I've lost pretty much everything because of OCD at this point - my self esteem, my job, and I've damaged all of my closest relationships. I've been suffering alone for 16 years and it's just grown and grown to the point where I couldn't deal with the violent images in my head and I became suicidal. I just started getting help two weeks ago. Mark - your story makes me hopeful. Anyone else who is reading this and suffering from OCD symptoms, please get help. This illness can take everything from you if you let it.
Damn Mark. Thank you for this video. I finally learned that like toy said, we can't afford to wait for motivation. There is no right time. The right time is the present. You just end up chasing it more and more til it's never enough. I loved this video.
Everytime you said bullshit I felt that, it radiated in my well being because it can be so painful, but with tears in my eyes thank you for these videos!
Damn, ish is real son! There must have been an instance where I developed this conviction that I have to be a person that has to grasp and understand everything 100%. This attitude has led me through the rabbit hole of OCD
I had previously skipped over this video to watch others but glad I took time to look at it today. This is so true and really struck a chord with me especially now with how the UK government uses fear again and again and people react to it. Much like my brain, fear again and again making me give up all I care about. I’m not prepared to do it, I want to build not destroy and not be scared of being kind to others!
Thank you so much mark. I know you know I knew this already lol but u know more than anyone this monster I am battling and since I got pregnant it's gotten a lot worst but I am really going to try my best to stop the rumminating. as usual your always rite!!! love your videos so much mark and thank so much for all you do xx
hey man, this is my topic right now. that's what I "needed". thank you. I felt super great and inspired but then I went after safeties and doing this and that, because they were "inportant" and even worse things I believes myself to be necessary for myself, like getting an x-ray on my food. all that bullshit led to a disconnection from my true self, 'cause for sure he told me to not do this bullshit even if the outcome was uncertain. my fault, did't listen. Well, it's an "eye for an eye" give up safeties and life an adventurous fulfilling life or run after safteries and give up my freedom and exciting life. eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
Thanks for this Mark. Was on the verge of a relapse today and this video helped give me the extra focus I needed to sit with uncertainty and not do compulsions.
Someone who is my mode for transportation asked me if I left a place due to anxiety. I was shocked "I've never told her I have anxiety." "Are people talking about me?" What does she mean by that?" Why did she ask that?" Now I'm avoiding therapy because "what if she asks me again" and "I'm not comfortable working with someone who knows about my mental health issues." I feel like I'm on this endless loop of obstacles whenever I feel I've found the solution. I was upset when I found out she was my support but put off the feeling for a while but now it's gnawing at me.
It can help to recognize that these attempts to read people's minds and judge what they say are just compulsions that make things worse. It doesn't sound very useful to avoid therapy or other people. These are just ways the mental health issues stick around and get in the way of doing things to get over them.
Mark Freeman it's those pesky intrusive thoughts and before the thought even comes in my body responds. That insecurity and sensitive subject matter is what makes it so upsetting. I don't want people other than mental health providers knowing about mental health.
Wow, talk about perfect timing with your video. I was just thinking about how I'm losing in life and how I need to make a change, because I've been stuck for such a long time.
I have been doing better recently. So I'd like to share how I've been doing it. This is it. Provoke your anxiety as much as possible as often as possible for as long as it takes. Believe in what your mind is telling you as strongly as you can even if you really don't believe it. Force yourself to believe your anxiety. Provoke provoke provoke. This is very hard to do in the beginning and it will give you a more overall anxiety for a longer period. But just keep going. Keep provoking. I swear this works very well if you can take it. And remember. Don't tell yourself you are doing this to get rid of your obsessions. Stop reassuring yourself. Just Keep Provoking. Goodluck
So I have OCD but mild. I am religious and I try to stop any thing sinful or forbidden like masterbating or doing any sexual things that are not normal and stop revising and rechecking to be 100% sure it's so difficult and I don't feel motivated yet I feel depressed from time to time. Because when I succeed at doing something and say the last time I fall back to it and I feel super anxious and depressed that I failed so I'm learning now to take things easy and normal. I hope I get used to that and feel good and be perfectly normal. Note: it's super difficult to live on and get used to a new thing or change especially if you have a mental thing going on or psychological. Thanks for the video mark
It's ok to fall back. You can learn from that. It's like getting lost in the wilderness--when you notice you're lost, you don't need to punish yourself more. Just turn in the direction you want to go in and get moving. Judging yourself only makes the journey more difficult.
Your videos are great !! What are some things you do for a healthy life not just to reduce anxiety. I know exercise, meditation and healthy eating are huge for you but what else do you do like keep a gratitude journal ? Take vitamins ?. I would love a video just focused on healthy things you can start doing to build a healthy life.
Thanks, Robin. I don't keep a gratitude journal. I find it's helpful to be grateful for anything. Today I've been grateful for my elbows and tortillas and cups to put juice in. But if having a gratitude journal was a helpful reminder to get started on the practice of gratitude, that could be useful. The only other thing I would add in, besides the things you mentioned, is healthy communication. That can mean many different things, just like those other supports you mentioned. Healthy communication is about using different styles of communication, using visuals, continually working on expressing myself, sharing things online instead of just passively receiving things, etc. It's something to explore in whatever way communication plays a role in your life and relationships. Happy communicating!
You inspire me to get finally "over it" , because I have always felt like " man, you don't relly need this shit", of couse I can't find arguments why, but that's the guiding feeling and you better listen to it right?
Hey I'm supper interested in doing your mental fitness 101 I'm confused is to how it works when I checked out the site it just had a bunch of videos, so I'm guessing you do the videos day by day? Plus what kind of expectations should I have for the course, like what should I expect to get from it? And does it really help?
Thanks for the message, Dylan. Yes, it is a video course, with some text-based lessons as well. You just do it at your own pace. It covers all of the concepts and exercises I previous did with clients during the first month of working together. It's only meant for learning those concepts/skills. But if you looked over the topics and you wondered if it would help with something, then it probably wouldn't help with whatever it is you're thinking of.
hi mark I have a situation you might be able to help with I went to a party 3 years ago and have a thought about something happening my friend showed me the dvd of the party because I wasn't on it I'm now thinking was it the correct year? but the baby at the time would be of a certain age so it can't be the year after my head is going mad any advice plz mark? nikki x
Checking about the past is a common compulsion but as you've already seen, it only creates more uncertainty and more anxiety. If you want to get over this, it's very helpful to cut out compulsions. The more you choose to chase certainty, the more you'll experience uncertainty and anxiety and everything else that goes along with that stuff. Instead of chasing certainty and making yourself anxious, it can help to accept uncertainty and keep the focus on doing things you care about in the present.
Hey Mark, do you have any advice for how to cope with negative experiences. I felt stable a while ago and went on a trip to visit my friend for three days. I was extreme anxious all the time, eventhough I had fun when we went to a party. It felt like it wasn't worth the effort. How can I stay positive and motivate myself to leave my safety zones, if I had such a bad experience with it??
There are a couple of things to consider here: 1) I found it really helpful not to base success on feelings or thoughts. I don't control that stuff in my head so it'd be like putting the weather in charge of my life. If there's a cloud in the sky, it doesn't mean my day sucked or was negative. 2) Believing my feelings only got me into a deep pit of mental illness, so with recovery, it helped me to recognize that I was basically having feeling hallucinations. I was getting anxious when there was nothing to be anxious about. Reacting to that only made me sicker. So I had to stop believing the hallucinations. If I feel anxious, that's fine, it doesn't mean anything more real than if I imagined I was a unicorn. 3) Speaking of unicorns, if I experience a thought that I'm a unicorn, that doesn't make me a unicorn. Likewise, if I experience an emotion like anxiety, that doesn't make me anxious. It can help to recognize that you are not your thoughts or feelings, they're things you experience. And you can experience anything while you do things you care about. I don't encourage people to be positive or try to get motivated. That's just chasing more feelings. I find it helps to keep the focus on doing things I care about. My brain can feel whatever it wants. My goals in life have nothing to do with avoiding anxiety or any other feeling. When we shift the focus from trying to avoid feelings, to actually doing the things we care about in life, the feelings we feel become much less important. What do you want to focus on in life?
Hello mark, Huge fan and avid listener of your youtube challenge and follower of monday meditations. I love what you do because everything is done with recoverg in mind. I was wondering [im sure you get this alot] if you can do a video on the fear of schizophrenia and also ocd and the feelings that come along with some of ocd fears..and what can be done to overcome that
Thanks, Alexis! The fear of schizophrenia is one that I probably won't do a video on only because it's so helpful to approach it as any other fear. It's just like any other fear about illness or harm--we need to work on accepting the stuff in our heads and not engage in compulsions around those uncertainties. The reason for approaching it as any other fear is because OCD will happily jump to something else if you only focus in on a narrow issue like schizophrenia symptoms. It really helps to take a very broad approach to OCD and tackle things like uncertainty (about anything). Then you're dealing with patterns. So recovery is about: "I don't react to uncertainties with compulsions" or "I don't react to feelings I dislike by trying to control or avoid them" instead of "I don't react to uncertainty about schizophrenia with Googling symptoms". Then there's much less work to do. Your brain can come up with a million different fears and a million different compulsions to engage in as a reaction to those fears. But if you break OCD down into its fundamental patterns, then there are far fewer challenges to overcome. Any thought or feeling in our heads is stuff we can experience. Enjoy embracing that stuff!
Hi mark ive really been struggling with relapse in my ocd. I watched your videos a month ago and something clicked and i completeley abandoned the compulsions for a month but now they have come back and i feel like this has always been the case when i tind a solution it works for a while but then it wears off and its almost like i grow immune to the technique. For example i heard that accepting uncertainty helps so i tried doing that but its no longer working what can i do to make sure ocd technique help in the long term?Also do you know anything about ocd related to writing i find that when im writing my ocd orders me to skip words or purposely make mistakes i have to write a lot and dont know how avoid it have you heard of this symptom before and how to overcome it.Also i watched your video on relapse but i dont think it applies to me because i really want to get better and i would do anything its just that the techniques get old.
The technique that works for the long-term with getting over OCD is to cut out compulsions, mental or physical. It helped me to recognize that the compulsions lead to the obsessions/anxiety. So choosing to do the compulsions means I'm choosing to have those experiences. It's great to accept uncertainty or other feelings we don't like, but that also means not reacting to those feelings. Those writing symptoms are the same: you experience a feeling you don't like or a thought you don't like, and then you react to it with a compulsion like skipping words or making mistakes. Those are the compulsions. The practice of getting over OCD is about experiencing those feelings and not engaging in the compulsions. When you say that something "works" and then it stops working, that makes it sound like the techniques or the thoughts/feelings are responsible for your actions. I find it helped to recognize that I was responsible for my actions. It's just like getting into great physical shape--if I stop exercising and I do things that make my physical fitness worse, I can't blame exercise for "not working". Exercise works if I do it. Cutting out compulsions works if I do it. If I choose to engage in compulsions, it's like choosing to sit on the couch and eat ice cream all day. So it's helped tremendously to focus on the healthy things I can do in my life. I can experience any thought or feeling while I do those healthy things.
Hi Mark, I've been suffering from OCD for 4years , when I was a 12yrs old..swear words used to come in my mind whenever I used to pray god but then it lasted for quite sometime! But 4years back I have started having intrusive thoughts involving my loved ones! And then one day negative self talk is triggered! And it is there with me all the time! I just want to if the intrusive self talk is a common OCD phenomenon! It makes me think all the mistakes I've done in my life and it also throws all the things that will make me depressed! And it also throws logic that no one would have done this to themselves why can't you be the one to do it and apart from this there is also this urge to know what happens if I distract myself when I'm doing something and then I'll have the urge to think something negative and distract myself!! Can you please let me know if this is a common phenomenon! Waiting for your reply!! Best Regards, Karthik.
Hi Karthik, asking if something is a common phenomenon is actually the common phenomenon. It's often referred to as "reassurance-seeking". It can help to recognize that trying to chase certainty is what OCD is all about. Instead of trying to chase those, I find it useful to switch the focus to doing things I value. You don't have to react to any of these urges or uncertainties or whatever else your brain throws up.
Thanx a lot mark!! Your videos have helped me quite a lot!! The cloud concept of thoughts and memories have been helping me a lot on the path of recovery!! I hope that I'll be on the other side soon and will strive to keep my brain as fit as possible!!😀🤘🏻
Hello Mark, first of all thank you for your great work ! I tried to contact you several times via email ! I deal with ocd and i have read your book which is by the way an awesome book but I have a problem ! when I want to face my root fears say for example loneliness should I say "MAYBE if I do X I will be alone" or I should say "If I do X I WILL be alone " shoul I fuse with the worst scenario or let it be a probability ! I wish you answer me
Try both. Recovery is a bit like a sport. Getting stuck on just doing one thing or trying to find the right way to play the game isn't an approach I find effective. Sometimes you need to shoot and other times you need to pass. So why not try both of the things you mentioned? You may find one approach is best in some situations and the other approach is better in other situations.
true but if I agree with the worst scenario I will be fusing with my thoughts .. And I should not fuse with my thought because I am not my thoughts you always said that xdd so it's like we had come back to the beginning
Great reminder of how to approach uncertainty. Interesting how you applied to a society-level perspective, I really do think how we behave as individuals can work the same way on a large scale as well. Any word on when the book will be out? Excited to read it!
Thanks, Kamran! Yes, I find these concepts most helpful when they're applied throughout our lives. The book looks like it will be out this summer (in the UK at least).
I've lost pretty much everything because of OCD at this point - my self esteem, my job, and I've damaged all of my closest relationships. I've been suffering alone for 16 years and it's just grown and grown to the point where I couldn't deal with the violent images in my head and I became suicidal. I just started getting help two weeks ago. Mark - your story makes me hopeful. Anyone else who is reading this and suffering from OCD symptoms, please get help. This illness can take everything from you if you let it.
That's great you're getting help now! It's totally possible to tackle this beast. Keep taking steps!
How are you doing nowdays?
Damn Mark. Thank you for this video. I finally learned that like toy said, we can't afford to wait for motivation. There is no right time. The right time is the present. You just end up chasing it more and more til it's never enough.
I loved this video.
Thanks, Ashley! Yes, now is always a great time. We're always ready to do things right now.
Everytime you said bullshit I felt that, it radiated in my well being because it can be so painful, but with tears in my eyes thank you for these videos!
Damn, ish is real son! There must have been an instance where I developed this conviction that I have to be a person that has to grasp and understand everything 100%. This attitude has led me through the rabbit hole of OCD
I had previously skipped over this video to watch others but glad I took time to look at it today.
This is so true and really struck a chord with me especially now with how the UK government uses fear again and again and people react to it.
Much like my brain, fear again and again making me give up all I care about. I’m not prepared to do it, I want to build not destroy and not be scared of being kind to others!
Enjoy building!
Every time I listen to this I take something new from it. Thank you Mark, you’re doing great work! ❤️
Thank you! I'm glad it continues to be useful :)
Thank you so much mark. I know you know I knew this already lol but u know more than anyone this monster I am battling and since I got pregnant it's gotten a lot worst but I am really going to try my best to stop the rumminating. as usual your always rite!!! love your videos so much mark and thank so much for all you do xx
Mark, you're a hero.
Thank you.
נתנאל מ That's very kind of you
hey man, this is my topic right now. that's what I "needed". thank you.
I felt super great and inspired but then I went after safeties and doing this and that, because they were "inportant" and even worse things I believes myself to be necessary for myself, like getting an x-ray on my food. all that bullshit led to a disconnection from my true self, 'cause for sure he told me to not do this bullshit even if the outcome was uncertain. my fault, did't listen.
Well, it's an "eye for an eye"
give up safeties and life an adventurous fulfilling life or run after safteries and give up my freedom and exciting life. eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
Thanks for this Mark. Was on the verge of a relapse today and this video helped give me the extra focus I needed to sit with uncertainty and not do compulsions.
Enjoy hugging that uncertainty!
Huge "Lapse" going on here. Its funny how i feel suprised once again.. even though its a familiar beast.
The beast likes to play tricks but stick to the actions you care about in life. Those never change.
So True Mark :)
Someone who is my mode for transportation asked me if I left a place due to anxiety. I was shocked "I've never told her I have anxiety." "Are people talking about me?" What does she mean by that?" Why did she ask that?"
Now I'm avoiding therapy because "what if she asks me again" and "I'm not comfortable working with someone who knows about my mental health issues." I feel like I'm on this endless loop of obstacles whenever I feel I've found the solution. I was upset when I found out she was my support but put off the feeling for a while but now it's gnawing at me.
It can help to recognize that these attempts to read people's minds and judge what they say are just compulsions that make things worse. It doesn't sound very useful to avoid therapy or other people. These are just ways the mental health issues stick around and get in the way of doing things to get over them.
Mark Freeman it's those pesky intrusive thoughts and before the thought even comes in my body responds. That insecurity and sensitive subject matter is what makes it so upsetting. I don't want people other than mental health providers knowing about mental health.
Yet another awesome video from the one and Only Mark. You are a true gift to mankind.
That's very kind of you, Vijay.
Wow, talk about perfect timing with your video. I was just thinking about how I'm losing in life and how I need to make a change, because I've been stuck for such a long time.
Hi, fellow internet person, I feel the same way :(
We gotta have a positive outlook in life and take steps to recovering, it's so easy to say, but hard to achieve, but it is possible.
It's possible!
I have been doing better recently.
So I'd like to share how I've been doing it. This is it.
Provoke your anxiety as much as possible as often as possible for as long as it takes. Believe in what your mind is telling you as strongly as you can even if you really don't believe it. Force yourself to believe your anxiety. Provoke provoke provoke. This is very hard to do in the beginning and it will give you a more overall anxiety for a longer period. But just keep going. Keep provoking.
I swear this works very well if you can take it.
And remember. Don't tell yourself you are doing this to get rid of your obsessions. Stop reassuring yourself. Just Keep Provoking.
Goodluck
So I have OCD but mild. I am religious and I try to stop any thing sinful or forbidden like masterbating or doing any sexual things that are not normal and stop revising and rechecking to be 100% sure it's so difficult and I don't feel motivated yet I feel depressed from time to time. Because when I succeed at doing something and say the last time I fall back to it and I feel super anxious and depressed that I failed so I'm learning now to take things easy and normal. I hope I get used to that and feel good and be perfectly normal. Note: it's super difficult to live on and get used to a new thing or change especially if you have a mental thing going on or psychological. Thanks for the video mark
It's ok to fall back. You can learn from that. It's like getting lost in the wilderness--when you notice you're lost, you don't need to punish yourself more. Just turn in the direction you want to go in and get moving. Judging yourself only makes the journey more difficult.
Your videos are great !!
What are some things you do for a healthy life not just to reduce anxiety. I know exercise, meditation and healthy eating are huge for you but what else do you do like keep a gratitude journal ? Take vitamins ?. I would love a video just focused on healthy things you can start doing to build a healthy life.
Thanks, Robin. I don't keep a gratitude journal. I find it's helpful to be grateful for anything. Today I've been grateful for my elbows and tortillas and cups to put juice in. But if having a gratitude journal was a helpful reminder to get started on the practice of gratitude, that could be useful. The only other thing I would add in, besides the things you mentioned, is healthy communication. That can mean many different things, just like those other supports you mentioned. Healthy communication is about using different styles of communication, using visuals, continually working on expressing myself, sharing things online instead of just passively receiving things, etc. It's something to explore in whatever way communication plays a role in your life and relationships.
Happy communicating!
You are inspiring.
Thanks, Björn!
Thanks Mark! Keep up the great work!
Thanks, Ståle!
Thank you, Mark
You're welcome, Bhushan!
You inspire me to get finally "over it" , because I have always felt like " man, you don't relly need this shit", of couse I can't find arguments why, but that's the guiding feeling and you better listen to it right?
man.., your awesome Mark... great vid
Thanks!
Hey I'm supper interested in doing your mental fitness 101 I'm confused is to how it works when I checked out the site it just had a bunch of videos, so I'm guessing you do the videos day by day? Plus what kind of expectations should I have for the course, like what should I expect to get from it? And does it really help?
Thanks for the message, Dylan. Yes, it is a video course, with some text-based lessons as well. You just do it at your own pace. It covers all of the concepts and exercises I previous did with clients during the first month of working together. It's only meant for learning those concepts/skills. But if you looked over the topics and you wondered if it would help with something, then it probably wouldn't help with whatever it is you're thinking of.
Mark Freeman but these skills and strengths will help me with meditation and acceptance ?
They help me with those things.
hi mark I have a situation you might be able to help with I went to a party 3 years ago and have a thought about something happening my friend showed me the dvd of the party because I wasn't on it I'm now thinking was it the correct year? but the baby at the time would be of a certain age so it can't be the year after my head is going mad any advice plz mark? nikki x
Checking about the past is a common compulsion but as you've already seen, it only creates more uncertainty and more anxiety. If you want to get over this, it's very helpful to cut out compulsions. The more you choose to chase certainty, the more you'll experience uncertainty and anxiety and everything else that goes along with that stuff. Instead of chasing certainty and making yourself anxious, it can help to accept uncertainty and keep the focus on doing things you care about in the present.
Great stuff, Mark!
Thanks, John!
You're welcome! I'm glad it was helpful :)
give the uncertainty a big hug ^__^
Hug it!
Nice vid man
Hey Mark, do you have any advice for how to cope with negative experiences. I felt stable a while ago and went on a trip to visit my friend for three days. I was extreme anxious all the time, eventhough I had fun when we went to a party. It felt like it wasn't worth the effort. How can I stay positive and motivate myself to leave my safety zones, if I had such a bad experience with it??
There are a couple of things to consider here: 1) I found it really helpful not to base success on feelings or thoughts. I don't control that stuff in my head so it'd be like putting the weather in charge of my life. If there's a cloud in the sky, it doesn't mean my day sucked or was negative. 2) Believing my feelings only got me into a deep pit of mental illness, so with recovery, it helped me to recognize that I was basically having feeling hallucinations. I was getting anxious when there was nothing to be anxious about. Reacting to that only made me sicker. So I had to stop believing the hallucinations. If I feel anxious, that's fine, it doesn't mean anything more real than if I imagined I was a unicorn. 3) Speaking of unicorns, if I experience a thought that I'm a unicorn, that doesn't make me a unicorn. Likewise, if I experience an emotion like anxiety, that doesn't make me anxious. It can help to recognize that you are not your thoughts or feelings, they're things you experience. And you can experience anything while you do things you care about. I don't encourage people to be positive or try to get motivated. That's just chasing more feelings. I find it helps to keep the focus on doing things I care about. My brain can feel whatever it wants. My goals in life have nothing to do with avoiding anxiety or any other feeling. When we shift the focus from trying to avoid feelings, to actually doing the things we care about in life, the feelings we feel become much less important. What do you want to focus on in life?
Hello mark,
Huge fan and avid listener of your youtube challenge and follower of monday meditations. I love what you do because everything is done with recoverg in mind. I was wondering [im sure you get this alot] if you can do a video on the fear of schizophrenia and also ocd and the feelings that come along with some of ocd fears..and what can be done to overcome that
Thanks, Alexis! The fear of schizophrenia is one that I probably won't do a video on only because it's so helpful to approach it as any other fear. It's just like any other fear about illness or harm--we need to work on accepting the stuff in our heads and not engage in compulsions around those uncertainties. The reason for approaching it as any other fear is because OCD will happily jump to something else if you only focus in on a narrow issue like schizophrenia symptoms. It really helps to take a very broad approach to OCD and tackle things like uncertainty (about anything). Then you're dealing with patterns. So recovery is about: "I don't react to uncertainties with compulsions" or "I don't react to feelings I dislike by trying to control or avoid them" instead of "I don't react to uncertainty about schizophrenia with Googling symptoms". Then there's much less work to do. Your brain can come up with a million different fears and a million different compulsions to engage in as a reaction to those fears. But if you break OCD down into its fundamental patterns, then there are far fewer challenges to overcome. Any thought or feeling in our heads is stuff we can experience. Enjoy embracing that stuff!
we had to learn to put the hammer down
Hi mark ive really been struggling with relapse in my ocd. I watched your videos a month ago and something clicked and i completeley abandoned the compulsions for a month but now they have come back and i feel like this has always been the case when i tind a solution it works for a while but then it wears off and its almost like i grow immune to the technique. For example i heard that accepting uncertainty helps so i tried doing that but its no longer working what can i do to make sure ocd technique help in the long term?Also do you know anything about ocd related to writing i find that when im writing my ocd orders me to skip words or purposely make mistakes i have to write a lot and dont know how avoid it have you heard of this symptom before and how to overcome it.Also i watched your video on relapse but i dont think it applies to me because i really want to get better and i would do anything its just that the techniques get old.
The technique that works for the long-term with getting over OCD is to cut out compulsions, mental or physical. It helped me to recognize that the compulsions lead to the obsessions/anxiety. So choosing to do the compulsions means I'm choosing to have those experiences. It's great to accept uncertainty or other feelings we don't like, but that also means not reacting to those feelings. Those writing symptoms are the same: you experience a feeling you don't like or a thought you don't like, and then you react to it with a compulsion like skipping words or making mistakes. Those are the compulsions. The practice of getting over OCD is about experiencing those feelings and not engaging in the compulsions. When you say that something "works" and then it stops working, that makes it sound like the techniques or the thoughts/feelings are responsible for your actions. I find it helped to recognize that I was responsible for my actions. It's just like getting into great physical shape--if I stop exercising and I do things that make my physical fitness worse, I can't blame exercise for "not working". Exercise works if I do it. Cutting out compulsions works if I do it. If I choose to engage in compulsions, it's like choosing to sit on the couch and eat ice cream all day. So it's helped tremendously to focus on the healthy things I can do in my life. I can experience any thought or feeling while I do those healthy things.
Hi Mark,
I've been suffering from OCD for 4years , when I was a 12yrs old..swear words used to come in my mind whenever I used to pray god but then it lasted for quite sometime!
But 4years back I have started having intrusive thoughts involving my loved ones! And then one day negative self talk is triggered! And it is there with me all the time! I just want to if the intrusive self talk is a common OCD phenomenon! It makes me think all the mistakes I've done in my life and it also throws all the things that will make me depressed! And it also throws logic that no one would have done this to themselves why can't you be the one to do it and apart from this there is also this urge to know what happens if I distract myself when I'm doing something and then I'll have the urge to think something negative and distract myself!!
Can you please let me know if this is a common phenomenon!
Waiting for your reply!!
Best Regards,
Karthik.
Hi Karthik, asking if something is a common phenomenon is actually the common phenomenon. It's often referred to as "reassurance-seeking". It can help to recognize that trying to chase certainty is what OCD is all about. Instead of trying to chase those, I find it useful to switch the focus to doing things I value. You don't have to react to any of these urges or uncertainties or whatever else your brain throws up.
Thanx a lot mark!! Your videos have helped me quite a lot!! The cloud concept of thoughts and memories have been helping me a lot on the path of recovery!! I hope that I'll be on the other side soon and will strive to keep my brain as fit as possible!!😀🤘🏻
Hello Mark, first of all thank you for your great work ! I tried to contact you several times via email ! I deal with ocd and i have read your book which is by the way an awesome book but I have a problem ! when I want to face my root fears say for example loneliness should I say "MAYBE if I do X I will be alone" or I should say "If I do X I WILL be alone " shoul I fuse with the worst scenario or let it be a probability ! I wish you answer me
Try both. Recovery is a bit like a sport. Getting stuck on just doing one thing or trying to find the right way to play the game isn't an approach I find effective. Sometimes you need to shoot and other times you need to pass. So why not try both of the things you mentioned? You may find one approach is best in some situations and the other approach is better in other situations.
true but if I agree with the worst scenario I will be fusing with my thoughts .. And I should not fuse with my thought because I am not my thoughts you always said that xdd so it's like we had come back to the beginning
Are you afraid your thoughts are true?
I'm not sure if they are true or not
miro miro That's an uncertainty you can have.
yes!!!!
Great reminder of how to approach uncertainty. Interesting how you applied to a society-level perspective, I really do think how we behave as individuals can work the same way on a large scale as well.
Any word on when the book will be out? Excited to read it!
Thanks, Kamran! Yes, I find these concepts most helpful when they're applied throughout our lives. The book looks like it will be out this summer (in the UK at least).
Awesome! I'm in the US, so hopefully we can get our copies soon. Definitely need one for my shelf.
just do the opposite !