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• Archive: Controlling AnxietyIn the effort to control anxiety and emotional pain, the mind can become enslaved.
• Once the patterns of obsessive compulsion take hold, they do not let go without a fight, because they seem to be controlling anxiety.Obsessive compulsive disorder is driven by anxiety, and it’s also a faulty way of trying to deal with anxieties: “If I carry out the ritual, maybe my anxiety and emotional pain will leave me alone!” Getting caught in obsessive compulsive patterns can take over the processes of living a normal life, leaving the sufferer unable to think about anything other than the ritualistic agenda.OCD makes people feel they have no choice but to cave to the demands of their obsessive preoccupations. Obsessive compulsive thoughts and activities seem to bring comfort at first. “If I do this or that enough something terrible can be averted.”Yet, as with any repetitive behaviour, when habituation gradually kicks in – the more you do, the more you have to do.
• Fifty hand washes turns into seventy, turns into a hundred… and so on.And, while obsessions and compulsions are connected, and one often leads to the other, they are not quite the same thing.
• Many of us obsess occasionally.
• The extent to which we can relax about our obsessive imaginings, and witness the process objectively, determines the likelihood that obsessive thoughts will not morph into compulsive actions.Common obsessive thoughts involve:* Focus on orderliness and symmetry * Focus on dirt or contamination by germs * Imagining a mistake has been or might be made * Fear of ‘sinful’ or evil thoughts * Fear of doing or saying something inappropriate.