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dgreen97
122 Posts |
 Posted - 08/03/2013 : 12:48:35
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Read short article about the irony of OCD a week or so ago. Something about this article clicked with me in the way the pain is being reinforced and how we're doing that to ourselves. Im going to use myself for example but I think it could apply to many of you.
If you're like me, you're obsessed with the pain and generally afraid of the sensations you feel. There is this inner urge to constantly go online and look at articles, message boards, talk to your family, your therapist, about anxiety and TMS. Talking to somebody each day reassures you that everything is going to be ok and you feel a little better for a very short period of time, but that urge comes back. This in itself is the problem.
From what I understand so far, the reason this is a bad idea is because every time you seek reassurance that you're ok, you're in effect worrying and activating your fear response system in your body. Why else would you seek reassurance if not to calm worry? There is no other reason. So when you seek reassurance by asking people "is this normal, is this ok, am I doing this right?" and monitoring your pain, inward focusing, etc. you're telling your brain "I am in danger. This body part Im focusing on is in trouble, do something about it." It's pretty much telling your brain to stay on high alert, be hypersensitive to the sensations in that particular part of your body, and monitor them until the threat is gone. Every time you seek reassurance, you're still telling your brain that the threat is there. If you inward focus and find out your still in pain, that activates another stress response. Like Alan Gordon says in his article "breaking the pain cycle", this can happen probably a hundred times a day. Essentially by doing this you're activating little stress responses, or maybe even big ones, many times a day keeping you stuck.
I've been talking to art for a while now and we talked about two things:
1. when having anxiety, focus on the breath. For me, this hasn't been working so well because when I focus on my breath my thoughts still run rampant and its really easy for me to get sidetracked and focus on pain thoughts again. Affirmations that are mindless seem to work better because i can focus on the specific words and it blocks out the other negative thoughts. This can be seen as not indulging in the fearful thoughts.. when you do this you're containing your worry and not activating stress responses. If you're in pain and you start worrying about it (like i still do and Im working on it), you're activating stress responses and delaying recovery.
2. limit the time you spend looking information up about anxiety, TMS, anything that is seeking reassurance. If you're still looking up articles about your symptoms, that has to go first. I thought for a while that I stopped looking up stuff about my condition but in reality I may have stopped looking up things about my eyes... but I went right to looking up things about anxiety and OCD instead. It's the same thing just shifted to a different subject. This is still reassurance seeking and fuels the fear response system. I'm trying to do only 20 minutes of looking stuff up a day now. A while back I would literally spend 2-3 hours some days looking up information, trying to calm myself down. The only way I could pull myself away from it was to just shut the computer off.
So the thing that I wondered for a long time was "Why do I have pain in my eyes? What is significant about my eyes that makes it my primary symptom?" To relate to the information about, my brain senses a threat to my eyes and releases stress hormones into my body. When it does this, it tightens up the muscles in my eyes to "protect them" from the threat. My threat would be that Im worrying about my pain, why is it up today, is looking at the computer or reading this book going to make it worse, etc." When these thoughts come up and I indulge in them, it activates stress responses and tightens the muscles further. It's the same thing when somebody that isn't drunk gets injured in a car accident and somebody who is drunk doesn't.
The person who is not drunk sees the threat up ahead, BRACES for it and the muscles in the body tighten. Due to this tightening, they get hurt from the crash. Somebody who is drunk as hell driving and gets into a wreck, nothing happens to them because they are loose as a goose and don't care. The muscles don't tighten, the fear response doesn't get set off, so they are much less prone to getting injured.
So I think thats what going on here, at least for me. Im hypersensitive and my nervous system is hyperstimulated from stress and anxiety. When I worry about my eyes Im telling my brain hey, there is still danger to my eyes. activate the flight or fight response which tightens my eyes and makes them hurt. So the exact opposite is happening to me than what Im trying to accomplish. In my mind I think that worrying more and trying to find out why Im in pain is going to alleviate it faster, but this is the exact opposite of how OCD works. When I look back now, in the 8 years that I've had pain there has been one consistent thing: I never stopped worrying about it and I always sought out more information about why I was still suffering. Unfortunately to get to this point most people need to go through every single physical treatment humanly possible before the OCD doubting mind will let the physical go and you can concentrate solely on psychological. Right now I dont have fears that my eyes are going to be damaged forever, or that there is a physical problem with them, thats all been ruled out at this point. Im actually afraid of feeling the sensations of pain itself.
Here is one article about this:
http://www.ocfoundation.org/eo_selferp.aspx
I need to get off of here now, my 20 minutes for looking crap up today is up.
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icelikeaninja
USA
316 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2013 : 15:28:03
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Very good. During my pain free week last week I was on here still talking to people who were in pain and giving advice.
The pains moved back in but I solidified it was Tms and am trying my best not to ask for reassurance etc .
All directions point Tms but I get a glitch or a fear when I feel a tweak of pain.
Yes, my mind veered off symptoms to looking up Tms, Claire weekes, pyschosymatic illness.
I was reading one guy who was so convinced he had aids/HIV that he developed joint pains, rashes, vision problems, but had 5 tests in the course of two years saying negative.
He finally went to psychotherapy and in ten weeks he was fine again.
Another is of a guy who had genital pain only to have it relieved by antidepressant.
So it's tough but we have to fake it until we make it. My problem has also been the fact that I have not worked since may. Starting my job this coming week I feel will get me over the hurdle of this I believe because of less focus on the body.
This job can certainly use my OCD and perfectionism.
**Sure I can lay down on a bed of nails and not have pain but why am I having back pain when laying down on a soft mattress? |
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RustyShackleford
5 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2013 : 07:22:53
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| I never believed I had any form of OCD until anxiety struck. I believe like many that hypochondria is a brutal meeting point between anxiety and OCD with a revolving door stuck in the loop of physical symptoms, worry, fear and back again. This journey through TMS/anxiety has shown me how problematic OCD can be and maybe given me a greater understanding of it as this was a new manifestion of worry and fear for me, not a life long problem as many with OCD have/had suffered for a greater part of their life than I have. |
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Realization about OCD and this pain
