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
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