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Thread: Harm OCD and Anxiety

  1. #11
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    Re: Harm OCD and Anxiety

    Yes, I think your counsellor is right. I know in my case it's not just that but also expecting to feel perfect so I have an unreasonably high expectation. For instance, I won't workout today because I feel a bit bleuggh but tomorrow I may feel better so can then. Then tomorrow comes and it may be bleeuggghh again and you say it again.

    I've had this discussion with a few people with GAD + OCD and they said exactly the same. People with HA share similiar traits in their anxiety disorders to people with OCD and I see them have the same problem. They go weeks feeling ok and then they are put under stress for some reason and the HA starts creeping back in. It makes sense really because if you had say low level GAD and then a big event happened in your life to put you under more stress, your GAD will naturally spike. Anything attached to that such as OCD is bound to spike with it. It wouldn't make sense if your OCD was fine but your GAD was really bad to me since GAD is something many of us feel 24/7 to some extent.

    I think of it like giving someone a major caffeine hit. Your overstimulate them and anything that works based on that system in the body is bound to suffer.

    If you look at it from the point of view of the brain and how it works you have only got to look at the neurotransmitters to understand this. There are I think 4 classes and 2 of them are Excitory and Inhibitory. Drugs like Benzo's act on Inhibitory ones, namely GABA, which calms you down. The Excitory ones can mean faster processing between synapses, acceleration. We can't cope with that all the time hence the balancing our brains do in producing & releasing one to calm down the other.

    I've always said I have triggers e.g. social stuff, change, new things, the unknown, etc so pretty typical stuff for anxiety sufferers. But I can have completely regimented days, something I suffered with badly with my OCD originally, and nothing changes. So, why am I still anxious when I know exactly what is going to happen and in what order? I have no stress at all on my life, yet I am still anxious. Thats GAD to me. No triggers, just increased "normal" range of anxiety.

    I will post in about the 8 elements seperately as I need to dig that out of the book I have to get it right.
    __________________
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    For free Mindfulness resources, please see this thread I have created to compile many sources together http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=168689

  2. #12
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    May 2015
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    Re: Harm OCD and Anxiety

    Thanks again for all the info Terry, it is very much appreciated. I will look forward to seeing the elements of mindfulness you mentioned. I did some reading on it yesterday, I think I definitely live in the "what ifs" and not in the moment, I always seem to expect the worst possible thing to happen - that is kind of my definition of GAD. Right now my biggest thing is worrying that I'll never improve as this recent round has been very rough and longer than any I've had before.

    I'm also having some somatic symptoms with this that I thought had gone a couple months ago but now are back, tough to deal with on top of everything else.

  3. #13
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    Re: Harm OCD and Anxiety

    GAD can be a pain for somatic symptoms. I've had "the buzzing bees" pretty much from the beginning and right side muscular tension that makes it harder to breath has been a feature of the relapse. I can deal with the mental ones easier than the physical ones, they have always been my downfall. When they effect my mood, thats when I am in for a difficult day. My mood is much more stable thesedays though thanks to high strength Omega 3.

    We all seem to have our focusses with anxiety. Some people have something to a lesser extent that are a major focus for someone else and vice versa. For me, OCD in terms of tics & physical compulsions was far more intense than intrusive thoughts which I seemed not to feel as bad about.

    Change & uncertainty are massive problems with anxiety so that "what ifs" are going to be looking at anything that seems unusual. Someone who used to be on here had a trick for turning the "what ifs" around. Its on a thread of his so I will see if I can find it for you.

    Are you familiar with Cognitive Distortions? I didn't do these in my CBT but when I joined a charity to attend their walk-in meetings they had CBT based modules that we would go through one a session. One of these was on Cognitive Distortions and it was very helpful. Once you learn it you can easily pick them out in people posts. It's a bit harder with yourself but it comes in time.

    I've had that worry about not improving and I'll put money on every anxiety disorder sufferer who has ever lived having the same thoughts. It's a natural thought, it's just one that can come from frustration or desperation and because of that they are skewed negatively. Again, Cognitive Distortions covers this one and teaches you how they affect your mood even further.

    A few years back I was the worst I had ever been. I only started with GAD 9 years ago and I knew nothing about OCD other than the media portrayed stereotypes of washing, hoarding & checking. I suddenly found myself with hundreds of compulsions and even tics like "head bobbing" so I thought I was losing my mind. This is why I think it is so important to read about OCD so you know it's nothing more serious, especially when you consider the themes of Pure O which can be very distressing and socially unacceptable in terms of how others may intrepret them. I can distinctly remember having thoughts like "this is my life now", "I will never get better", etc. But I'm here now and I have conquered my intrusive thoughts. I have had some more develop but I'm in control of them and I will sort them out too as they are low level compared to before. I have stopped most of my compulsions. I still get those twinges to perform them when I see something I would have done it with but I stop it by accepting it being there, letting it float through, etc. Sometimes I will purposes touch an item, as I did today with 2, but when approaching it I will feel that slught nag (it's that inner chimp saying "ooh, I used to touch that, please please can we?") and I will think "I am touching this because I WANT to" and then I will walk off. When I touch it I will employ the Mindfulness by feeling the texture, the temperature, looking at marks on it, very briefly think about how it makes me feel, etc and I walk off. I started doing that to beat some of my compulsions after starting to learn Mindfulness and it helped. At times I will make an effort to go and touch something, like a railing or a wall, and employ that same practice but I will do it because I want to.

    I felt some of the old rituals for my walks cokming back to me this year as I've had some ups & downs. I thought "oh god, they are coming back" but I worked on them again and they are gone again.

    Several years ago I would have been very happy if you told me it would kill me. Again, it's a natural thought when you are in so much pain that you can't take any more. It's born out of desperation though, it's a negative skew. We can only take so much. My therapist told me that emotions are powerful so we can't work on them directly but we can work on the elements that influence them like our thoughts. It's a hard journey but it is possible. I'm not recovered by quite a way in my eyes but my life is much better than it was.

    ---------- Post added at 09:22 ---------- Previous post was at 09:03 ----------

    Some links about Jon Kabat-Zinn's 7 Attitudinal Foundations of Mindfulness.

    http://psychcentral.com/blog/archive...ness-practice/

    http://www.mindfulness-meditation-no...-attitudes.pdf

    Kabat-Zinn created MBSR after he brought Mindfulness to the West in the 1970's. Our UK version, MBCT is based off his work. Here is a book preview of one of Kabat-Zinn's books but you can only see some of the 7 in here:

    https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...ACTICE&f=false

    I think reading the bits that you can might add onto what those other websites describe as this is more detailed.

    I was looking for the section in my book where it mentions 8 but I'm struggling to find it but what I will do is summarise each of the 8 weeks in the programme as they work through Mindfulness by introducing another element each time.

    Something you might also be interested in as that seeing an improvement in one of the elements actually creates a positive shift in all the others. I could never do acceptance, I just couldn't get my head around it and the various "guru" sites tend to be a bit vague on how to really achieve it. Mindfulness exercises train you but since this was an element I struggling with more than other e.g. non judging worked more for me as I lean more towards that as a personality trait (although Mindfulness has definately changed this a lot and made me more compassionate & accepting of others) so I could engage with it more easily. Because I could find some I could work on, the others were made easy later hence acceptance comes with time. This is why I believe Mindfulness is better than acceptance based methods if they don't actually guide you through exercises to achieve it.
    __________________
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For free Mindfulness resources, please see this thread I have created to compile many sources together http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=168689

  4. #14
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    May 2015
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    251

    Re: Harm OCD and Anxiety

    Yes, I tend to get lots of somatic symptoms, nausea/IBS, palpitations, chest pain, tingling in legs and feet, dizzy, etc. Usually one of my first signs that my old pal GAD is gearing up again. Since I tend to have health anxiety too, the symptoms are a double whammy and I start immediately wondering what is physically wrong with me.

    Actually for me the health anxiety was always the worst part until this round. I've been dealing with this on/off for about 10 years. And I've even had long breaks in between major flareups, usually I can get through a flareup in about a couple months. But this latest one is different, been dealing with it since April and I'm still struggling, albeit I'm somewhat better but still feel I have so far to go. In the past I have had a couple go rounds with OCD type checking, like going back to see if garage door is shut, checking if stove is off and once when I had electrical issues at my house I would get up many times in the night to check the breakers.

    This time the harm OCD intrusive thoughts are new and have bothered me quite a lot. Never had those before and I am trying to handle them better, I notice the content changes as I get used to one thought a different one surfaces. The other thing that has gotten me this round is that my anxiety is much more general than ever before. I wake up and get anxious over maybe having anxiety that day, I get anxiety over going to the store or even doing household chores. I'm back at work (was out 6 weeks) and get anxiety doing tasks I've doing 100's of times. This is different than before, my anxiety was much more focused on just a few things.

    Yes, anything you could find on the "what-if" thinking would be much welcomed. I'm looking through the links your provided and will definitely do some reading. Just trying to find the best ways to help myself through this difficult time.

    And yes I've heard of cognitive distortions, probably have a few of them. The class I had covered them but only briefly. I think I have a very negative view of things and have a lot of all-or-nothing thinking going on with this. There's probably some other things too.

    I too have had those thoughts of "this is my life" and "it will never get better", I'm sure as you said it is a common theme with this sort of thing. There are many days I just want to stay in bed, pull the covers up and wish the world away. I know that won't help, but sometimes it is so hard to just take that first step to get up and get moving in the mornings. I find myself wishing for the old me, the me that didn't jump at little things or get startled so easy or who wasn't anxious to do normal everyday tasks. I feel like I've lost her and want so much to get her back.

    I'm reading on the mindfulness now and am going to try my best to practice some of it this weekend, weekends tend to be rougher for me as I'm not at work and have much more time for my mind to wander. Thank you again so much for your input and help with this.

  5. #15
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    Re: Harm OCD and Anxiety

    I couldn't find the post where Davit mentioned about countering "what ifs" but it was just like this:

    http://psychology.tools/what-if.html

    By countering it with positive versions. This is interesting because positives are what we need to counter negatives but the brain is looking out for the negatives so we need to use more positives to make an effect.

    The above form shows 3 being used. I know in positive psychology that they have minimum numbers of positives to counter and 3 is one of them. 5 for more success in personal or business relationships is one I can remember too but I remember Davit stating for some it can be up to 10. Basically, there are different catagories of negative words based on their strength in terms of survival so the stronger they are, the more positives are needed to counter them.

    Have you read the Wiki page on Cognitive Distortions? It matches the one the charity gave me. The examples are useful to understand them.

    Something the charity had in it's various statements was one about how recovering doesn't mean returning to a previous state. I think this is important because we are striving to find that old person but really we change throughout life based on our experiences so we are not quite the same as we were years ago anyway. So, perhaps it is better to define what you want to be as opposed to what you should be? Have you covered the use of negative words like should and how to replace them? I really don't think we can go through all this with disorders that are quite introspective in nature and come out the other side recovered but the person we were before. Besides, would you want to be? I wasn't as non judgemental or compassionate and I can remember being harsh about my fellow managers who went off with stress when they had less challenging workstreams than others who didn't. But I soon changed my mind when my day came. I knew then that we all have limits and it doesn't matter what they are because once we reach them, we can all have this same reaction with anxiety. I felt ashamed for a while for how I felt back then. I don't want to return to that person. I want to recover and take this knowledge with me to become a better person.

    So, maybe define the positive attributes that you want from your old life, but don't set an unachievable target? Set it to recovered but with a different outlook on life shaped by your experience.

    Goals can be useful but goals that are not smart are only going to make life harder. Thats how it works in business and it's the same in psychology. Set a big goal and we struggle with it. Work on it in a series of smaller more manageable ones and see the progress so you feel good about yourself. In time, you will reach the big goals too. Like I mentioned earlier, don't set a goal to totally get rid of intrusive thoughts because it's not possible and your mind knows that because everybody has them. The goal right now is reducing the negative reactions and seeing them as just thoughts. The frequency reduces, the impact reduces, anxiety stops coming with them, etc. So, like with Mindfulness it makes sense to work on the here & now. Plans are fine, but don't make them a bugbear or they become negative again.

    I think anxiety is a sneaky animal. It looks for what you fear the most and uses it against you. If you get used to a thought, it tries a different one to catch you off guard. Learning to handle all these thoughts will mean you won't have this problem anymore. Symptoms shift anyway and look at the HA people who lurch from one problem to another because of that. OCD is just the same in that way, it changes and you get caught out. I'm sure you remember that from your HA days.

    I've seen a couple of HA people on here who have also started to get intrusive thoughts and it scared them badly. It was so different to what they had been battling with. So, I would say to recognise that this is just a different form of anxiety, it doesn't mean you are getting worse, it's just anxiety moving aroung - changing it's tactics. There are a lot of similarities between HA and OCD anyway and since HA isn't really a diagnosable condition because it's an umbrella term covering some elemtns of GAD, OCD and the entirety of the Somatoform Disorders, it can be a bit mislerading. It's different for you in the US as you use a different diagnostic manual and if my memory serves me I think they are classed as "OCD spectrum" but you have a diagnostic criteria that puts them into GAD or OCD based on having a pre existing condition. But whatever they fall into, those HA traits and how the obsessiveness and Googling works, the fear of a serious illness whether named or not, are all on a par with the obsessions in OCD and Pure O seems closer to me.
    __________________
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For free Mindfulness resources, please see this thread I have created to compile many sources together http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=168689

  6. #16
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    May 2015
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    Re: Harm OCD and Anxiety

    Thanks again Terry, I really appreciate your insight. I like the idea of countering negative what-if's with at least 3 positive ones, I usually fail to see to positive possibilities or discount them when they occur. I will try to work on that, I think it would really help.

    I just read the cognitive distortions wiki and definitely see a few of those in myself. All-or-nothing, discounting the positives and catastrophizing are the ones that immediately jump out at me. Looks like I have some work to do there as well. You have a good point about picking out the positive attributes from my old life/self and work on finding those instead of just making a sweeping statement that I want my old life back. My old life led me to where I am now, so I believe I need to make some changes. I'm going to try to set some reasonable goals for myself, where before I had a habit of making this huge list of stuff I needed to do, then I would get overwhelmed before I ever started. It was like setting myself up for failure. I didn't this just do this with anxiety/ocd/depression but with regular tasks in my life as well.

    Right now my HA is a little calmer, the intrusive thoughts still get me part of the time and part of the time I handle them ok. I will try to remember that they are just a different form of anxiety, it has switched as you say from one thing to another and now I'm dealing with that.

    I hope you are doing well at the moment and again I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me on here.
    Last edited by jadedreams; 31-08-15 at 16:52.

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