Everyday Mindfulness for OCD by Jon Hershfield & Shala Nicely

Author:Jon Hershfield & Shala Nicely
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SEL041000 Self-help / Compulsive Behavior / General, PSY009000 Psychology / Psychopathology / Compulsive Behavior, OCC010000 Body, Mind & Spirit / Mindfulness & Meditation
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications

You’ve Sacrificed Enough

Phoebe has become a victim of OCD trickery. She has come to believe that the removal of triggers is an effective way to remove obsessions, but the opposite is true. Avoidance of triggers simply makes more things triggering. If you sacrifice one thing, the OCD just turns its sights on something bigger. It is never satisfied, and it has no sense of decency. But if Phoebe can get in before the obsession takes hold, before the urge to avoid overwhelms her, she can remember the policy of using objects in the manner in which they are intended to be used. A knife can be used to commit a violent act; this much is true. But Phoebe bought that knife to be kept in the kitchen. The purpose of the knife is to murder potatoes, not husbands. She doesn’t need certainty about her obsessive fears to use the kitchen knife as it was intended. What she needs is to make space for thoughts about the knife being used in some other way, while she continues to destroy the lives of potatoes and their children. By committing to a policy of using objects as they were intended, she can also commit to a policy of allowing thoughts to be thoughts.

In our example, Phoebe bought into an OCD narrative that because the knife could be used for scary purposes, she must have some moral obligation to presume that it would be used for those purposes. If instead she considers that long-term management of her OCD necessarily involves making space for scary stories without behaving like those stories are meaningful, she can warmly, but firmly, state, “No, OCD, you can’t have this. I need the knife to make this meal, and I’ll make this meal using it as a knife, and if you have more to say about it, I don’t mind, as long as the potatoes get into the stew.”

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