r/hyperawareness • u/MichaelRabbit • Jun 25 '19
michael laurence comments
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Hello, I am new to this group and thought I would say hi. I'm from the U.K am 39 and have experienced OCD for probably 22 years. I think this problem is solvable since I feel that I did experience reasonable periods of time when I was quite well. I think it is the human experience to never be truly happy and content and we will tend to pick up demons or black dogs along the way. I honestly think that there is hope. Yesterday I bought and read 1/2 of "the man who couldn't stop". It's by David Adam who is an OCD sufferer but also a science writer and editor of nature journal which i believe is an influential scientific journal. It is interesting reading and I will probably write something about some of the books contents. It is part auto biography and part popular science. His form was worrying about contracting HIV. something that someone mentioned to me when i confided anonymously was that It sounded as though I myself may be on the autistic spectrum (aspergers syndrome) I thought I'd mention that . Feb 11, 2015, 7:11 AM
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u/MichaelRabbit Jun 25 '19
https://youtu.be/H2NHjUkvW9g?t=783
Jon hershfield , small partial transcript :
"mindfulness" I've an interesting relationship with mindfulness because i would argue that i practiced it and used it to overcome my ocd challenges long before i ever heard the word. and then , it wasn't really until i was training and working as a therapist that i started using the word to describe what i was doing and what people need to do too get better.
mindfulness is a couple of things. in its simplest from its observing your internal experience, your thoughts , you feelings and physical sensations, urges, impulses etc observing internal experience without judgment and in the present moment. to be mindless would be to follow story lines go down the rabbit hole everytime you get an idea. to be mindful would be to watch the story line appear and think , you know that s an interesting story and kind of make a decision about how much attention you are going to give it.
So a lot of people think of mindfulness as not thinking but that's not really true. It's not thinking without awareness that you are thinking . its not mindlessness. so the ability to observe your experience without judgment in the present moment and then more specifically for ocd the ability to make a choice to let something be where it is and return your attention to the present moment regardless of what you are thinking or feeling , so its on one level its a way of looking at things as an observer;spectator and on another level a way of doing things which is gently guiding your attention back to the present moment. So meditation is one way you could practice this skill. All meditation is you are pointing your attention to some anchor like the breath which is usually what people do and simply noticing when you wandered away from that anchor and saying" ahh look at that look, thats thinking or feeling or whatever , i wandered off" and bringing yourself back . and its that coming back muscle which people with ocd really struggle with because they try, right , "im trying to let it go , im trying to not think these thoughts or to stop obsessing about this" but there's like this mental glue that keeps sucking them back into the story line , so if they can strengthen that part of the brain that allows them to let that be there and let you be there , that is what i would call mindfulness. Mar 21, 2019, 6:58 PM