Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, is a psychiatric illness characterized by incessant experience of invasive thoughts and consequent performance of compulsions in a futile attempt to dissipate anxiety. A disease officially defined in the psychiatry guideline DSM-5, OCD has the prevalence of around 2%, making it a relatively common disorder.
While many OCD patients experience thoughts detached from reality, they often possess good insight, meaning that they recognize the presence of flaws in their magical or unrealistic thoughts. Indeed, OCD patients often maintain a perfect sense of reality, distinguishing them from the patients suffering from psychotic diseases such as schizophrenia.
As can be seen in the documentaries featuring OCD patients, OCD often inflicts significant suffering to its patients. For a deeper, more professional discussion of OCD symptoms, please visit the following site:
American Psychological Association OCD Page
Moreover, I have been writing on OCD, so if you want more resources related to OCD, please take a look at the links shown below:
Overcoming OCD: You Are Always One Step Away From The Escape
Dealing With OCD: How To React The Instant OCD Attacks You (3 Steps)
The Essence Of Human Knowledge, And Its Relationship With OCD
Cure OCD: NOHSEMPERLUX Guideline For OCD Recovery
OCD and Medication
Like many other psychiatric illnesses, many medications are available as treatment options. The first-line treatment often involves the use of SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) and depending on how the patients respond, other medications may be added to the prescription list.
Overall, medications are scientifically proven measures for alleviating OCD symptoms. The only problem is, they aren’t perfect. This is the reason that I am writing this post: while medication is a great supportive measure, it is not yet the perfect remedy.
Therefore, I advise OCD patients to follow the tips mentioned below. The tips comprise what I would like to call the “NOHSEMPERLUX guideline for OCD”.
The First Tip, Get Exercise
At first glance, exercise may seem largely unrelated to the psychological problems that many OCD patients suffer. However, if you are an OCD patient desiring to be free of OCD, exercise is one of the must-to-do.
Exercise is the scientifically proven way to deal with many psychiatric illnesses. A Harvard psychiatrist Christopher M. Palmer, author of the book Brain Energy, asserts that many problems of the human mind can be explained in terms of energy deficiency. While we often take the mobility and intricacies of a human body for granted, the normal functioning of a body is largely dependent on significant expenditure of biological energy. Just like how a country cannot become prosperous without access to food and resources, a functioning body cannot exist without energy, mainly present in the form of adenosine triphosphate or ATP.
Eating food is the first step of getting the energy, but it doesn’t suffice. In order to produce lots of ATPs needed to get your organs alive, you have to break down the nutrient present inside food and convert it into the form your cells can use, the aforementioned ATP. It doesn’t really matter how much you eat every day. Even if you consume 10,000 kcal of food, if your body is only capable of converting 1000kcal into ATP, you will end up with 1000 and get into the energy-deficient state.
Think of it this way. Uranium is a super-rich source of energy. That’s why we use it for nuclear powerplants. However, would eating 1g of Uranium (please don’t do that by the way) make you super fat? No, because Uranium is not something that our body can convert into ATP. In essence, it doesn’t matter how much or how well you eat. What truly matters is whether your body is in a state capable of converting consumed nutrient into a usable form.
What determines our body’s capacity to convert nutrient into energy is insulin resistance. When insulin resistance is high, no matter how much we eat, we are in the constant state of energy deprivation and hunger. That’s why obese people often feel hunger despite having large store of fat. Regular exercise, especially those that aim to strengthen muscles, improve insulin resistance and improve the body’s capacity to generate energy. This energy can be used to improve one’s cognitive capacities, eventually combating obsessive compulsive disorder.
There are about 650 skeletal muscles in the human body, and each of these muscles can be regarded as a power generator. By keeping as many of these muscles healthy, you can get a constant supply of cellular energy that can be employed as a potent weapon against obsessive compulsive disorder. That’s why exercise is so important.
The Second Tip, How To Deal With OCD
Patients, when confronted with obsessive compulsive disorder thoughts, become so distressed that they temporarily lose their sense of reality and end up carrying out the compulsions. Unfortunately, in the long term, submission to OCD perpetuates symptoms instead of mitigating them.
OCD patients eventually comply with OCD because OCD thoughts often feel so real, indistinguishable from healthy thoughts. In that case, I advise you to follow a single simple principle: if a thought gives you anxiety, it is OCD no matter what. It doesn’t matter whether the thought is about hitting people with car or stabbing people to death. The content doesn’t matter. A thought is OCD if it makes you anxious.
Just by identifying OCD thoughts, the process of ignoring the thoughts becomes much easier.
The Third Tip, Know OCD
It is true that OCD symptoms arise as a consequence of mind’s defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are methods that human mind uses to deal with various challenges in life. For instance, the defense mechanism sublimation involves the incorporation of productive artistic or physical activity as indirect means of expressing pain.
However, the fact that OCD arose in an attempt to protect ourselves doesn’t justify its existence. OCD is a malicious guest, analogous to tumors. Tumors arise when unfortunate error occurs during cell division. While cell division is essential for survival, occurrence of flaws during the process can give rise to tumors and cause death. No one would call tumor a friend just because it was produced during a life sustaining process of cell division. Likewise, OCD is never a friend, but a foe.
Therefore, it is always wise to ignore what OCD is saying. OCD is like some strange guy stubbornly claiming that 1+1 equals 3, and dealing with such a guy is often likely to be a waste of time. While OCD always tries to gaslight you into believing that following it would lead to happiness, the actual result is always the opposite, so there’s no good at all in listening to OCD. Knowing this will definitely help you combat OCD.
Conclusion
OCD is a challenging enemy. Defeating it is only possible after you have rigorously trained your mind to grow resilience against it. And following the tips outlined above will help you cultivate the capacity. Analogous to how muscle growth takes time and effort, mind growth necessary for overcoming OCD requires extensive effort. While the process may be exhausting, one thing is certain: one of the two has to disappear, you or OCD. There’s no doubt that the latter is the happy ending.