That covers all of the exercises I previously did with clients during the first month of working together. While you're doing those, you can ask any questions you have and you'll get to see if you like the types of exercises I do with clients. And if you still need additional support after doing the course, then we could talk about doing one-on-one sessions.
Thank you Mark. I raise the hammer for more than 2 decades; specially in the past 9 years where i´m dealing with uncertainty (is my family real?). it´s time to put the hammer down :)
Hey mark quick questions. So lately I've been going great and am super amazed :). Just a quick question though, with compulsions regarding social media. (I find that to be the hardest one btw lol) if I for example send a message on snapchat, and maybe I'm lying in bed or something, I will have no idea what else to do on my phone other than to wait for the person to reply. So I keep refreshing and refreshing. But I notice I'm a mouse chasing a cheese with no stick. So if it were in a case like that, and I wasn't compulsively on my phone but just on it a reasonable time before bed, would it be better to just wait for the reply? Or what else could I do on my phone if in that moment I'm talking to that person?
Refreshing constantly to check for messages is a common compulsion. People do it for emails, messages, responses to posts on forums, etc. It just fuels anxiety about people responding, which then starts to pop up in other areas. And what if the person doesn't respond?! If the only thing you want to do is wait for a message, then there's not much else you can do other than wait, is there? Unless there was something else you wanted to do, and then you could do that instead of waiting around.
So this is something I found also to be spiralling out of hand : Sometimes I'm very creative I have good business ideas or inspiration for things I want to practice and books I'd love to read. And then I buy so many books in a row that I'm overwhelmed by them. I can't really enjoy them until I've finished them. And then I worry about retaining enough knowledge and being able to apply it . I also have so many ideas that I don't want to let go of any of them. And I jot them all down. Then often I havve written so much down that I can't bring the ideas into a correct order and my idea is lost. Then I often feel like I've lost a valuable insight and inspiration. So this always wanting more and not being willing to p r i o r i t i z e , to focus on one thing, to focus on the process. It's weird.
+1Kilili I'm guessing the problem is wanting to retain all the material. Because I think it might later be useful. But it's too much to write it all down and that is frustrating.
My one of my compulsions is watching these videos when im feeling anxious or if my thoughts won't go away
Fuck yes, ironic
Same
Me 2
same!!!!! omg
Try also get a piece of paper write out your anxiety 100 times, its uncomfortable but thats the form of ERP I do that helps.
im so gladd you exist man. you are the only person that has made me see all this so clearly. thanks for what you do you are truly making a difference in lot of peoples life. at the very least you have done it for me. from the bottom of my heart thank you man.
Thanks! I'm glad the videos have helped!
I usually don't ever comment on videos, but I just wanted to let you know that your videos have helped me so much. Thank you for taking the time to make these and give advice, they have made me feel so much better and get me out of my head and self hatred. So again, thank you! :)
+Ashley Martin Thanks so much for the comment, Ashley! I'm glad they've helped on the journey :)
Good reminder. It's like the OCD themes video, we can all have different themes, but they are all inherently the same behavioral pattern. Gotta admit I had been engaging in rumination and reassurance without realizing it.
+Kamran But then you realized it, which is great!
Yeah! I think my trouble lately has come from the fact I still engage in the OCD behavior pattern.
I think I convinced myself that I needed to figure out and reassure myself that I was doing the correct recovery-related things because it was about recovery. But you can still engage in OCD related behaviors about recovery. Actually recovering is recognizing that that is a compulsion like any other.
Your reminder to keep recovery simple and this video also reminding me that OCD is very much the same no matter how it superficially appears were important to hear!
Thank you Mark for this. It makes so much sense. Its crazy how compulsions begin to infiltrate our whole lives and we don't even realize it. I started brain school last week. Its helping me work on not expecting myself to be perfect (another compulsion I never realized) and start all over when things go wrong. I always want things too fast, too soon and I realize now it's a journey. Thank you again for all the time, dedication, work and ideas you share with us. It means a lot! =)
+Ashley Elyse They do! They're so sneaky like that. That's great you've started brain school. I'm working on the next course now. Keep up the awesome work of taking steps! It can seem slow sometimes but it's amazing how far you can travel by making one change each week for a year.
the body and mind are connected and one always effects the other. I sometimes try so hard to control my thoughts and try to stop unwanted thoughts, then I realized that I can help to calm down my intrusive thoughts, by paying attention to my body. So I find what works for me is when an intrusive thought comes, I focus on not allowing my muscles to tense up. I allow myself to breath and keep the same facial expression. I don't allow my body to react and my mind then follows and understands that I am not in any danger. 😊
Mark, your videos are very helpful. I've watched several and will keep going. Thank you so much. I love your teaching style and how effectively you use metaphors to get an important message across. Powerful stuff, keep up the great work.
Thanks, Chris!
Since a week ago i started again with cutting out the compulsions, cause every time they slip in silently. My whole body is lightly anxious and want the checking so bad, but i keep saying i'm not going to do it. The results are that i've got a 'lot' more energy on the end of the day.
On some days cutting out the compulsions feel more difficult than other days (because of tiredness etc) and than you don't really see clear why you should not do the unhealthy action. But well, that isn't strange after learning the wrong habit for five years, i think.
Mark, just like the last time i said it, I really hope that the energy you put in this, will be payed back in a sort of way. I'm from Holland and i really know not any (online) experts who can explain it so well and are so intrinsically concerned with us. Thank you man :).
+William Beunder Thanks for the kind comments, William! That's great you're seeing the benefits of cutting out compulsions! Keep those in mind. It's so useful to remember that you know not doing the compulsions makes you happier and healthier, especially when you run into those difficult days, like you mentioned. Keep taking awesome steps!
I like it when people speak from experience. 🙂
Thank you so much
You're most welcome!
Is trying to stop compulsion a compulsion in itself? Because one of my obsessions is obsessing over and trying to overcome my thoughts and my OCD, and so I continuously ruminate and try to figure out ways to stop compulsions, only to engage in even more compulsions as a result, but, when I just ignore the urges to do compulsions I don't actually do them, while when I constantly "hit myself in the face" with these thoughts and ruminate without going anywhere my anxiety levels rise incredibly.
+VideogameDemocracy That's a very common one. That's one of the reasons I find it helps to quickly shift your focus to where you want to go and what you want to do. If your focus is only on beating OCD, then you need to keep OCD around so you can beat it. So it can help to do the things you value and if compulsions come back or not, it doesn't really matter, because you have the skills to recognize them and you're not going to spend time and energy on them anyway because you're focused on putting your time and energy into the things you value.
+Mark Freeman But what if my mind can't stop thinking about my OCD? Like, I would be working on a project, and then I would be thinking about that time I ate a really good pizza (it's an example), but then my mind would quickly shift to what was going on inside my brain while I ate the pizza, if I had any obsessions or compulsions, it's kinda like my brain always finds ways to make me pay attention to my obsessions and make me steer off course.
Very true what Mark says here. If you only focus on beating OCD, then you cannot beat it, because you need OCD around to beat it. It‘s like trying to stop thinking by thinking thinking is bad.
Thanks God you commented such thing , It's what actually has been happening to me all this time doing ERP and my therapist knows it i've told her , she's very good at this , but somehow sadly i started to avoid EPR knowing that it sucks because is actually helping me , it's hard , now i'm trying to get back into it , i feel like a coward , i know what i have to do but is very painful , you know let them be ( my intrusive thoughts) without compulsions .
did anyone else find this guy by accident because they were looking up half life full life consequences
mark freeman vs john freeman who wins
Mark i really love the way you think so i gonna need your help with something.I do psychoanalysis for 2 years now i have too much anxiety and irational thoughts.I catastrophize all the time.When i get anxious my mind goes "you cannot do it,this time is different,if you have an anxiety attack at work you will never make it go there again and you ll end up forever in your home afraid do anything"i also have obssesive thoughts that i try to figure out what's wrong with reality.Is it something happening that i dont know?why he talked that way?who talks that way? that's too strange for someone talking this way.Why this happened?What are the odds?Why this coincidence happened?Is it something wrong? You are thinking for so many years this way that your brain is broken now.You never gonna be normal again.Who thinks this way?My mind has changed,i am so weird now and i search answers and reassurance everywhere.Try to figure out what's wrong with you.What if you have agoraphobia and you end up broken.Then i leave the house and my mind goes,omg you have it,and i freak out.The strange thing is that everytime when all this pass and i forget all these thoughts,i dont think them at all and i realize that it was just irational worries.I feel that all these thoughts have chenged me forever and i am not me anymore.I see everything and everyone suspicious and try to figure out if my thoughts about it are true or not.I think you are paranoid!Only paranoid people think that way.Last when i have too much anxiety my body gets numb and i try to accept it but the fear is to intense that my mind always checks if the fear left.Now that i am writing i think "what if mark tell you something and you obssess about everything even more so you ll make it everything worse".Psychologists here in Greece cannot diagnose you,only psychiatrists can.So i dont know if i have ocd.I really appreciate your time Mark.Thank you :)
This sounds like lots of compulsions! What was the thing you needed help with?
I need your advice/opinion on all this thing that i wrote.I don't know if i have ocd so f i use your techniques with the compulsions my mind will go,yeah but you don't even know if you do compulsions so these techniques will not work for you.
@@makunpi I'm not sure understand. Checking for certainty about this stuff IS the compulsion
This is such a great post and so true.
I have very strange compulsions like look similar to hitting yourself like your hammer! so i got your point instantly. the solution its so easy ( to learn to put the hammer down ) yet its hard to .
Thank you so much for your videos !
You are funny! 😄 also thanks for sharing your brilliant insights!
One thing that helps me tackle my checking OCD is remembering that the majority of the population go about their lives without checking constantly and nothing bad happens! The same could be applied to fear of contamination - other people are just fine without constantly washing their hands etc.
The thing I would watch out for there is the reassurance component of that. Lots of bad things do happen. Through my work, I often have people sending me messages that basically go: "I had OCD in the past and I got over it by seeing that my thoughts were irrational, but now this [insert fear of your choice here] has actually happened! And it's REAL. So I can't stop thinking about it and I'm doing compulsions all of the time..." Reassurance will always work until it doesn't, so I find that working on the fears and the consequences we're afraid of and showing our brain that we can handle those consequences is much more useful for long-term resilience and mental fitness.
@@everybodyhasabrain Right, I see what you mean. I guess what I'm saying is, it's reminding myself that I am a capable adult and I should be able to lock a door and walk away just like other people do. My OCD seems to be tied to some kind of feeling that I'm not capable...maybe it's responsibility OCD too. For example, right now I'm looking after my neighbor's house while they're away and this sends my OCD into overdrive because I'm responsible. I'm much more concerned about checking her front door is locked than my own.
Actually, your video on trust really relates to this. It's learning to trust myself more than anything else :)
Yes, trusting ourselves to handle the terrible outcomes we're afraid of.
could you please consider doing a video on obsessing over regret over the past?
+chelsea ogle This video on feeling guilty might address similar issues: th-cam.com/video/vjRjaTA2bD8/w-d-xo.html
So helpful. Thank you!
You're welcome!
Dear Mark, how do you cope with bad therapist experiences? Although I'm now with an OCD-Expert, I had two therapists before that made my condition worse - now I engage in self-pitiful rumination on how much easier treatment would have been, if I'd had gotten the right therapist from the start.
Mark i have started working on how to make myself more mentally fit and whenever a thought poped up i said to myself that "i have more important taks to do instead of focusing on how to remove this i will focus on the skills i want to build for myself.
But as a result of this my Anxiety has increased.The thoughts have increased.Was it a compulsion?Why my thoughts have increased instead...
I'd define great mental fitness as having any thought or feeling while living our lives. So I wouldn't see it as a problem to have thoughts and feelings. It also wouldn't be a useful goal to try cleaning them away. That's a big part of what compulsions are all about. If you're working on building mental fitness, why are you concerned with having more thoughts and feelings. That would be like saying you want to build physical fitness, and then getting upset that there are weights in the gym.
It's completely natural to experience an increase in unwanted thoughts and feelings when we cut out a compulsion. The brain will throw up anything to chase more compulsions. These video explains some more: th-cam.com/video/yRSa0R_1aiA/w-d-xo.html
Howie Mandel went through this and said the same thing, "See it all as a single problem."
It is useful to just go after the patterns of behavior throughout life
Brilliant as always 👍🏻
What if you learn to knock out the headaches and pain. And possibly increase healing
Just like fighters who heal there catalyst in the knuckles then they don’t feel the pain anymore
Simple...thank you!
But how do I know wether I just have Harm OCD or I am just straight up evil? I spend AGES trying to figure out which is the case, and I guess trying to to reassure myself is a compulsion after the intrusive thoughts, but I still feel like it may not be Harm OCD, that worry is still there. How would you differentiate a sadist or murderer from someone with Harm OCD? Please help.
Trying to figure that out is the compulsion. I don't find it useful to trying judging or discriminating between the stuff in my head. It's all just stuff in my head. You always have a choice to act according to your values. If a thought pops into your head that you're a llama, you can let that thought be there and continue doing the things you want to do in life.
Zedo I appreciate that it might seem like providing reassurance that a person isn't evil might seem helpful but that's just participating in and enabling the reassurance-seeking compulsion. By trying to engage with the fear logically, you can actually set the person up to get even more trapped in the fear because it implies that finding evidence to back up the fear would make it true.
I disagree. You told them a couple of times that they're not evil. That's what reassurance is all about. By doing that, you reinforced a common pattern at work in OCD. You said that they're being so obsessive that they can't be evil. That's the typical IF X THEN Y pattern that fuels OCD. It feeds the logic of OCD because when you say, IF X (you're being obsessive) THEN Y (you're not evil) that means they can use the exact same logic to say, IF X (I have bad thoughts of harming somebody) THEN Y (that means I'm evil). By trying to engage with OCD using a logical framework like that, it only reinforces the problem. They might feel good to get rid of that uncertainty, but then their brain will just give them very rational-sounding evidence as to why that reassurance doesn't matter or it'll come up with a new thing to worry about, which then requires somebody else to reassure them the new uncertainty isn't true.
I completely respect the urge to help. It's very difficult to not provide reassurance. But I can't encourage it or condone it.
Really liked the video I would say this is the most inspiring to cut off the compulsion
Again, brilliant
thanks man! you've been helping me a lot!!!
Leo da Silva You're welcome! I'm glad it's helped.
Incredible!
+Royce M. Thanks, Royce!
I think of it like an alien egg from the movie alien, the little egg wants you to look “oh I should check what’s in there” and then BAM it jumps on your face and plants something inside you that grows and grows and busts right out of your chest! That’s a good visual for consequences hahaha
Exactly!
Hi again Mark! Love this video. Could you share some ideas about binge eating? Like behaviors we do before that makes then almost impossible to say no? I have been struggling with this. Thank you so much!! Best, Mariana
This is a great area to explore! Getting comfortable with and not reacting to feelings that push us into binge eating is the same as getting comfortable with and not reacting to other feelings that push us into compulsions. It can be very useful to explore how we eat and why we eat. In terms of behaviors, it could be useful to look at judgments and beliefs and desires. If we judge a feeling as something we need to react to or control, or if we believe that binge eating will resolve some feeling, then it's very natural to keep struggling with this stuff. You can even look at something like checking your phone--if we constantly react to urges throughout our lives, then it's very difficult to handle them in situations that are more challenging.
Mark Freeman Great advice!! Your book is awesome by the way, is helping me uncover mpre compulsions and gives me hope that I can be happy and live a fulfill life eventhough having ocd! :)
Thanks. I'm glad you're finding it useful!
I was wondering if I could get your perspective. I am 21 years old, have had many different OCD obsessions currently and in the past, but there is a certain obsession that is starting to get me very troubled. I get very anxious driving, so I've even avoided getting my license. I always fear that I will run someone over/ make a huge mistake and that I just cannot drive. I even stress out when I'm driving slower because I think the person behind me hates me. I've driven before but am in a constant state of judging myself when I drive that I end up doing the things I fear because I am so distracted. For example, I always think that somehow, I will not see the stop sign and keeping going, and then it happened to me! My biggest fear is just not seeing a pedestrian or a car, and hurting someone. So I mentally test situations in my head, to see if I would see the person. But you'll probably realize that that is a silly thing to mentally test because you can never win that situation in your mind. How do I get over this? I can't seem to get myself to "just drive" because I think that the alternative, hurting someone, is something that I shouldn't take lightly, is it worth hurting someone to get over my fear? In my mind, I am convinced that I will. It's distressing because I need to start driving and find it embarrassing that all my friends have been driving for years.
+amber n These are very common OCD obsessions/compulsions. But the thing I always emphasize with overcoming OCD is to start small and build your way up. The compulsions that are bothering you the most are usually the last ones I recommend a person tackle. Even though they might be the ones you want to deal with immediately. Building great mental health and fitness is no different than building great physical health and fitness--it's a process of gradually increasing the difficulty, duration, and intensity of the exercises. So you might find it useful to work with a therapist that's experienced with helping people recover from OCD and it can help to be open to tackling other compulsions first. You mentioned judging yourself thinking about others judging you--those are really helpful insights. As you look at all of the compulsions you deal with, it's very likely you'll notice that many of them involve judging yourself, judging others, and the fear of others judging you. You might also notice a bunch that connect to the fear of death or harm. All of those are connected. As you begin to learn how to practice non-judgment with the easier compulsions, that will help build up skills to make it easier to overcome those fears when driving.
Happy driving on the road ahead!
To see it that way helps really well 😂😂 ty
Hi Mark, ur videos are great and they have helped me try to adopt a more effective approach towards mental health. But I soon realize that sometimes I'll go back to watching ur videos to feel confident and motivated to beating OCD. How should I approach your videos in a manner that don't end up in a compulsion?
This is useful to recognize! Whenever you see a pattern of a compulsion like this, you can see it like a path that you're walking over and over again. What you can do is put a sign in the path to help you change direction when you find yourself walking it again. You could put a note on your computer or in a convenient spot to remind yourself of something you want to do that you value instead of rewatching videos to chase feelings. This also helps to shift the focus away from beating OCD and towards living your life. If we need to beat an enemy, then we need the enemy. It's a way that OCD traps people in OCD. So it also helps to have that valued action/activity prepared in advance. For instance, if somebody wanted to read more, they could have the book sitting in an easy-to-reach spot so the moment they get the urge to go and look at videos, they can grab the book and enjoy that instead.
Mark Freeman Thanks your advice seems logical!
Sorry to bother you (I really appreciate that u take the time to answer repetitive questions from us ocd sufferers :P) but could you advise on one more question about compulsion: When it comes to resisting mental compulsions, you have said to accept the intrusive thought and then shift the focus to whatever I am doing at the moment. How can I tell whether I am accepting the intrusive thought or whether I am just distracting myself from the thought by shifting my focus to what I'm doing? Accepting or denying / distracting from a thought seems to be a very gray line.
There are probably other compulsions packed in there, which is why it's difficult. When people ask about this, I suggest considering why you don't spend all day trying to figure out whether you're accepting or denying/distracting yourself from the clouds in the sky. Why aren't these thoughts you're dealing with just like clouds? What changes can you make so that you accept them in a way similar to how you accept clouds?
how to identify a compulsion if its something like watching old pictures. I wanna look at pictures I haven't seen in a while but i feel i have to look at it. Its like am driven by anxiety. At the same time this action is completely normal. So should i do it or not! and when to know if such things are not a part of an obsession.
+wendy wends I identify compulsions as anything I do to cope with, check on, or control uncertainty, anxiety, or other feelings I don't like. If an action is fuelled by fear or anxiety or the desire to get rid of some feeling, etc, then it's only natural that it will lead to more fear, more anxiety, more stress, more of the urges, etc.
Is indeciciveness related to ocd? To me nothing ever feels right. I never feel like I've chosen the right path. Always doubting.
I'm thinking of doing this deep brain stimulation which is supposed to help. But I'll read about it first !
+1Kilili I would approach this in a slightly different way. I'd begin by asking: Why should things feel "right"? If you want to feel a particular way, your brain is going to give you the opposite feeling so you can try to get rid of it and get that feeling you want. I think it helps to see OCD as an addiction to feeling certainty. The more you want to feel certain and the more you like getting rid of uncertainty, the more your brain will give you uncertainty, so you can get rid of and get that thing you want. It's just like with an addiction: your brain makes you experience withdrawal so you go chasing that feeling you want. But eventually, you can't get that feeling at all, no matter how much you engage in the compulsions. The way out of that is to accept how you feel and do healthy things. So that's going to involve feeling indecisive and feeling uncertain. Trying to get rid of those feelings and wanting to get rid of those feelings is the problem.
And something that really helped me was recognizing that there is no such thing as the "right" feeling. It's just made up. It's a label we invent. It would be no different than somebody saying that they want to feel a unicorn before they make a decision. You can't feel a unicorn before you make a decision anymore than you can feel "right" before you make a decision. You can pretend that you do, but that would only be something you make up.
By all means, explore whatever options you'd like for recovery, but there are some easier options than getting implants. If you choose to chase a feeling, it's only natural that you won't experience it. It's no different than somebody choosing to chase a particular drug high. And, although it's difficult, it is possible to accept what we're feeling and not engage in compulsions to chase that high any longer. That's something that's entirely within your power now.
+Mark Freeman Viewing ocd as an "addiction to feeilng certainty" is very helpful I think. It is helpful to simplify these things so we don't miss the forest for the trees.
I think I knew that inside, but also believed that there is an inner compass that somhow says "right direction" when I'm in the right direction.
I started going to a new University last week and I felt miserable after 3 days. I couldn't figure whether this was ocd or a hint from my heart that I am on the wrong path.
You know it's like you lose your intuition. But maybe that's part of it... it's weird doing something that does not somehow feel right :) But I get it !
hi Mark! your videos have helped me a lot in the last few hours, as I've just discovered them! would you say feeling the need to confess is a compulsion? if I think about something I would label as bad or wrong I feel the need to confess but afterwords after my confession I feel as if the person didn't understand how bad it really was so I have to confess again...
Yes, confessing is a very common compulsion.
Hey Mark question, why is it that people who react negatively to situations seem to do it daily and feel no different yet us people with anxiety can't seem to shake off the negative emotion?
That's not something I've noticed.
I just find that every time I react to a situation "negatively" even if it's the way I feel my anxiety goes through the roof and lingers and I'm not sure why?
That's very normal. Correcting and controlling are compulsions. For example, some people have a compulsion to fix things they feel are out-of-place or misaligned. So they see something as "wrong" and they want to fix it and get it "right". Maybe they go into a dining room and they want to fix all of the cutlery on the table. But that just tells the brain to find more things to fix. It's like an addiction. So then they get bothered by something else "wrong" and fix that and then another thing and another and another. That's why you notice your brain trying to judge more when you start trying to correct and control. It helped me to recognize that I don't control other people and then to explore how to apply that understanding in my actions
Sorry for the late reply thanks. I agree it is like an addiction. The thing is that I believe alot of my frustration comes from the fact that these intrusive thoughts affect the way I perform in my everyday tasks and lately that's what I've been experiencing. Not just judging if I did a good job or not but having to constantly accept my anxiety and how it affects my life. Does this monster ever really quit? lol
Hey Mark! Thanks as always for your videos :) I would like to ask you a question. Don't you think that having some compulsion is human and healthy? Sometimes I find myself thinking: "is this a compulsion or not?" And I have the feeling that this just fuels ocd. If my mind tells me: "move your leg", if I do it it's a compulsion, but if I don't do it, my leg is kind of stuck. The same goes for swallowing, clearing your throat, moving fingers, checking the door or my alarm clock. If sometimes I do it and sometimes don't I feel good, but if I always don't check or don't do these 'compulsions' I feel stuck. Thanks
Yeah, so I always encourage people to build around where they want to go. It's just like physical fitness: you go to the gym to build skills. So what are the things you value that you can build and create around?
When you say you're compulsion free, does that mean you still have triggers and obsessions but you treat them like air ?
With me I did often experience thought plus immediate emotional response, i mmediately it felt like somebody poured hot coffee into my brain. I hate that feeling, and I am wondering if it is part of the symptoms or if only the obsessions are the symptoms and the believing into them and the feeling are not. In other words did you learn to live with the thoughts without having this hot coffee experience all the time or do you have to accept both in a package ?
+1Kilili I view "triggers" as compulsions. Consider why you're not "triggered" by clouds? It can help to explore what happens when you interact with a "trigger". The hot coffee emotions are like the pain I talk about in this video. It's totally natural to have those emotions after engaging in compulsions.
I'm not triggered by clouds because they're not stressing me out. They're white and harmless. :D
Who decides they're harmless?
Hi Mark, does accepting uncertainty also include uncertainty itself? As in the sense me and many other OCD-sufferers have this intrusive thought that there may be this „perfect proof“ which (in the OCD mind) is believed to disprove the core OCD fear. As you explained in one video the OCD brain just continues to throw a bigger and more abstract uncertainty at you if you happen to „logically solve“ a prior uncertainty. In that sense this process would go on forever unless one opts out of doing compulsions/certainty seeking behavior. But although this is true, I think one must also accept the uncertainty of „perfect certainty“ may or may not being existing - although the above is an oxymoron, I believe that for all practical purposes one must accept at least the theoretical possibility of a perfect proof. What is your opinion Mark?
This is an uncertainty that doesn't need solving. You can put your time and energy into things you care about :)
Yes Mark, you are absolutely right. It is somehow truely fascinating that once one starts cutting out compulsions, the OCD-brain comes up with truely imaginative intrusive thoughts in order to keep oneself in the cicle of rumination, checking, "prooving" and so on.
hey mark I get anxiety attacks. even though I go for therapist and think positive and have faced my ocds attacks r still there. will it be all my life ? because I get attack for a small trigger or for no reason at all. I am really confused how to deal wit it? can u help me?
It can help to cut out compulsions. There are many that fuel anxiety attacks. They can be mental compulsions and overt compulsions. Trying to be certain that a bad experience won't last forever is actually a common one. We engage in that by doing things like seeking reassurance online but it can also be a part of the cycle that builds up to an anxiety attack as we start to judge how we're feeling, and then we start to worry about whether that feeling will last or get worse, and then it does get worse because of those compulsions, and then we engage in more compulsions to try to fight the feeling, which makes it worse, which leads to more compulsions, and so on. Ideally, your therapist can help you overcome this. These are issues you can overcome, but it requires some big changes. I'm not aware of how thinking positive would help. In fact, one of the most helpful things I've learned is to show my brain its ok if it has horrible terrible thoughts. I am not my thoughts so it doesn't matter what thoughts are bouncing around in my head.
thanx a lot mark for the reply I was waiting for it. I feel really alone in this cause I live in india. no one to talk abt this. I have to work outside but attack scare me dnt know how long I have to live like this.
hi mark in my reply to the problem to wrote BIG CHANGES can please mention any 2 changes in my thinking which will help me stop anxiety attack please.
Change #1: stop wanting to stop anxiety attacks. If somebody didn't exercise because they hated it and wanted to avoid sweating, eventually everything would make them sweat. The more you want to avoid anxiety, the more anxiety you'll experience. Change #2: Practice non-judgment. If you're constantly judging things as bad, then it's only natural to be anxious, but that comes from your judgments, not the things or experiences.
thanx a lot mark . thanx for being there :-)
Hej Mark, i love your video's. I suffer from ocd for about 4,5 years. I have defeated a lot of major things that bothered me.
I do have one problem. i cannot stop rumminating. I try to write down every thought that comes to my mind.
Now i have a question wich nobody can seem to answer. I can keep myself for about a week to accept whatever comes in my mind. i say to myself: Thoughts are just thoughts and after one week i seem to weaken in my actions and ocd seems to get worse. generally after week 2 i collapse and go to a low point where i loathe and hate myself.
how do i keep accepting everything without losing my strenght to keep doing that?
+chrizmeister1992 When it comes to writing down every thought that comes to mind, were you identifying that as a compulsion? Because doing something like that would only encourage ruminating and more obsessions and more anxiety. Another compulsion that can be very useful to cut out is loathing and hating yourself. It's very easy to get caught in an addictive cycle of hating yourself and feeling, then cutting out compulsions and feeling good about that. If you feel good about cutting out compulsions, then what does your brain need to do to help you get that? Give you more compulsions and give you all of those feelings you dislike, so you can try to get rid of them again. It can really help to see healthy things as just the things we do. If you engage in a compulsion, that's fine. Recognize it. Go back to doing healthy things again. In each moment, we have the opportunity to do healthy things aligned with our values.
+Mark Freeman thx for the response mark. ive maybe put it wrongy so i noticed i have automatisch compulsions in my brain that just come tot minder after a thought so i tell myself just once : its an obsession andere leave it at that, no further rumination, nothing. a second later it Pops another obsessieve thought and i respons the same: it's an obsesive thought, just a thought and after a while my brain just relaxes and does not respond for a while. at the start of each day i write down without judging whats on my mind. for example i had an obsesive thought about death and leave it at that. in the Evening i do the same. but i somethimes forget to do that:)
+chrizmeister1992 Those all sound like compulsions. Reassuring yourself that it's just a thought or just an obsession is only going to encourage your brain to give you more so you can reassure yourself that it's ok. It creates an addictive loop. So that's probably why it keeps giving them to you. Thoughts are like clouds. Do you need to reassure yourself throughout the day about the nature of the clouds in the sky? You can just let them be there. If you started to write down your thoughts on the clouds each day, in the morning and at night, it wouldn't be strange if your brain started thinking about the clouds all of the time. It might help to consider that you've already judged the thoughts as important and worth paying attention to if you're choosing to write them down. Of all the things you experience during the day, if you're choosing to write about one of them, then it's only natural that you would spend lots of time ruminating on that one experience.
+Mark Freeman your probably right but when i say to my brain its aan obsessieve thought. i pops up with the questionwhat if it's not an obsesive thought? and i just say thats also an obsession and i do nothing with it i DONT rumminate on it. i just started doing this for the last 2 weeks. usually i just kept rumminating on the thought trying to Find meaning or to know exactly of its right or wrong ....now i just acnoledge its a thought and if stress lr panic comes up i DONT change the way i respond. i don't try to fix things annymore i just take the risk that it a thought. so im kind of confused since im actually forcing myself to say thats to myself it prevokes more anxiety not reliëf to say its an obsesive thought
+chrizmeister1992 That's great you're not ruminating on it and it's actually a great sign that it's causing anxiety when you don't ruminate. You can accept that feeling. It doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe consider if you're still afraid of the consequences of those thoughts. Sometimes, when we reassure ourselves that it's just a thought or just an obsession, what we actually mean is: "It's just a thought (so it won't actually happen)." What that does is reaffirm to our brains that the topic of the obsession is something we should be afraid of. We're implying that if it wasn't a thought, then we should be TERRIFIED! Personally, it's helped me to practice accepting ALL thoughts as thoughts and it's also helped to accept the consequences of my fears while I do healthy things aligned with my values.
I'm sorry, but you look exactly like Taran Killam, without hair. Also, great videos! There's so much good advice here.
Kalleidoscape 🔑🔒
I actually started having a small hammer with me as a reminder :)
Thank you Mark!
So useful!
@@everybodyhasabrain I'm happy to say that nothing has helped me more than your videos. For two months I was suffering severe OCD about real past events. The anxiety went through the roof, up to the point of vomiting. I then decided to be irrational and stop trying to think my way out of it and thus started to cut out the compulsions.
The first day was like a nightmare. I felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, because my ego realized that it won't ever get reassurance and that it is doomed to living in uncertainty.
The second day was even worse, but the third day felt like a tipping point. I'm in my fourth day and I can feel things going for the better. Much less intrusive thoughts, with less anxiety triggered.
I still don't feel like exposing myself to triggers as I feel that could pull me back a few steps, but I know that eventually I'll have to listen to that song that triggers my anxiety, or visit that place, or...
Thanks a lot Mark. I've really learned more about the mind that I've learned in 20 years of studying various philosophies and trying out different meditation practices.
Hey Mark, can reading self help books and watching self help TH-cam videos be a form of compulsion? I used to have symptom or thoughts and immediately run to google and self diagnose a disorder and that brought me so much pain. Is watching these videos going to do the same to me? I'm uncertain if i should be here if I want to relieve my compulsions
It's why or how a person does something that makes it a compulsion. Hand-washing is a great example of this. When I struggled with OCD, I would wash my hands compulsively. Now I still wash my hands but I don't do it compulsively and it never causes me any anxiety. You can do anything as a compulsion. Many people develop compulsions around exercise, eating, or meditation--all things that can be useful supports or they can be ways to practice making our mental health worse.
Hey where can I get a one on one??
The first step is to do the Mental Fitness 101 course you can find here: brainschool.markfreeman.ca/ That covers all of the exercises I previously did with clients during the first month of working together. While you're doing those, you can ask any questions you have and you'll get to see if you like the types of exercises I do with clients. And if you still need additional support after doing the course, then we could talk about doing one-on-one sessions.
Thank you Mark. I raise the hammer for more than 2 decades; specially in the past 9 years where i´m dealing with uncertainty (is my family real?). it´s time to put the hammer down :)
hlo mark
Hey mark quick questions.
So lately I've been going great and am super amazed :). Just a quick question though, with compulsions regarding social media. (I find that to be the hardest one btw lol) if I for example send a message on snapchat, and maybe I'm lying in bed or something, I will have no idea what else to do on my phone other than to wait for the person to reply. So I keep refreshing and refreshing. But I notice I'm a mouse chasing a cheese with no stick. So if it were in a case like that, and I wasn't compulsively on my phone but just on it a reasonable time before bed, would it be better to just wait for the reply? Or what else could I do on my phone if in that moment I'm talking to that person?
Why do you have to do something?
So just be in the present moment while the person responds?
Refreshing constantly to check for messages is a common compulsion. People do it for emails, messages, responses to posts on forums, etc. It just fuels anxiety about people responding, which then starts to pop up in other areas. And what if the person doesn't respond?! If the only thing you want to do is wait for a message, then there's not much else you can do other than wait, is there? Unless there was something else you wanted to do, and then you could do that instead of waiting around.
So this is something I found also to be spiralling out of hand : Sometimes I'm very creative I have good business ideas or inspiration for things I want to practice and books I'd love to read.
And then I buy so many books in a row that I'm overwhelmed by them. I can't really enjoy them until I've finished them. And then I worry about retaining enough knowledge and being able to apply it .
I also have so many ideas that I don't want to let go of any of them. And I jot them all down. Then often I havve written so much down that I can't bring the ideas into a correct order and my idea is lost.
Then I often feel like I've lost a valuable insight and inspiration.
So this always wanting more and not being willing to p r i o r i t i z e , to focus on one thing, to focus on the process.
It's weird.
+1Kilili I'm guessing the problem is wanting to retain all the material. Because I think it might later be useful. But it's too much to write it all down and that is frustrating.
The HEK is dis