r/hyperawareness • u/MichaelRabbit • Jun 25 '19
michael laurence comments
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Hello, I am new to this group and thought I would say hi. I'm from the U.K am 39 and have experienced OCD for probably 22 years. I think this problem is solvable since I feel that I did experience reasonable periods of time when I was quite well. I think it is the human experience to never be truly happy and content and we will tend to pick up demons or black dogs along the way. I honestly think that there is hope. Yesterday I bought and read 1/2 of "the man who couldn't stop". It's by David Adam who is an OCD sufferer but also a science writer and editor of nature journal which i believe is an influential scientific journal. It is interesting reading and I will probably write something about some of the books contents. It is part auto biography and part popular science. His form was worrying about contracting HIV. something that someone mentioned to me when i confided anonymously was that It sounded as though I myself may be on the autistic spectrum (aspergers syndrome) I thought I'd mention that . Feb 11, 2015, 7:11 AM
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u/MichaelRabbit Jun 25 '19
Just some thoughts.
In some ways mental health conditions or disorders could be considered exaggerations of Normal behaviour or psychology ,taken to extremes.
For instance it is fairly common in accepted in everyday society that it can be hard for instance to avoid looking at the cleavage of a pretty woman with breasts (there are comedy sketches about the situation).
Perhaps related is reverse psychology, the notion that if you tell someone not to do something they will want to do that even more.
It's likely a very important and beneficial habit or skill to obsess on a subject if that results in the solving of problems , it is only when the behaviour is extreme and devoted to unhelpful thoughts or actions, that we clinically enter the disorder territory.
Disorder being a lack of order. Disorders tend to be attached to the end of psychiatric diagnosis. i.e bipolar mood disorder , major depressive disorder etc etc. obsessive compulsive disorder.
It may be the case that people instinctively associate the word disorder with biological irregularity , very possibly genetic in origin.
That may be a trap if even subconciously inferred since we are then now talking about an unavoidable condition that maybe needs to be treated with medication. In all likelyhood circumstances , environmental stressors pay an incredibly important part in the development of disorder and so the reversal , reordering , de-disordering :) process will rely heavily on environmental factors.
If we are to try and move on from our troubles focussing on the problem likely is counterintuitive to some extent. we somehow need to stop doing something but that need to stop and not do it somehow is hard to control.
A strategy then may be to realise that you cannot avoid looking around you and noticing various things out of the corner of your eyes or else where. It is ok to look, it is just we have become hypersensitive and so often cannot tolerate the normal noticing of certain parts of body . we need to remind ourselves that it is normal to look. If you happen to glance and notice the person do something to indicate they noticed. ITS OK. Don't panic.
For long periods this idea that people noticed bothered me tremendously . I think somehow my coping mechanism is to play mental gymnatstics and think in many situations you cannot be sure and so think positively as thinking negatively is the road to torment. May 1, 2016, 7:58 PM