Tag Archives: Depression

Inaction

MOVE……..unless you are dead.  Otherwise, no excuse.  You don’t have to wait until you are in a good mood before you move.  You don’t have to feel good about moving before you move.  You don’t even have to know what you are gonna do before you move to move.  All you have to do is move.  Yes, even when you are angry, vulnerable, weak, lost, confused, down, or 100% non motivated.  None of those things are required to move.  To move you only have to what?  And then see what goes from there.

Thinking

When you are thinking ask yourself if it is serving you.  If it isn’t consider pure action instead in the absence of intentional thought.  Try not thinking and only doing the very next thing there is to do only.  Work at it.  There is nothing wrong with thinking but it sure would be nice to not have to.  Try more unabated action instead.

Presence

Fall in love with no resistance to what is and watch what happens.  This isn’t to imply that you never do anything about it.

Action

If Laziness did not exist,

what would I do today?

Medication As A Crutch?

I used to think if I took medicine for my obsessions, compulsions, and depression that I was weak or cheating. “I should be enough of a man to handle my problems and not need medicine,” I would think.

How long would it take me to realize that willpower pales in comparison to intelligence? If you’re trying to dig yourself out of a problem and have a lot of willpower, that is good. It is not good when your efforts to dig yourself out only make you worse. In this example it is obvious that you won’t succeed by willpower alone. Rather, it takes intelligence to step back and look at your situation. If you realize you aren’t getting any better by your present course of action, then you need a new course. It is even more admirable and noble to ask other’s opinions, that you respect, as to what their opinion is regarding the course of action you have chosen for your recovery. At least consider what those who truly love you have to say. You don’t have to do it, but at least seriously consider what they have to say. What do you value more, intelligence or willpower?

I value both, but not one without the other. Mules have willpower. Wise people have intelligence which they can use to figure out the best course of action (based on objective data not ego or shame or embarrassment) and they then use that awesome willpower to implement that plan to success.

The real crutch for those of us who have OCD and/or depression is the easy, comfortable, powerless choices we make in response to our condition. Some of those choices can be avoiding, sleeping,isolating, compulsing, controlling, drinking, and many more. Medicine, when used responsibly and intelligently, is no more of a crutch than willpower. We know willpower is not a crutch.

Be an intelligent person. If you are spinning your wheels (based on an honest, objective view point) try another course of action. That is hardly a crutch, rather, that is a refusal to live the one and only life you have based on stupidity.

If medicine seems to be the next reasonable course of action, take it and discover what happens. You can always choose a new course. One of the components of OCD and depression is that we aren’t seeing things clearly. Listen to people that, in your heart of hearts, you truly believe love you and want you happy.

Be the smartest, informed person you can be.

Never quit.

Life

Never give up unless you want certain unhappiness and certain death within yourself. Life is meant to be lived fully alive, within and without, whenever possible.

You don’t need a guide or manual on how to live the specifics of your life. Things will naturally flow for you once you powerfully determine that you are going to give it 100%. It truly is what you make it. If you are feeling sorry for yourself and bitter and resentful at life and people for the bad events and breaks that have come your way GET OFF IT. The feeling sorry road for yourself is the wrong road. It leads to further sadness, misery, and despair. Dig down deep within yourself, step-up within and without and take your life over moment by moment. Keep your life adventurous, exciting, and/or stimulating for yourself no matter what it takes. You won’t be any good for yourself or anyone else unless you are alive and happy within and outside of yourself.

Keep negative folks away from you that aren’t interested in helping themselves. Move on and find positive and uplifting forces in your life that will propel you through your life in an exciting, fulfilling way. Whatever fears you have that hold you back, face them and work through them. Otherwise, you will regret it when your life is over. You will know that you sold out to the negative and you will realize that you didn’t step-up. When life hits you the hardest, in the pit of your stomach, when you feel like a vulnerable, helpless child with no strength, confidence or certainty…HANG ON. Hang on because this is the final moment you must go through before you can graduate to the next level of greatness. And if you hold on you definitely will automatically move past it to fresh, greener pastures even though they are  invisible at that time. The only one that can kill your spirit or ruin you is you. You have yourself to blame only, period.

Find your Passion, your Dream, your Bliss. No matter what it takes, find it. This why God has you here. What you naturally love to do is who you are at your core to a great degree. Find this, claim, honor it, and engage your life with it as much as possible. Surpass the fear and allow it to take you where it may. This will be your contribution to the world. Don’t ask too many questions about it, just try it first and then talk about it.

Life is moving through you and at some point it will leave you. Seize it, claim it, own it, and engage yourself fully in it. This is your gift to God that you leave after life has moved through you.

Don’t let the fear of being laughed at and not fitting in, and failure, and death hold you back. NONSENSE. None of them mean anything. What means something is the caliber and quality of the person you are…your integrity and character. These are the things that are immortal and go on forever affecting generation after generation. You have a huge responsibility to seize your life and your bliss. Because, whether you like it or not, you are shaping future generations by who you are now, moment by moment, day by day.

If you do nothing, you have just done something. There is no middle road. We just fool ourselves into thinking there is. Help the world. Make it a better place. Start with one act, one persona at a time. And feel good about yourself for this because you are living a God-like life in helping and inspiring what he has created. How beautiful and inspiring that is.

Start with the ones physically around you right now. Show acts of love and kindness and empowerment to them. Be inspired and you will inspire those around you. That chain will continue unless you are the weak link that doesn’t do your part.

Look at the miracles that are right in front of you. Really look at them with your heart and experience them. Start with your life. Why in the world do you have one? What did you do to deserve it? I call that a beautiful mysterious miracle. If that is not enough, look at newborn babies and nature and experience them as much as possible. Look for the small miracles all around you.

When you feel your most down, go help someone else. Get out of yourself and move for someone else, even though it may hurt physically and emotionally to do so. This will bring you out of it. You are breaking the pattern.

If you accept life fully, the good and the ugly, then you can’t help but be moved in a deeply spiritual way. Joy and sadness come together as an emotion and you will experience a spiritual groundedness. Accepting and embracing all of life gives us peace and helps to ground us.

We are nothing less than spoiled rotten children if we don’t help to make the world a better place. Help the person next to you and your needs will be met.

OCD and Anxiety

OCD AND ANXIETY

You are not your OCD

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder consists of intrusive and unwanted thoughts, images, and urges which cause anxiety. In one’s attempt to reduce anxiety, repetitive rituals are performed which continues to feed the OCD cycle and make it worse.

OCD may manifest itself in various ways.

ERP is the gold standard treatment for OCD. It’s the act of doing the opposite of what you want to do during an anxious moment. This may seem counterintuitive at the time but it is exactly what is needed to recondition our amygdala, which is responsible for alerting us to danger. The beauty of ERP is that for the first time we are put in a position of control and choice as it relates to our OCD. At the risk of oversimplifying ERP it can be equated to jumping into a cold swimming pool and staying in it long enough to the point of being no longer cold to you. This process is called habituation where we expose ourselves to exactly what we are wanting to avoid. This is done on a repeated basis until it no longer causes any discomfort. This has been the most effective treatment for overcoming OCD. It definitely was for mine. The more aggressive you are willing to be with ERP the sooner it will get better.

When we are afflicted by OCD and anxiety one fact which is overlooked is that if we allow our anxiety to become at the highest level possible without interruption, it will NATURALLY begin to decrease on its own. This is where the real healing takes place.

Sometimes it may appear confusing as to what is OCD and what is real. One effective technique is to realize that when you feel that you must do something right now before you can go on, you are in OCD land. Another red flag is when you have no sense of free choice in the moment. You MUST do this NOW in order to get rid of this NOW.

OCD causes us to doubt and demands certainty. The problem with a 100% demand for certainty is that no one has that available to them. In OCD our alarm system tells us without this guaranteed certainty we are in grave danger. In reality we are not but to the OCD sufferer they feel in complete and total danger. Quite a quandary. A very effective method in dealing with this quagmire is to work towards increasing one’s tolerance for uncertainty. I know that sounds like a completely foreign notion but from someone who has been there, in time it will not be foreign to you. So the question is how do we increase our tolerance for uncertainty? First of all it’s important to note that we comfortably go about our lives doing things that are uncertain a vast majority of the time. The difference is it is just not the focus of our worry at the time. So the question becomes how do we become unconcerned about things that are unreasonable to be concerned about. The most effective path in accomplishing this is undoubtedly ERP.

UNCERTAINTY and COMMITMENT

Okay here’s the deal,  I’m 50 and have had OCD since I was 18.  It pretty much came out of nowhere, although looking back it’s obvious I had the predisposition for it.  I know I should go in order and introduce myself and tell my story and all that, but today I’m just diving into something that will help me because I am feeling obsessive and anxious today about uncertainty as it relates to life and my well being.  Here’s the content of this particular obsession for me:  I had a very difficult stomach issue about 3 years ago where I had inflammation of the stomach lining. I was nauseous and had no appetite and felt tired and weak due to it.  I also was very depressed because It had just been 4 months since I came off the medicine I was on for OCD that I had been taking for 14 years.  I came off way too fast and the PSYCHOLOGIST that was advising me to come off it had no idea what he was doing in this area. He acted like it and because he had helped me so much in our therapy sessions with exposure and cognitive therapy, I believed him and went for it…big mistake.

Once the medicine was 100 percent out of my system, it caused me to feel depressed and I hadn’t done well with depression in the past.  Then I started feeling obsessive soon after  and now I didn’t have the help of the medicine to help me fight it.  In addition to this was my stomach issue, no desire for food or the opposite sex, the inability to enjoy a glass of wine, and the fact that a 4 year relationship I had with a woman had just come to an end. I was really worked over and did not feel good.  So I got back on medicine and back in therapy and aggressively started doing exposures. I met the woman of my total dreams, whom I am now married to, and I gradually got better.  Furthermore, I started a support group which helped me immensely. I also started a new business.  All of this helped in time and I am now doing well. Today, however, I had a visit from the common obsession that goes something like this:  “How do you know you won’t go back to feeling bad like you did before?What would you do if the worst happened and you got depressed and nauseous again and had terrible pains in your stomach, and NOTHING could help me, what would you do then? ”  I respond in my mind and say , well I could work out and do exposures………and what if that didn’t work?  Well I could check myself into the hospital and certainly they could take the pain and anguish away……..but what if they couldn’t and I just remained in pain and anguish and suffering with deep depression and OCD and NOTHING helped, what then?  So I tell myself, well there is an end in sight because ultimately I would die and I wouldn’t be in anguish anymore.  But what if after I died it carried on forever and ever and anguish and suffering never ended……..what then?  Maybe that’s what hell is and maybe I will go there and maybe….and maybe…..and maybe, maybe, maybe….. .   Beautiful thought process and concept indeed isn’t it?  Just lovely and uplifting and positive!!  Right?  Wrong.

So here is how I deal with the above.  First of all, It sucks.  Secondly, I stopped searching for certainty because that is what is feeding this evil villain.  “But how can I live with uncertainty?”  Honestly, I never knew before and sometimes I get back in that place like I feel the pull is today.  So here’s the deal, I don’t have certainty and we don’t on anything.  First reaction is that  sucks and that I can’t live like that because I’ll go crazy with that kind of fear OR get deeply depressed to where I can’t move and I just sit there and suffer in anguish.   So there’s no certainty…ultimately, and anything could happen……ultimately.   Okay, that’s reality, that’s it.  No that’s not it!   You forgot about one thing here….ME.   You see last time I checked, I have a choice here, as long as there is breath in my body.  So you see, life and reality and afterlife and hell can do whatever it wants to me but I still get to decide what I’m going to do right now…… BIG piece of this, not to be overlooked.  So now this is where I take over and I say “AS LONG AS THERE IS BREATH IN MY BODY, I WILL FIGHT THIS AND I WILL SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE HELPING THOSE WHO ARE SUFFERING WITH THIS.”  That’s what I go with.  So it’s like, if you’re (OCD) threatening me all of my life that you’re going to destroy me, I don’t know if you will or won’t. What I do know is that I have a CHOICE as to wether I am going to live my life to the best of my ability or whether I am going to spend my precious days on earth worried about whether or not you are going to destroy me. I could spend my days ruminating about what I would do or how I would handle it if that happened.  That’s a loser’s game and I get to decide whether I am going to play it or not and SO DO YOU.  That whole notion can kiss my ass!  As long as I am alive I have a CHOICE and I will CHOOSE the courageous, powerful, sensible, life fulfilling one every time.  As long as I have a CHOICE as to whether you take me or not, I WILL exercise it……..EVERY time!  CHOOSE TO FIGHT.