Please write “a bit more on OCD” was a request from a Daily Reminders subscriber that I took to heart and have been researching on their behalf. My answer started a couple of days ago, with a Part 1 to this topic (this piece is Part 2).
So if you're reading this because of the post's title, then I'd say it's essential that you familiarise yourself with ‘Not writing about conditions’ first (it's a 4 min read), because it sets the entire context for this second part.
I'll wait…
Giles P Croft
Part 1 of this 2-Part series on OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
You're back! 👋🏻
Now, I'm going to go ahead and assume that if you've got an interest in this topic, you don't need to learn any more details about the condition, so really I'm signposting you to helpful resources 💝
Resource #1
I ended that last piece by saying, I was going to look at a real life example of someone who ‘overcame’ OCD when they were introduced to the Innate Health/3 Principles understanding.
That someone, and their story, has come from Chana Studley's fantastic, highly-recommended book Beyond Diagnosis: A Paradigm Shift from Pathology to Innate Health (the subtitle for which could be the subtitle for the Daily Reminders themselves, eh)? #AllSayingTheSameThing
After Part One of the book, where Chana outlines the Innate Health understanding in relation to mental health diagnoses, Part Two explores stories from people who'd been given various diagnostic labels, and what happened to their lives (and their experience of their diagnosis) when pointed in this direction.
One of the chapters is from Samantha, who details all of her OCD symptoms—checking, touching, organising; horrible intrusive thoughts; being “95% preoccupied … and 5% present”—and all of the things she tried over the years, for the condition: therapy, CBT, medication… none of which really had any lasting effect.
The post-insights version
Then she went on a 3 Principles/Innate Health-related course, and had these sorts of things to say:
“This opened a door to seeing my mental health in a way I had never imagined … my mind quieted down for the first time ever.”
(“Never imagined” = Unknown unknowns, yeah?) And this ‘quieting down’ very much chimes with the first time this understanding really landed for me. The contrast between the noise in my head that I had completely taken for granted, and the silence that descended, when the thought/feeling connection clicked for me… it was like night and day. Very strange, initially, truth be told!
Insights are always unique to us, and Samantha describes hers as seeing deeply that:
“All minds are machines and churn out stories based on long-held beliefs to protect us … it was fleeting and had nothing to do with me.”
I actually listened to a podcast discussion between Samantha and Dr Amy Johnson (whose course she attended) and the most interesting part of that for me relates to my previous post—that looking at everything from the perspective of the symptoms (which is what regular therapies often do) was not helpful—when she said:
“Everything had always been [looked at] through this OCD lens … ‘I've got this, … how do I get rid of it, I want to be back the way I was’, and that was the big joke in the end; that was another huge insight I had: I was always wanting to get back to the way I was—‘Life was great when I was 18, right, before I had this episode?!’—and it was just this false, false hope that there's something to get back to and, God, that was just about the biggest relief I could ever feel when I saw that there's nothing to get back to! I didn't go anywhere! I've always been here! … It was just covered up. Nothing changed, I just see it differently – that's it.”
She concludes in the same way that most other 3 Principles stories with happy endings conclude:
“When I could see this on a deeper level, the noise in my head had no reason to be so loud. It couldn't get my attention any more. And I found myself able to spend more time in the present moment. I found my peace with it all.”
💗
Resource #2
I hope that's whet your appetite, because your second resource—a podcast episode between Nicola Bird and Damian Mark Smyth—is a real doozy.
Damian had crippling OCD symptoms that changed completely, after one weekend's course! (That's the power of insight, folks.)
I'm going to leave it here for you, and just bullet point some of my favourite highlights, below:
OMG I love this episode!! Highlights for me were:
- His description of OCD from the inside of it all
- How this human-made, diagnostic label of a ‘dis-order’ wasn't actually a thing
- How he binged a whole load of Syd Banks materials, looking for answers, and got precisely nowhere
- The way it was only when he was a bit hungover and not even really capable of trying to ‘get it’ intellectually that something really landed (you'll have to listen in, to hear the big insight that changed everything for him)
- How he didn't have to do anything for the OCD symptoms to go away – they just ‘didn't make sense’ any more
- Finally, his assertion—like mine, in the previous post—that the symptoms themselves are never the problem.
Conclusion
So there we go – just a ‘bit more’ on OCD (two whole posts!) that nonetheless will quite possibly come as a bit of a disappointment to the seeking Reader Ego Construct 📦 … as we point away from these patterns of behaviour, not deeper into them.
Both Samantha and Damian found their way through it all, not by trying harder; not by doing more research or reading more about the condition, but essentially by doing less:
- Samantha by stopping the search for ‘something to get back to’
- Damian when he was a bit hungover and frankly incapable of intellectually wrestling any sense out of it!
😂
There's a message in there somewhere.
I'll leave you to find it for yourself… but don't try too hard, eh?
😘
Giles
p.s. If you recognise yourself in either of these stories and you're curious (or even a teeny bit excited) at the possibility of change, then get in touch. Working 1:1, with people, to get through these things is what I do – what I love to do! Not teaching techniques, raking over the past or giving you more to do… just the kind of conversation that points in a more useful direction. You know, upstream 🌊😮☺️
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Giles P Croft