Cordially Jess

So, this book review was actually inspired by my Penable Award post wherein I was asked the question, “What experience in your life profoundly changed you?” I opened up a little in this post about my battle with Mental Illness. In that post, I disclosed that at the time I was suffering from Anxiety/Depression, and also mentioned a book that was pivotal in my turnaround. And so I just wanted to write this blog post with the intention of hopefully helping those who are suffering at the hands of this terrible monster, called OCD, find peace and happiness as well. So by now, I guess I’ve just let you all know that I was once a sufferer of OCD. I was really embarrassed about this, and really didn’t want anyone to know, but, I’ve decided to share a bit of my story here in order to help others who are suffering at the slimy hands of OCD.

So lets get into it. A quick overview of OCD. OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Many people casually use the word obsessed without really knowing what true obsession is. Many people also casually say, “oh I’m just OCD about this or that,” but true OCD is anxiety provoking and life disrupting, causing sufferers misery, and also negatively impacting the lives of loved ones around them. Obsessions for OCD sufferers are unwanted, anxiety-provoking thoughts. That is the difference between a layman’s use of the term, obsessed, and an OCD sufferer’s term of obsession; it is UNWANTED, and causes petrifying anxiety. Compulsions are then the behaviors that one performs in response to the obsessive thoughts. They can be detrimental and time consuming; however, even knowing this, OCD sufferers still engage in them in order to “calm down” the obsessions. I am still a little but uncomfortable talking about what my specific OCD was, but am hoping that one day I will find the courage to share what my exact OCD was about.

Based on science and research, Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz came up with the Four-Step Self-Treatment method at UCLA School of Medicine. In this book I learned that by engaging in my compulsions, which I engaged in to relieve myself of anxiety from my obsessions, actually did quite the opposite of that, in the long run. By engaging in my compulsions, I was actually doing more harm to myself, even though it “calmed” down the obsessions temporarily. By engaging in my compulsions, I was just feeding into the disease, causing a cyclical and growing loop that spiraled my OCD out of control. Reading this book, I learned more about what OCD was, the science behind it, and the 4 steps that I implemented in order to free myself from the life-sucking disease.

The 4 steps include

1.     Relabeling

a.     Recognizing and calling your anxiety provoking thoughts out for what they really are, obsessions.

2.     Reattributing

a.     The why. Reattributing to why you are having these obsessive/anxiety provoking thoughts, it is due to a brain chemistry imbalance, a medical condition called, OCD. 

3.     Refocusing

a.     Now knowing that it is just an obsession and desire to engage in the compulsion (to calm down the obsession – which ultimately does more harm than good), you can refocus your energy into another purposeful/meaningful activity.

4.     Revaluing

a.     This step involves revaluing the obsessions/compulsions in order to decrease the intensity and frequency of them.

This is just a brief overview; the book does a much better job of explaining and showing you how to implement these steps to overcome your own monster. So what was my experience like with these steps? These steps were definitely not easy. I spent a lot of time in phase 1, the relabeling phase. Learning how to relabel my thoughts. Learning how to retrain my brain. For the longest time ever, these thoughts would just immediately cause life-sucking and energy-draining anxiety, and so it was really hard for me to begin relabeling. But I was motivated to beat my enemy, OCD. It did get really tricky at times though, because your irrational OCD mind wants to take over your rational mind. So when you’re relabeling, just keep this in mind, that it wants to trick you, in order to keep you under its devilish grasp. But as a psychology major, with advanced studies in neuroscience, I know that the brain is plastic and malleable; you can retrain your brain, and this is what these steps are based upon. It’s worked for me and its worked for so many other sufferers, who are now also free from the disease. So if we can do it, then you definitely do it too! Just don’t give up.

My journey wasn’t linear. I’d try really hard to not give into my obsessions and compulsions, but sometimes, I did, and that’s okay. When I did give in, I told myself, that next time I’d be do better. Eventually, it got easier and easier, and I was naturally able to implement these steps, and finally freed myself from the ugly grasp of OCD. This obviously did not happen overnight. It happened over a period of time. But with persistence, I overcame my monster, and so can you.

If you or anyone you know is suffering from OCD, please refer them to this resource. I 100% stand by my words when I say that this book was life-changing, significantly changing my life for the better! I am still so so happy to this day that I found this book while I was suffering, or else, I’d probably still be suffering today.

Another side note I forgot to mention was that this book shares a ton of OCD sufferers’ stories. All the individuals in this book had different types of obsessions and compulsions. These stories honestly made me feel a little better knowing that I was not ALONE or CRAZY, because some days, I really did feel crazy. It made me feel better that there was an actual name to what I was going through, and why I was going through this (as the book talks about what your brain’s doing).

If interested, you can find a link to the book here.