I really have to say that Mark's approach to OCD-recovery is the best path. Accept that there is no certainty, and live with it! What I also appreciate about him, that he is very ethical about mental health recovery
At this point I honestly think that we have to learn to simply live life rather than constantly checking the brain stuff. Our brain is so complicated and we will never keep everything under "control" , even watching too many videos (I think Mark is a legend btw) is a compulsion that could generate fear and checking even if it is a compulsion itself. There are a ton of things that could be said about mental health but we have to accept the powerful and complicated mind the human has and keep on living the life we want. I strongly believe that recovery is not based on getting rid of something, but leaving the uncertainties in the dark and enjoying the light.
Can I understand it like this? People (especially sufferers) should rely less on their logical thinking (brain) because the brain makes mistakes too often and that they should learn not to check/judge feelings and sensations, to live with uncertainty to get a "deeper knowing"? When I learned through ERP that I didn't get physical sensations because I wasn't checking for them (mentally or physically) and dealing with uncertainty, I knew that I had previously partly created them by myself. Before that experience I was always afraid that sensations were physical evidence and truth of my deepest fears. For me, this experience made a big difference.
Hey mark, I've been struggling a lot lately but your videos are what I come back to when I can't refocus. Thank you for all the time you have put in to help people. You are one of the reasons I'm not going under, brother.
Great vid Mark! I've spoke with you very briefly throughout the years and am amazed and grateful you took the time to actually get back to me. I would say you are the single most influential person in helping me understand Derealisation and OCD. Keep up great work! I don't think you will ever realise the amount of people you actually help.
Thanks for the kind words, Jay! It's a huge honor to be part of people's journeys with their brains. It really is special. I'm glad you've found these tools helpful on your adventures! 😁🙇♂️
You were recording it yesterday only near tracks and then you edited and posted it today ! Bravo! Also thank you 😁! My brain is so wrong , i am teaching it by not responding to the supplies it sends to me for rescue to avoid experiences i want to have -- trying to decrease the distance between the inability to do something due to supplies and desire of wanting to have it !! Also i realised you're an enabler, you enable us to do the actions we want to grow !! thank you ❤
Adding to my last comment, I think this is essentially what got me past SO-OCD, just realising I was sexually and emotionally attracted to women and it aligned with the life I wanted to lead. ERP language can get you stuck because you seem to think of it as being uncertain meaning you never get to know something, yet countless people around the world know their sexual orientation, what foods they like, whether they want to do certain acts etc, this is where the ERP language of uncertainty can get people stuck. It’s not necessarily total certainty, it’s just knowing something as reality, EG, humans breathe oxygen, the sun provides daylight, if you drop a cotton t shirt in water, it gets wet, there’s just things we know and don’t need to spend any time chasing certainty about it, reality just reveals itself.
Hey could you make a video about quilt feeling about having intrusive thoughts and intrusive thoughts about our partner? Your videos are really helpful!
It can really help to see there aren't different types of intrusive thoughts. They'll be about whatever we judge as bad or whatever brings up feelings we want to control and fix. The topic doesn't matter. This video explores cutting out the compulsions around intrusive thoughts that fuel the struggles: th-cam.com/video/ILEOqPVbRG0/w-d-xo.html
Great video as usual, Mark! :) So in conclusion one's recovery process is completely independent in relation to the frequency and content of the thoughts as well as the feelings that the brain produces. It is all about carrying that stuff (thoughts, feelings) with you while you do the things that you are excited about and that you value?
It helped me tremendously to see that mental health has nothing to do with the presence or absence of thoughts and feelings. But struggling with mental illness has a lot to do with judging thoughts and feelings that are or aren't there.
@@everybodyhasabrain That makes a lot of sense. I remember myself judging thoughts because I assumed that the strange thoughts somehow were a sign of me going crazy and that their presence would make me lose control in the long-run. Luckily I have learned that I can let any thought be present without wishing it away and that I can handle the uncertainty of me losing control. Your videos helped me a lot during this journey. Thanks a lot :)
Howdy Mark. When it comes to recognizing reality without judgment, I'm just realizing the degree to which I have been mistaking my feelings for insights into reality--like if I "feel" that I am going to lose control (for example), that is evidence that I'm on the brink of it, or at least that it's plausible to some degree. "I wouldn't be feeling these intense feelings in response to these thoughts if it wasn't true" is the underlying idea I think. In your experience, how do you teach the brain that that is not the reality of the situation?
I find that's not something to teach the brain. That's US making those connections and following those rules. So we can start breaking them, in so many ways throughout life. The brain will catch on quickly. The resistance initially will be because we've been teaching the brain to connect those things together, so it's just trying to help us save time, like it would with learning a video game or playing a musical instrument by reflex. But we taught it that. Now we can do things differently by showing it we don't connect those things together or follow those old rules we invented
Mark, I have such an intense fear that these images and thoughts will legit get stuck in my head. They make me feel like darkness is closing in on me. When the thoughts aren't there, I feel okay, and that's just more scary cause that means that if they get stuck, that's the end of me.
This is a common compulsion. The idea that thoughts can get "stuck" and end us is the same as any contamination fear--that some bad thing will get stuck and affect how we want to live our lives. It also sounds like there are a bunch of compulsions going on around feelings in general. You can see how that feeling of "okay" just fuels more of the compulsions. It's why I define great mental health as doing the things we value while having any thought or feeling. Because avoiding experiences will often feel good. Doing compulsions will often feel good. But we can then see how it's creating problems in our lives and limiting us, just like how any addiction might feel good at first, but then we need to avoid more and more, and chase more and more compulsions. So the approach I take to mental health is about wanting to have experiences. We can welcome any thought or feeling as we live our lives and expand our lives. It's about building skills, not avoiding experiences, because trying to avoid experiences and chase feeling is what gets us into this mess.
@everybodyhasabrain It's very kind of you to answer so quickly and with such a good response. Thank you Mark. You're videos are my favorite compulsion🤭
No cost! But we don't post the link publicly. Please send me a message through my website: www.markfreeman.ca or a DM on Instagram @markwfreeman and I can give you a link to access it
The thing that I'm struggling with now is not knowing then when there is actual danger or if my brain is just tricking me. I feel like certain people are out to harm me in some way. I have had times when I've been right and people have tried to hurt me without being too obvious. Now my concern is not knowing if it is just my brain or if I should actually be worried. I feel like this illness will find any way to keep its hold over me
Its so true.. I have always noticed whatever my brain says like that this might happen in future.. Be it positive or negative.. Actually nothing happens.. I had also a problem like you earlier .. I was also afraid of people watching me.. Whenever someone is standing , they may or may not be watching me..but My brain immediately starts assuming that they are watching me, they are thinking about me, if i go near they might ask me so so which i dont like.. And then i dont know what to answer.. Then my brain be like okay if they ask you this question.. Then you answer like this.. And then i spent time in framing amswers to unrealistic thoughts.. Later i realised.. When i met the person in real.. They never ask me those questions which i was thinking.. Even i got to know they were not watching me nor thinking about me.. They were all busy in their own life.. So this is just what i faced few months back and realised.. Brain just try to fool us..try to gain our attention by giving thoughts which we fear..99.999 percent things which comes in our head never happens in real..
For me, 76.3% of the things in my head don't happen. But even though nearly a quarter of things in my head do happen, that doesn't mean spending time ruminating and doing compulsions around them produces any useful help for handling them. Even if somebody was thinking about me, that wouldn't require me to choose to make my mental health terrible.
@@everybodyhasabrain absolutely true..❤..i loved that you always take out time to read each and every comment and reply..not many youtubers do that..thanks for being kind....❤
But everytime As i tell myself that "enough of everything i am going to do everything to get rid of this mental illness cz i am reaponsible for everything thats happening to me".instantly a fear pops in "what is the right thing to do,how do i know beforehand that what i am going to do from now on is not gonna skrew up everything what i have achieved.What is the gurantee that iam going to suceed in this for 100th time.How to deal with this uncertanity cz in this it feels very real I need to know the right method on how to correctly responding and changing behaviour towards the brain .kindly tell me this plz....
Yes, so I always encourage people to make the work about things you want to grow and build, not cleaning away something you dislike. Instead of what you want to get rid of, you can give your time and energy to creating things you want to see in life :) Enjoy!
Hey Mark, how did you resolve both compulsions in this example out of interest? I think I've had the issue in the past where I recognise a belief is plain wrong (or at least I'm as sure as I can be) but then my brain would say 'ahh you're just reassuring yourself' and almost kind of flip between the two compulsions. My approach for cutting that so far has just been kind of accepting both things, both that the compulsion doesn't make sense and that its also totally real etc, and then trying not to 'clean' it up anymore after that. It kind of works for me so far, just wondered if you had any different approaches.
@@Deathhead68 one of the sticking points for me too, and I’d blame ERP language to this to some degree as were told we have to be uncertain, which in reality, isn’t true entirely. I’m not uncertain that I like women, I just like women, in the same way that I’m certain I like mint choc chip ice cream, they’re just things I know, it’s why I’m happily married and eat mint choc chip whenever I get an ice cream! So in essence, there’s no need to chase certainty, I don’t check that it’s daytime if the sun is in the sky, I just know in the UK when the sun is up, it’s day time. For me, it’s essentially just learning to one, ignore the what if, if my brain said, what if you don’t like Ice cream, I’d just dismiss that, as I know I do, and 2, when OCD comes up with what if, in that moment, if I have no tangible reason to buy in to the doubt other than something created in my imaginative brain, then it doesn’t exist in reality and therefore is dismissed. Some days this works well, others, OCD throws tantrums, the key is to essentially live as though your fears are false and not congruent with reality, yes technically anything is possible, but we don’t waste time on imagined possibilities. Like I wouldn’t waste time on me somehow just being scooped up by a flock of pigeons and hauled away somewhere, technically if there were a lot of pigeons, it’s possible, but is it something you’d ever expect to occur, absolutely not!
This is why I used to get so upset when people would say things like "just trust your gut" when making decisions. If I trusted my gut and my brain, I wouldn't do basically ANY of the things I do on a daily basis. My brain is wrong like all the time.
I really have to say that Mark's approach to OCD-recovery is the best path. Accept that there is no certainty, and live with it! What I also appreciate about him, that he is very ethical about mental health recovery
🙇♂️
At this point I honestly think that we have to learn to simply live life rather than constantly checking the brain stuff. Our brain is so complicated and we will never keep everything under "control" , even watching too many videos (I think Mark is a legend btw) is a compulsion that could generate fear and checking even if it is a compulsion itself. There are a ton of things that could be said about mental health but we have to accept the powerful and complicated mind the human has and keep on living the life we want. I strongly believe that recovery is not based on getting rid of something, but leaving the uncertainties in the dark and enjoying the light.
That sounds like an excellent plan!
the relief at finding someone who can put some of this intense, often paradoxical internal stuff into words is unreal. thanks so much
Thanks! I'm glad you're finding the videos useful!
Can I understand it like this? People (especially sufferers) should rely less on their logical thinking (brain) because the brain makes mistakes too often and that they should learn not to check/judge feelings and sensations, to live with uncertainty to get a "deeper knowing"? When I learned through ERP that I didn't get physical sensations because I wasn't checking for them (mentally or physically) and dealing with uncertainty, I knew that I had previously partly created them by myself. Before that experience I was always afraid that sensations were physical evidence and truth of my deepest fears. For me, this experience made a big difference.
It's great you recognized how we can create those physical sensations we end up doing even more compulsions around!
When you popped into the corner of the camera and said “cause your brains wrong” 😂 comedic timing 10/10
Brains! 🧠🧠🧠!
Hey mark, I've been struggling a lot lately but your videos are what I come back to when I can't refocus. Thank you for all the time you have put in to help people. You are one of the reasons I'm not going under, brother.
I'm glad these have been supports as you're navigating the wilderness :)
Great vid Mark! I've spoke with you very briefly throughout the years and am amazed and grateful you took the time to actually get back to me. I would say you are the single most influential person in helping me understand Derealisation and OCD. Keep up great work! I don't think you will ever realise the amount of people you actually help.
Thanks for the kind words, Jay! It's a huge honor to be part of people's journeys with their brains. It really is special. I'm glad you've found these tools helpful on your adventures! 😁🙇♂️
You were recording it yesterday only near tracks and then you edited and posted it today ! Bravo! Also thank you 😁! My brain is so wrong , i am teaching it by not responding to the supplies it sends to me for rescue to avoid experiences i want to have -- trying to decrease the distance between the inability to do something due to supplies and desire of wanting to have it !! Also i realised you're an enabler, you enable us to do the actions we want to grow !! thank you ❤
Enjoy doing the actions!
i needed this more than you can imagine thank you
You're welcome!
Adding to my last comment, I think this is essentially what got me past SO-OCD, just realising I was sexually and emotionally attracted to women and it aligned with the life I wanted to lead.
ERP language can get you stuck because you seem to think of it as being uncertain meaning you never get to know something, yet countless people around the world know their sexual orientation, what foods they like, whether they want to do certain acts etc, this is where the ERP language of uncertainty can get people stuck.
It’s not necessarily total certainty, it’s just knowing something as reality, EG, humans breathe oxygen, the sun provides daylight, if you drop a cotton t shirt in water, it gets wet, there’s just things we know and don’t need to spend any time chasing certainty about it, reality just reveals itself.
You are awesome. You help me so much from a distance - you are great at expression! Great job
Thank you! 😁🙌
This series is fantastic! Thanks for all your work!
Thanks for watching the series!
Mark uploading a new vid instantly cheers me up ❤
😁🙇♂️
Wow ! Thank you! Deep deep insights . An eye opener really .
Enjoy exploring it in practice!
Thank you. I need to watch you more.👍
:) Please enjoy!
Thank you for this video - it's very helpful 🙂
You're welcome!
Maybe the brain is more interested in protecting than in generating reality based content😅
Absolutely! It's so good at protecting!
Hey could you make a video about quilt feeling about having intrusive thoughts and intrusive thoughts about our partner? Your videos are really helpful!
It can really help to see there aren't different types of intrusive thoughts. They'll be about whatever we judge as bad or whatever brings up feelings we want to control and fix. The topic doesn't matter. This video explores cutting out the compulsions around intrusive thoughts that fuel the struggles: th-cam.com/video/ILEOqPVbRG0/w-d-xo.html
@Mark Freeman Thank you! I will check it. Only intrusive thoughts I ever had are about my boyfriend, sadly 🤣
Excellent video!!! Seriously so much great information! I wish everyone found your content! The world would be a much more mentally fit place 😅😅😅
Thanks, Jordan! 😁🙌
Great video as usual, Mark! :)
So in conclusion one's recovery process is completely independent in relation to the frequency and content of the thoughts as well as the feelings that the brain produces. It is all about carrying that stuff (thoughts, feelings) with you while you do the things that you are excited about and that you value?
It helped me tremendously to see that mental health has nothing to do with the presence or absence of thoughts and feelings. But struggling with mental illness has a lot to do with judging thoughts and feelings that are or aren't there.
@@everybodyhasabrain That makes a lot of sense. I remember myself judging thoughts because I assumed that the strange thoughts somehow were a sign of me going crazy and that their presence would make me lose control in the long-run.
Luckily I have learned that I can let any thought be present without wishing it away and that I can handle the uncertainty of me losing control. Your videos helped me a lot during this journey. Thanks a lot :)
@@Fabio-m7e Congratulations on that awareness and skill!
Howdy Mark.
When it comes to recognizing reality without judgment, I'm just realizing the degree to which I have been mistaking my feelings for insights into reality--like if I "feel" that I am going to lose control (for example), that is evidence that I'm on the brink of it, or at least that it's plausible to some degree. "I wouldn't be feeling these intense feelings in response to these thoughts if it wasn't true" is the underlying idea I think. In your experience, how do you teach the brain that that is not the reality of the situation?
I find that's not something to teach the brain. That's US making those connections and following those rules. So we can start breaking them, in so many ways throughout life. The brain will catch on quickly. The resistance initially will be because we've been teaching the brain to connect those things together, so it's just trying to help us save time, like it would with learning a video game or playing a musical instrument by reflex. But we taught it that. Now we can do things differently by showing it we don't connect those things together or follow those old rules we invented
I think the answer i was trying to find, is right in this video. Thankyou!!
The answer is always where we last left it!
It would be awesome
If you could elaborate on the concept of relearning emotions and feelings . I have allot of trouble in this area . Thanks
Mark, I have such an intense fear that these images and thoughts will legit get stuck in my head. They make me feel like darkness is closing in on me. When the thoughts aren't there, I feel okay, and that's just more scary cause that means that if they get stuck, that's the end of me.
This is a common compulsion. The idea that thoughts can get "stuck" and end us is the same as any contamination fear--that some bad thing will get stuck and affect how we want to live our lives. It also sounds like there are a bunch of compulsions going on around feelings in general. You can see how that feeling of "okay" just fuels more of the compulsions. It's why I define great mental health as doing the things we value while having any thought or feeling. Because avoiding experiences will often feel good. Doing compulsions will often feel good. But we can then see how it's creating problems in our lives and limiting us, just like how any addiction might feel good at first, but then we need to avoid more and more, and chase more and more compulsions. So the approach I take to mental health is about wanting to have experiences. We can welcome any thought or feeling as we live our lives and expand our lives. It's about building skills, not avoiding experiences, because trying to avoid experiences and chase feeling is what gets us into this mess.
@everybodyhasabrain It's very kind of you to answer so quickly and with such a good response. Thank you Mark. You're videos are my favorite compulsion🤭
I heard you talk on a diff video that there’s a discord Does it cost to be on your discord or is there a link Thank you
No cost! But we don't post the link publicly. Please send me a message through my website: www.markfreeman.ca or a DM on Instagram @markwfreeman and I can give you a link to access it
The thing that I'm struggling with now is not knowing then when there is actual danger or if my brain is just tricking me. I feel like certain people are out to harm me in some way. I have had times when I've been right and people have tried to hurt me without being too obvious. Now my concern is not knowing if it is just my brain or if I should actually be worried. I feel like this illness will find any way to keep its hold over me
Did you see the example I used in this video is about paranoia and cutting out compulsions around it?
Can BFRB be a compulsion? I struggle with skin picking and strangely it's more difficult for me to resist to it rather than avoid mental compulsion
Yes, it's a very common compulsion.
@@everybodyhasabrain it is strange because I do it usually when I don't have obsession (or maybe I have them but i don't recognize em lol)
Why would that be strange?
@@everybodyhasabrain yeah you made me think that anyway discomfort is present so it makes sense
Its so true.. I have always noticed whatever my brain says like that this might happen in future.. Be it positive or negative.. Actually nothing happens..
I had also a problem like you earlier .. I was also afraid of people watching me.. Whenever someone is standing , they may or may not be watching me..but My brain immediately starts assuming that they are watching me, they are thinking about me, if i go near they might ask me so so which i dont like.. And then i dont know what to answer.. Then my brain be like okay if they ask you this question.. Then you answer like this.. And then i spent time in framing amswers to unrealistic thoughts..
Later i realised.. When i met the person in real.. They never ask me those questions which i was thinking.. Even i got to know they were not watching me nor thinking about me.. They were all busy in their own life..
So this is just what i faced few months back and realised.. Brain just try to fool us..try to gain our attention by giving thoughts which we fear..99.999 percent things which comes in our head never happens in real..
For me, 76.3% of the things in my head don't happen. But even though nearly a quarter of things in my head do happen, that doesn't mean spending time ruminating and doing compulsions around them produces any useful help for handling them. Even if somebody was thinking about me, that wouldn't require me to choose to make my mental health terrible.
@@everybodyhasabrain absolutely true..❤..i loved that you always take out time to read each and every comment and reply..not many youtubers do that..thanks for being kind....❤
But everytime As i tell myself that "enough of everything i am going to do everything to get rid of this mental illness cz i am reaponsible for everything thats happening to me".instantly a fear pops in "what is the right thing to do,how do i know beforehand that what i am going to do from now on is not gonna skrew up everything what i have achieved.What is the gurantee that iam going to suceed in this for 100th time.How to deal with this uncertanity cz in this it feels very real
I need to know the right method on how to correctly responding and changing behaviour towards the brain
.kindly tell me this plz....
Yes, so I always encourage people to make the work about things you want to grow and build, not cleaning away something you dislike. Instead of what you want to get rid of, you can give your time and energy to creating things you want to see in life :) Enjoy!
@@everybodyhasabrain okay I am working on that.Thanks for your reply sir..❤️
Hey Mark, how did you resolve both compulsions in this example out of interest? I think I've had the issue in the past where I recognise a belief is plain wrong (or at least I'm as sure as I can be) but then my brain would say 'ahh you're just reassuring yourself' and almost kind of flip between the two compulsions. My approach for cutting that so far has just been kind of accepting both things, both that the compulsion doesn't make sense and that its also totally real etc, and then trying not to 'clean' it up anymore after that. It kind of works for me so far, just wondered if you had any different approaches.
Great video too btw. Genuinely love hearing about these travels. I just got back from China and Taiwan myself and it was incredible.
@@Deathhead68 one of the sticking points for me too, and I’d blame ERP language to this to some degree as were told we have to be uncertain, which in reality, isn’t true entirely.
I’m not uncertain that I like women, I just like women, in the same way that I’m certain I like mint choc chip ice cream, they’re just things I know, it’s why I’m happily married and eat mint choc chip whenever I get an ice cream!
So in essence, there’s no need to chase certainty, I don’t check that it’s daytime if the sun is in the sky, I just know in the UK when the sun is up, it’s day time.
For me, it’s essentially just learning to one, ignore the what if, if my brain said, what if you don’t like Ice cream, I’d just dismiss that, as I know I do, and 2, when OCD comes up with what if, in that moment, if I have no tangible reason to buy in to the doubt other than something created in my imaginative brain, then it doesn’t exist in reality and therefore is dismissed.
Some days this works well, others, OCD throws tantrums, the key is to essentially live as though your fears are false and not congruent with reality, yes technically anything is possible, but we don’t waste time on imagined possibilities. Like I wouldn’t waste time on me somehow just being scooped up by a flock of pigeons and hauled away somewhere, technically if there were a lot of pigeons, it’s possible, but is it something you’d ever expect to occur, absolutely not!
This is why I used to get so upset when people would say things like "just trust your gut" when making decisions. If I trusted my gut and my brain, I wouldn't do basically ANY of the things I do on a daily basis. My brain is wrong like all the time.
For sure! I would not trust that gut anywhere. My gut was a huge fan of compulsions and disasters!
My brain is reactive!
That's the standard version!