Mindlock: What To Do When Obsessive Thoughts Take Over

The OCD and Anxiety Podcast by Robert James Coaching. Music. Hello and welcome to The OCD and Anxiety Podcast where we explore how to have a more positive relationship with anxiety disorders disorders taking back control so that you can start living the life you choose and not the one chosen by your fears. Music.

Hello and welcome to episode 393 where today we're going to be exploring what to do when the mind gets kind of locked in on an obsession it's a really important area to to kind of have some tools to be able to to help you when you do feel that you're kind of stuck if you would like to get a free session with me to to get some assistance with OCD and anxiety then you can by heading over to my website robertjamescoaching.com

there you can book in for that free session directly or if you prefer you can send me a message and let me know about what you're are struggling with. So yeah, today we're going to be looking at what to do when the mind gets stuck on a particular obsession. If you find the podcast helpful, it would be great if you could follow and like on Instagram.

Also, if you could subscribe, the majority of people who listen to this podcast are not actually subscribed and it would be amazing if you could actually do that. I would really, really appreciate it. So there we go, guys. If you have any questions at all about anything I speak about today, do please let me know. And off we go.

Now, you may have come across the fantastic book Brain Lock, quite similar to today's title, where the author, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, talks a lot about similar things I'm talking about today, about what happens with the OCD brain when we get really fixated and stuck on something. And I wanted to actually share a quote from that book.

And it is this, the more often you act in these unhealthy ways, the more you teach your brain that what is simply a habit, a learned behavior, is essential to your survival. And I love this quote because really, you know, this is why we do actually get stuck, you know, in our minds, in our brains, however you want to put it. You know, this is a really big part of OCD is we get so fixated.

On these particular habits, these compulsions that we're performing in order to kind of feel just right, you know, that our brains believe that over time that we have to perform these compulsions in order to survive, in order to feel just right, in order to manage the situation effectively.

And unfortunately, the more that we do this, the more that we create kind of neuroplasticity you know not working in our favor actually kind of you know we're creating these neuro pathways and reinforcing them making them stronger by repeatedly performing our compulsions that tend to keep us stuck and i'm sure you've uh you've been there your your yourself with with this where you know you're kind of struggling the anxiety is quite high and but maybe

you're doing just about okay you're managing to to manage it but then out of nowhere a particularly troubling or difficult and obsessive thought and appears a trigger maybe it's one that you haven't thought about before and it really kind of catches you out and before you know what's going on you're starting that process of you know of compulsing you're ruminating on it maybe you're performing physical compulsions of one form or another and unfortunately the more

that you do this the more that you're actually creating this this kind of stuckness the more that we keep going over a particular thought and we think about it again and again and again we know what tends to happen we just create this situation where that thing is the only thing that we can think about it. Almost doesn't matter where we where we go or what we're doing in the back of our mind is.

That thought and it's just going round in circles and we may be trying to pay attention to a conversation or to other things but we're almost always semi-aware of this obsession at the same time and we're trying to kind of on some level trying to figure it out or trying to have some kind of certainty about it and unfortunately this you know this is just us kind of getting stuck we're getting we're getting locked in on a particular thought by overthinking it over

analyzing it and unfortunately then just kind of creating a bigger and bigger problem for ourselves. Now, you might be nodding along thinking, yes, I know exactly what you're talking about there. I've experienced that on many occasions and it's incredibly difficult and frustrating. Sometimes I don't know what to do with it. How do I deal with that situation? You know, and I think most people who struggle with OCD have experienced this kind of thing.

And it's really frustrating because something, even if we know it's not really rational, can start giving you so much anxiety once you've entangled yourself with it enough you know it becomes this real kind of monster that is enveloping us and kind of taking us over and it can be difficult to know what to do and really that's what we're going to be talking about now what is the the kind of antidote to this situation when your mind feels like it's got stuck the gears aren't moving we're

hyper focused and hyper aware of this particular issue how do we move our attention elsewhere how do we move away from that thing so that we're able to to give ourselves some headspace and give ourselves an opportunity to kind of focus on something else well focusing on something else is actually part of that process but let's kind of unpack this a bit more.

So to get us started with this let's return to Jeffrey Schwartz again and another quote and it is this the brain's going to do what the brain's going to do I told them but you don't have to let it push you around and I think this is a really helpful way to get started because unfortunately this is what we're doing when OCD is winning like this when we do get really stuck and we're going around in circles really the OCD or the brain is kind of pushing us around.

We are believing that because this thing is is so strong in our mind in this moment that we can't get ourselves out of it that that we we tend to feel very disempowered in these situations.

And you know the reality is in my experience this isn't true this is a trick of the mind it's a trick of the OCD it wants you to think that you're powerless in these situations it wants you to believe that you just need to kind of go round in circles and keep performing these compulsions, keep problem solving or keep physically checking things or whatever it is that you might be doing. Whereas the reality is you have much more choice than you may realize.

And this is always the first step is to recognize that even though the OCD may be screaming at you that you don't have a choice, the anxiety may be incredibly high.

Other difficult emotions might be present the reality is even when all of that is going on you do still have a choice and you know this is difficult to really comprehend at times but realizing this and and kind of working towards a realization of this even if you feel that you know that's quite far off right now well maybe the first steps for you is is kind of working towards that realization that you really have a choice by proving to yourself some of the time that.

By actually making different decisions in those situations where, you know, you aren't just listening directly to the OCD and what it's telling you that you should do, but actually you're kind of being patient with yourself and you're actually taking the opportunity to prove to yourself that, you know, you can do something else and just, you know, experimenting with that in a way.

I think this really is the first step to experiment and kind of prove to yourself that that, you know, despite the fact that you may be feeling very high anxiety, you may be feeling very uncomfortable and uncertain. You can still get away with not performing compulsions in that situation. And when you prove that to yourself, well, you know, your subconscious really does start to kind of pay attention to that. It notices that.

And, you know, you start to kind of realize that oh actually I can do this because I did it this morning I and I did it this afternoon before before my snack and you know I kind of stopped the the kind of chain of events that would lead to me really going much further down the rabbit hole that OCD rabbit hole that we really don't want to go down you know and the more evidence that you start to collect where you prove to yourself that actually you do have a choice and you know

that now that you're acting on that choice you you can kind of see that the more evidence you have for this well it's going to stand you in good stead moving forward and once you realize that you have that choice then you can start acting on it more in in helpful ways and something that i find to be to be very helpful is kind of once you've realized you've got this choice.

The next thing that we kind of need to do is just to acknowledge, acknowledge the fact that we've been we've been kind of caught out, that we've gone down the rabbit hole a little bit. We've really got stuck. The mind has got locked in on a particular problem and we're going round in circles with it. OK, well, we just acknowledge that to ourselves. It's OK.

There's no shame in that. You know, OCD is very difficult to deal with sometimes. And so we just acknowledge it to ourselves. We might say something along the lines of, I've been triggered, or I've got stuck, or there's that thought again. It doesn't really matter what you say, you kind of label it with something. Once we've done that, then we need to work on the acceptance piece. Now, this is something where I think a lot of people get confused. What do we mean by acceptance?

How do you do it? You know, does acceptance mean agreement? Acceptance does absolutely not mean agreement at all.

Acceptance just means that you are acknowledging that you're feeling difficult emotions and that you're going to try to feel those emotions it also doesn't mean that you have to be perfect at doing that just because you're trying to accept difficult emotions doesn't mean that you're going to be able you're going to be able to do that 100 effectively sometimes it can be more like just tolerating those difficult emotions, observing that they're there and

trying to allow them to be there without fighting against them so much. You know, that can be sometimes a more helpful way of viewing it.

And then the next step, and this is really important too, is learning how to refocus your attention back onto a valued activity. Despite the fact that you might still be feeling a bit anxious, you're trying to tolerate that anxiety and allow it to be there. But yeah, it might still be there. I think sometimes we're kind of waiting for the anxiety or the other difficult emotions to be gone before we start taking action.

And that generally means that we're going to be staying staying stuck for much longer than we need to if we're able to refocus onto our onto our values and goals despite the fact that we're still feeling a bit uncomfortable well that really helps us then to to kind of accept more readily because when we focus our attention on something we tend to come more into the present and the more that we're in the present well the more likely we we are to let go of some of these things and to start feeling

a bit better to help yourself along with that sometimes it's helpful to you know whatever you're doing to try to be more active and more animated in in that thing that you're doing and I don't mean in in a kind of in a weird way you know of course if you're having a conversation with somebody you don't need to be super animated like wow but you can just be a little bit more focused on the conversation you can be actively listening and demonstrating that to

the person that you're conversing with if you're doing another activity like a sport you can really try to concentrate your mind more on it you know the more that we are willing to just really try to come into the present by putting more energy and focus into whatever it is that we might be doing I think that really does tend to to help us to begin to let go of the particular thing that maybe the mind is locked onto.

And I think the final thing to say about it is try not to demand perfection from yourself when it when it comes to these things. If you're applying this and you're getting a little bit of success with it, maybe it's not perfect. But, you know, you spend a few minutes and you haven't been paying attention so much. Well, that's that's progress. And if you keep applying it, perhaps over time you're able to, you know, to pay attention more, to to kind of forget about the obsession for for more time.

You know and this really then starts to help with neuroplasticity as well because if you keep applying this over the weeks and over the months when you're dealing with difficult thoughts and you're getting stuck with things you're learning to come back to the present to acknowledge to accept and to refocus well you're developing that ability and you know that is something that over time may help with neuroplasticity and and kind of helping you to have a different relationship with

anxiety and obsessions when they come up so there we go guys i really hope that you enjoyed that one if you have any questions at all about anything i've spoken about today do please let me know and please do subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review if you uh if you don't mind that would be amazing as well and i really hope that you enjoyed see you next time.

Just a quick reminder that if you want to get a free session all you need to get that is to head over to my website www.robertjamescoaching.com and there you can leave me a message and we can arrange the free session and now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer any information that you view on my website instagram page facebook group or anywhere else online or any information that you listen to on the podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be

a substitute for actual medical or mental health advice from a doctor psychologist or any other medical or mental health professional. Music.