¶ Intro / Opening
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 407. I hope that you're doing very well today.
However, if you are struggling with OCD or anxiety, then you can get a free session with me to get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com and 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 struggling with.
¶ Visualizing Victory with OCD
In today's podcast I'm going to be sharing with you a kind of visualization activity.
It's really trying to visualize your victory with OCD and I think so often we're kind of doing the opposite we're kind of without even realizing it we're kind of visualizing our our struggles with OCD and convincing ourselves that we're always going to be stuck with it this activity isn't necessarily going to you know completely stop OCD of course it's getting over OCD it's a bit of a cliche but it's a journey in my experience but when we visualize and we see our success it can really help us I
think to take positive action the positive action that we need to take in order to to to start that process of overcoming OCD so I really hope that you find this episode helpful if you could please subscribe to the podcast that really does help us it makes a really big difference so if you wouldn't mind doing that that would be amazing also if you would like to follow on YouTube now you can you can follow along on instagram my instagram handle is at robertjamescoachinguk
and i really hope that you enjoy many things.
Here's a quote to get us started today and it's by somebody called bo bennett and it is this visualization is daydreaming with a purpose and i really like this quote because there's a couple things about it number one unfortunately you know a lot of people who who daydream actually tend to struggle more with anxiety and so if you're somebody you know, where you find yourself, you find your mind kind of drifting off very easily, that you get distracted by thoughts,
difficult emotions coming up, and you start ruminating. As many people with OCD do, you know, then daydreaming actually has been correlated with experiencing more difficult and negative emotions.
Obviously, not everybody who struggles with OCD is also going to struggle with daydreaming but uh for for some of you it may be a thing it may be something that you experience as well and actually i think it's you know rather than just letting ourselves daydream all day you know hopefully you know you you don't have time to do that all day because i'm sure most of you are very very busy and have difficult lives and difficult things going on you know but
really uh i think when we talk about visualization what we're thinking about out here is really daydreaming with with a purpose you know rather than allowing your mind to to take you to all sorts of negative places which let's be honest that's what happens with OCD when we're really struggling and we're we're trying to you know deal with those inner demons deal with those thoughts we're going around in circles with it we're fighting it we're really trying to to kind
of put it back in its place, put it back in its box, you know, and, you know, it's a real kind of struggle. And in a way, it is a form of kind of just allowing your attention to kind of drift around almost like a daydream.
When we actually recognize that, you know, we really do have a lot more ability than we give ourselves credit for to put our attention where we want it to go, to refocus, even to visualize things that we want to be able to achieve, then we're actually daydreaming with a purpose. We're actually allowing or determining where our attention goes. And that is going to serve us so much more in the long term.
When I look back over the years, you know, through my own struggles with OCD, so much of the time it had to do with the fact that my attention, my kind of creative energy was creating all of these bizarre, unwanted kind of thoughts that were going on in my head.
These kind of I was almost visualizing you know the worst possible outcomes for all sorts of different things convincing myself that that could happen or that could be true you know and all of this creative energy well you know when we put that creative energy into other things a lot of the time we we end up feeling a bit better if we think about things like acceptance commitment therapy for example you know part of the reason why i think it works so well is
you know we are rather than just kind of sitting and kind of hoping that we're going to feel better or you know doing all of this kind of problem solving in order to feel better looking for the perfect solution all of these things that kind of keep us in the trap of ocd rather than do that we actually learn to to begin the process of letting go of that and refocusing our attention onto activities and things that provide meaning for us and a lot of the time that
that may be creative things or things that are interesting to you in different ways you know and i think that's part of the for for why it's so so helpful. And visualization is just a really a kind of way to kind of build on that. I think it's not something that is necessarily straight from acceptance commitment therapy, but it's something that I do myself. Sometimes it's something related to the Wim Hof method.
Actually, Wim Hof, if you have seen him in interviews and when I was actually on my training camp in Poland with him, he was talking directly about the importance of visualization for him. When he's going to do an ice bath or something like that. He always likes to visualize the process beforehand. Anytime he's going to do anything difficult, in fact, he will visualize that process and make sure that he's preparing his body and his mind for the difficult thing that is coming up.
And let's face it, with OCD, we know that there's difficult things that are coming up.
You know and in his opinion it's so much better if you prepare your mind beforehand for those difficult things by teaching it by instructing it about what is coming up what are those difficult things that that you might have to do you know whether that's exposure work that you're going to be doing whether that's going to an event that you've been really putting off or worrying about maybe that's you know doing something else that's difficult for you in in different ways or maybe
Maybe that's having a cold shower. Obviously, if you're going to do Wim Hof method things, make sure you're doing that in a safe way. But in my experience, visualization can be a really beneficial and helpful tool.
¶ Simple Visualization Activity
So I think that's enough of an introduction. We're going to get straight into this simple visualization activity right now. So if you're going to do this, you need to make sure that you're doing it in a safe place, please. So never when you're operating machinery or driving a car or anything like that, make sure that you're, you know, you're at home, you're somewhere safe to do this kind of activity.
And what you need to do is basically get yourself into the same kind of position that you would do for a meditation.
So you can sit down cross-legged on the floor you can sit on the side of the bed whatever is comfortable for you and what I'd like you to do then is to just ground yourself for a moment or two just settle yourself so you're going to to close your eyes roll the shoulders a few times very gently mindfully in one direction and then in the other really paying attention to the body as you're doing this, noticing the movements and maybe any energy moving in the body as you're doing this.
And then just, you can stop with that now and just focus your attention please onto the breath. And I'd just like you to notice the inhale and exhale at the nostrils. Just noticing the air coming in and going back out. If you get distracted by thoughts or anything else, do your best to try to accept that and just bring your attention back to the breath.
And then I'd like you to take a slightly deeper breath now, breathing as low as possible down into the stomach, up into the chest and then breathing out a nice, long, slow exhale. And repeating, breathing very low and slow down into the belly, up into the chest. And then breathing out that nice, long, slow exhale. And then just come back to normal breathing. And we're going to build now a sense of self-compassion in the heart to get us into a more open mindset. set.
I'd like you to breathe and imagine a white light that is travelling down through the body into the heart. And so you're breathing in this beautiful white light, a symbol of love and compassion, filling up the heart, breathing out, letting go and repeating so that each Each time that you breathe in, you're filling the heart with more and more of this white light, filling the heart with love and compassion, breathing in, letting go, repeating, and just looking for that space to breathe into.
And if you get distracted, just keep coming back to that visualization of this beautiful white light, filling up the heart, breathing back out again, letting go and repeating. Good. Then I'd like you now to just bring to mind a future scenario, perhaps six months from now. I'd like you to imagine yourself somewhere where you would really like to be one of your favourite places to be. And imagine that you're with the people in your life that you really care about, people that you really love.
And you're happy. You're enjoying yourself. You're present. And this future version of you has learned how to deal with their OCD more effectively.
They're more accepting, more self-compassionate, better able to accept the uncertainties of life and it's not that this future version of you is perfect perhaps sometimes you might still get caught up in thoughts in ruminations, in themes but when you do, you're much better able to recognize it to bring yourself back to the present and to enjoy the things in your life, the places that you love, the people that you love, the activities that you love.
And again, just see yourself in this place with the people you care about, enjoying yourself, managing OCD. Recognizing all of the things that you've been able to achieve the hurdles that you've overcome and just feel how that feels, And I'd like you now to just put a very subtle half smile on your face as you see yourself smiling at the people that you love in your life, enjoying their company. And I'd like you now to turn up the color on this image.
I'd like you to make it brighter and brighter and brighter again so that the colours are all more vivid so that it somehow seems even more real as once again you see yourself content able to deal with OCD to accept uncertainty to live your life according to your values use. And then we're just going to allow that image now to begin to disappear into the background as you bring your attention once more back to the breath, focusing in on the inhale and exhale.
And then taking a slightly deeper breath again. So breathing as low as possible down into the belly, up into the chest and then breathing out that nice long slow exhale good and then just stretching the body a little rolling the shoulders a few more times opening up the eyes and fantastic i really hope that you found that visualization helpful if you have any questions at all about it feel free to to get in touch and i look forward to seeing you next time.
Just a quick reminder that if you want to get a free session all you need to do 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.