What Do We Need For Recovery From Our OCD?

 (Information for this essay comes from the following source: the website ocduk.org/what-causes-ocd)

 

What do we really need for recovery from our OCD?  We don’t know the exact causes. We may ask 10 - 15 doctors; we may get just as many different answers.  There are many prevailing theories.

We don’t know why some treatments work for some and not for others.

It is believed that OCD is the result of the combination of the following factors:

1. neurobiological

2. genetic

3. behavioral

4. cognitive

5. environment

 

Even though there are certain parts of the brain are different in OCD sufferers than non OCD sufferers, it is unknown how these differences relate to the precise mechanisms of OCD.

 

An imbalance in the neurotransmitter or brain chemical serotonin could be to blame. Medications known as Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are used to treat OCD. But it is not known why these meds help some people.

 

Brain imaging has shown differences between the brains of people with OCD and those without OCD. But the scientific community is split whether what they have found is a cause or a result of having this disorder.

 

We just don’t know what the causes are or why certain treatments work for some and not for others.  

 

 

 

But there are things that we do know. I’m speaking for the Greater Toronto (Canada) Area and if other areas are similar, then, we have a long way to go.

 

There is a lack of genuine community support for OCD sufferers. As well as their families and friends. They need help as well.

 

Peer support groups can only do so much. They are places for members to share their pains, their frustrations, gather information.  But nothing more.

 

They have no right offering Cognitive Behaviour Therapy ( CBT) for liability reasons.

 

 CBT is hard to come by. In many cases, it is not free and can be costly. The wait lists are lengthy.

 

With apologies for sounding self righteous, in many community mental health agencies, we are often grouped with others who have more severe mental illnesses. Many are marginalized making OCD sufferers uncomfortable. Many of our OCD members have expressed this concern.

 

We may share commonalities with those who suffer from other mental illnesses but we do have differences that others do not understand.  And, I’m sure, we don’t understand them.

 

We need to address not only the OCD but the entire needs of the patients. Treat the persons with the illness, not just his illness.

 

Support should be available 365 days a year, Not just from 9 - 5 Monday – Friday. Our OCD does not take holidays or weekends off.

 

We need more people who understand, empathize with our sufferings. Those with caring hearts. Something that medications cannot offer.  

 

We need employment opportunities if we are to get back on our feet. We have a high unemployment rate. We need to create work environments that are welcoming, understanding.

 

Overcoming our OCD, getting out into the work force is like a cast coming off a broken leg. Recovery is slow, often terrifying. Like a person fearful about reinjuring a healed leg that was once broken, relapses are always fearfully lingering on the backs of our minds.

 

If none of these are true, why, then, does the World Health Organization, according to the website “ocduk.org”, rate OCD as one of the most disabling illnesses of any kind in terms of lost earnings and diminished quality of life? Why do so many OCD sufferers think about suicide?

 

We have a long way to go!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love, Forgive, Be Kind....Anyway

 In our journey through life, we try to be the best person we can be. We try to be kind, helpful and generous. Only to have people walk all over us.

 

Rabbi Harold Kushner is fond of saying “just because you are a vegetarian, doesn’t mean the bull won`t attack.”

 

The question is with all the unfairness, the injustices in life, why even bother to love and to forgive? Why even bother to be kind?

 

There are words of wisdom that say that we should love and forgive anyway. Here are the words of Mother Teresa:

 

People are sometimes unreasonable and self centred.

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motive.

Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you

Be honest anyway

If you find happiness

People may be jealous

Be happy anyway

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have

And may never be enough

Give the best anyway

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God

It never was between you and them anyway.

 

And a quote on a refrigerator magnet reads: “Dance as if no one was watching; love as if you`d never been hurt.”

 

So the question needs to be asked why even bother loving, forgiving, being kind? Everything seems so futile.

 

 

 

I think before we criticize others for their negative behaviour, we should look within ourselves. We should take a look in our own hearts to see who we have offended and violated.

 

I learned a long time ago at a 12 step program, when we point our index fingers accusing someone of a fault, three fingers are pointing back at us.

 

Our weapon is our silence, our apathy. We allow peoples’ pains and anguish to continue by our silence.

 

We need to forgive. Former president of the University Of Notre Dame, The Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh summed it up nicely: “Why should we be forgiving and merciful without measure? Maybe the simplest answer is that we are all in such need of mercy and forgiveness that we can ill afford not to be merciful and forgiving of others.”

 

And, of course, the words of Jesus Christ when He had asked a crowd who was about to stone a woman for having committed  adultery: “he who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7)

 

If we were to look at those who have hurt us, their lives are not to be admired. We need to walk in the shoes of those that have violated us. Maybe we would not be so hard on those that have hurt us.

 

Wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

 

Those who have hate and do harm, I believe, must have more hatred for themselves. Those people are incapable of loving and are more disabled.

 

And our first reaction is to get even, demand vengeance. But in the words of Buddha:  “Hatred does not cease by hatred. But only by love; this is the eternal rule.”

 

But if we are to reach out to the hurting, we have to find the right way to our enemy’s heart. Wrote clergyman Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887): “you never know until you try to reach them how accessible men are but you must approach each man by the right door.”

 

I think that everyone is accessible. We just have to find the right way.

 

We have a 50% chance of being welcomed. Those aren’t bad odds. We don’t know how far our compassion will go.

 

In a society of rugged individualism, there are more hurting wounds. We need to love, forgive, be kind more than ever.

 

I think if we refuse, the only person we will end up hugging is our self.

 

We have a duty to love. In the words of the late Dr. Leo Buscaglia: “man has no choice but to love. For when he does not, he finds his alternatives lie in loneliness, destruction and despair.”

 

 

 

                 

 

 

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

A Few Things That I Have Learned Over the Years

I have been diagnosed with OCD since 1972 (though I had symptoms much earlier). I have learned a lot. Here are a few things that I have learned that have helped me.

 

But I never said that it was easy!!

 

- Ken Munro

 

 

• In the recovery process, there will be setbacks. New fears will crop up. Old fears can come back to haunt us. We must constantly face these old fears as well as the new ones.

 

• The road to recovery is an individual thing. What works for one sufferer doesn’t necessarily work for another. One man’s medicine is another man’s poison.
   
  And recovery from some treatments will depend on how far the person has progressed in recovery.

 

• In letting go/confronting our fears, there is often a sense of vulnerability. It can be scary. There will be days when we think that we are falling without a safety net.
   
• Fears must be confronted.

 

First, even though it may bring temporary relief, giving in to our compulsions DOES makes matters WORSE. 

 

By giving in, we are keeping the original fear alive and we become prone to new fears.

 

It’s like a scratch. The more we scratch, the sorer the wound becomes.

 

Secondly, my experience has been that if I am confronting even one difficult OCD situation, other OCD fears will act up. We need to confront all fears. We must constantly be letting go of our fears.

 

Thirdly, as the old saying goes:”what goes around comes around.”

 

I had a fear about a broken light bulb back in 1988. I was worried about a piece of glass from this light bulb. For three weeks, I checked everywhere, throwing out many things.

 

A few years later, I was working at factory that made glass products. In the factory’s backyard, there was a “sea” of broken glass.

 

Fears not faced can come back to haunt us.

 

• In confronting our fears, there is an element of faith. We all have that faith. Giving in to our compulsions is wrong. Why are we, then, caught between “a rock and a hard place” when we are confronted by a fear?

 

• Faith is like a muscle. The more we use it, the stronger it grows. Victory over one fear gives us confidence and strengthens our faith in confronting and beating the next fear!

 

• When it comes to our fears, we image what it might be (our OCD) versus what it really is (reality). We must cling to the latter.

 

• When I am confronted by a fear, I think about what is going on inside my brain. And how recovery lies in my own hands.

 

According to the book “The Brain That Changes Itself” by Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Norman Doige, when I have an OCD attack, 3 parts of the brain are involved:

 

            (1) the orbital frontal cortex
            (2) the cingular gyrus and
            (3) the caudate nucleus.

 

The initial attack starts in the “cortex” which sends a signal to the “cingular gyrus” which triggers the dreadful anxiety causing physical sensations we associate with dread.

 

Signals are sent to the “caudate nucleus” allowing our thoughts to flow from one to the next. Except in cases of OCD where the “caudate” becomes extremely “sticky”. It cannot process information. Probably one of the reasons we don’t respond to logic and reasoning when it comes to our fears.

 

By giving in to our compulsions, we reinforce the wiring in our brains and, thereby, reinforce the fears even though they are based on our imagination.

 

But because the brain is plastic, the brain can heal itself if we “let go” of our fears. New circuits grow. Old circuits die.

 

• When we are confronted with an OCD attack, we are being bluffed by a sensation that lies to us. If we give in to our compulsions, we will get caught up in a vicious cycle of our compulsions.  This is one of the principles from “Recovery Inc.” founded by Dr. Abraham Low.
   
• Find a good friend to lean on. For comfort. Support. For wisdom. For empathy. Someone who is understanding. There’s nothing shameful in asking for help. We all need help. Even a broken leg needs a crutch.

 

Sharing pain lessens the burden.

 

• When we confront our fears, there will be, at times, terror. But, eventually, this will subside. We are left with doubt and uncertainty. We can learn to live with this doubt and uncertainty. The late John Finley said that: “maturity of mind is the capacity to endure uncertainty.”

 

• We can find peace of mind even with unresolved problems. This is one of the promises from Obsessive Compulsive Anonymous. (OCA)

 

 

To Love

(Material for this essay comes from the following books: “Love” and “Personhood” both by Dr. Leo F. Buscaglia and “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough” by Rabbi Harold Kushner.)

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(Writer’s note: I have noticed, over the years, that even though we have OCD, we have other psychological ills as well.

If we could fix the OCD, many of us would remain sick. We need to address the entire needs of patients, not just the OCD.

Many of us lack, for example, self worth and/or have low self esteem.

Here’s an essay that I had published on the internet where I am a volunteer contributor. It’s about loving oneself. The address, by the way, is personal-development.com/ken.

                                                                                                                 – Ken Munro)

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

To Love…….So, what do we mean “to love.”

Our first responsibility “to love” is to love ourselves. To discover who we are, our talents, our weaknesses. Our true being. It is a journey that never ends and is always under construction. What we are today, we necessarily may not be tomorrow. We are being molded through our pains, trials and crosses to bear.

But to love oneself can be misleading. It’s more like accepting oneself. Something that many people have troubling doing.

Much if it is due to our upbringing - i.e. family, friends, our environment, etc. We become by what we live by and learn from. If one is constantly living in an environment where belittling is the norm, it's hard maintaining confidence and self worth, let alone establishing these traits.

And we are not alone.

According to psychologist Dr. Pauline Clance in her book "The Imposter Phenomenon, When Success Makes You Feel Like A Fake," suggests that 70 percent of successful people suffer from the Imposter Phenomenon - a constant worry that, although admired and respected, they will, some day, be "found out." They feel that they are failures masquerading as successes.

Dr. Clance believes that more than half the population suffers from it - at least, from time to time. Boiled down in its simplest form, it says "I don't like myself. I'm not what I should be - and I doubt if I ever will be."

And according to her mail, the late columnist Ann Landers stated there were millions of affluent "failures" and an equal number of "successes" who have nothing in the bank.

Then, how do we learn to accept ourselves?

We must realize that most people do not have it together. Canadian religion author Tom Harpur claims that we are all weak and the fact by being human we are all vulnerable. And he suggests that the way in which we conquer our weaknesses is to confront them directly. This is the first step in spiritual and moral growth.

We sometimes feel that we don’t measure up to God’s standards. But religion should liberate us. It’s man’s distortion of faith that has hurt us.

In Judaism, a person is created in the image of God. Therefore, man is not sinful in nature but good. And religion does not demand of us to be perfect. It allows us to be human. In the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 7:15 - 17, we read that we should be neither too good nor wicked.

And according to the Talmud, a book of wisdom which is part of the Jewish faith states: “At Judgment Day, every man will have to give account for everything which he might have enjoyed and did not.” The problem arises when these good things are taken to extreme, becoming addictive. But that is our fault, not God’s.

Even in the Christian faith, we are accepted. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. (Romans 8: 38 – 39)

 

Our second responsibility “to love” is to love all men. Dr. Leo Buscaglia in his book “Love” writes: “man shall love others to the extent he loves himself.

And we cannot love others unless we have faith. Writes Erich Fromm:  “Love is an act of faith and whoever is of little faith, is also of little love.”

Dr. Buscaglia adds: “there are those who believe anything less than love of all men is not love at all. They argue that who does not love all men sincerely cannot love even a single person deeply since all men are one.”

To love someone, we must have the ultimate concern for that person addressing his needs, his hurts. It goes beyond just mere “lip” service of speaking words of encouragement. To love someone means to get actively involved in the person’s welfare. We help him become the person that he was meant to be by humbling ourselves and being of service. Taoism interpretation of the Golden Rule sums it up best: “Treat your neighbor’s loss as your loss and your neighbor’s gain as your gain.”

Sadly, to love is rarely practiced and so desperately needed.

We can start by trying to have a better understanding of one’s suffering, empathizing with his pain, walking in his shoes. Just by listening with a sympathetic ear and a compassionate heart can have a great healing effect.

If we have ministered to his needs and are the only ones benefitting, we have failed. We probably have done more harm than help him.

And “to love” is difficult. At the heart of loving is vulnerability. We have to risk. We have to take a chance. It means showing our vulnerable side. It also opens us to criticism. And that can be scary. People may take advantage of us. It means stepping out of our “comfort zone.” But this can be done without people walking all over us – by not giving up our self respect.

And what we call loving by some is often more about control. It is often based on fear such as the religious zealots who want to control us with their value systems. Or those who want to push their views down our throats by playing “rescuer.” They give us what they think we need, because it has worked for them, not what we actually need. One man’s medicine is another man’s poison.

As Thomas Merton wrote:”the beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

We have a duty to love. Dr. Leo Buscaglia writes: “man has no choice but to love. For when he does not, he finds his alternatives lie in loneliness, destruction and despair.”

So many tragedies are caused by peoples’ insecurities, fears, low self esteem, loneliness, etc. I’m amazed how many of these tragedies that could have been avoided if someone had reached out and practiced genuine love.

A church marquee sums it up: Love fails only when we fail to love.