Getting Our Minds (And Our Hearts) Onto Other things

 It is one of the most difficult things to do. And I have been advised by many to do it. Family, friends. Yes, even, fellow OCD sufferers.

Getting our minds onto something else when we have an OCD attack. Something more positive, more constructive.

And we know as OCD sufferers that is extremely difficult. For some, maybe even impossible.

Psychiatrist Dr. Jeffery Swartz acknowledges this important principle. It’s his step #3 in his book “Brainlock. ” Step 1& 2 acknowledge that when our OCD is acting up, it’s not an attack of our fears but our OCD.

We need to try to get our minds onto other things. And if we can only for a short while, we have made progress. It’s been said that ground work for new brain circuitry starts to grow, allowing us to overcome our OCD.

If we can find and develop some passion, some interest that can divert our attention away from our OCD, we have a better chance in conquering our OCD.

 

A poem that helps me get my mind off of my OCD often is by the late poet Emily Dickinson:

If I can stop one heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain.

If I can ease one life the aching

Or cool one pain

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again

I shall not live in vain.              

 

 

Here are few more quotes that hopefully will inspire sufferers to get their minds off their OCD, even if it is just for a short time.

And I never said that it was easy. 

Remember! We are being bluffed by sensations that lie to us.

 

 

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.

– Charles Dickens

 

 

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have made some difference that you have lived and lived well.

 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lots of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

– Robert F. Kennedy

 

If you have no will to change it, you have no right to criticize it. 

- Author unknown

 

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

– Horace Mann

 

 

There is a story where a man was walking along a beach, throwing starfishes back into the water. The tide was going back out leaving starfishes along the beach.

A second man had come along wondering what the first man was doing.

“If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die” said the first man.

The second man said that there were miles of beaches with starfishes all along. You cannot make a difference.

The first man said, after throwing another starfish into the water, “It made a difference for that one!”

– Loren Eiseley

(This is a shorter version of what the credited author actually wrote)

 

 

Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren’t any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.

– R. Buckminster Fuller

 

Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried: ``Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them? God said: ``Ì did do something, I made you.”

 - Author unknown

 

The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to make things better.

- Robert F. Kennedy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Risking

If we are going to conquer/recover from our OCD, we must step out of our “comfort zone” and “take a chance.”

We must risk. Risking is part of the recovery plan. There is an element of vulnerability in risking.

We want security in confronting our fears. But it has been said that security is myth.

Helen Keller once said that “security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Remember: we are being bluffed my sensations that lie to us.

A poem that I have saved in my scrapbook from an Ann Landers column years ago shows us the problem of risking. Even though it applies to life, it can apply to facing our fears. It’s called “The Dilemma.”

(The Ann Landers column had this poem’s author listed as unknown. However, I used the poem in a previous essay at another website and someone e-mailed me with the author’s name. I have since I deleted that e-mail. If someone knows who the author is, please e-mail me.) 

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental

To reach out for another is to risk involvement

To expose feelings is to risk rejection

To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule

To love is to risk not being loved in return

To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow but he cannot learn, feel change, grow or love. Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave. He has forfeited his freedom. Only a person who takes risk is free.

Here are other quotes that address risking and taking a chance by confronting our fears.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. 

– Marie Curie

To conquer fear is the being of wisdom

– Bertrand Russell

Fear cannot take what you do not give it.

– Christopher Coan

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

– Joseph Campbell

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.

 – Rosa Parks

You are the only one giving fear a leg to stand on.

– Dodinsky

He who fears something gives it power over him.

– Moorish proverb

Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death.

– Author unknown

Fear insults courage.

– Terri Guillemets

Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile...initially scared me to death.

                                                                                                            – Betty Bender

Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.

– Judy Blume

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

– Dale Carnegie

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

                                                                                                – Eleanor Roosevelt

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid but he who conquers that fear.

                                                                                                                – Nelson Mandela

The key to change....is to let go of fear.

– Roseanne Cash

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret to life.

                                                                                            – Ralph Waldo Emerson