C’mon Make My Day: A Talk On Observing Obsessive Thoughts

This is a simple description of how to help yourself deal with obsessive fears in a healthier manner using imagined exposure and creative visualization techniques. Only practice the exercises described to you later on after you have listened and practiced anxiety relief programs and are able to use meditative approaches for the relief of everyday anxieties and stress. For those who are self-disciplined only.

Transcript

Come on,

Make my day.

This program is not a meditation but a lecture on how to apply your newfound practical meditation skills in ways that can make your life more comfortable.

You can listen because I introduce you to an exercise that you can do to resolve problematic anxiety.

However,

Do not attempt to do this exercise until you have listened to all my previous guided meditations and creative visualizations in a concentrated meditative state at least six times each.

The exercise is simple enough to understand but you need to understand some background.

Anxiety becomes a disorder when it begins to interfere with your daily functioning at home and outside at work,

In school or in other social environments.

There are many kinds of anxiety disorders including PTSD,

Panic,

Agoraphobia,

General anxiety disorder,

Social anxiety disorder,

Obsessive compulsive disorder and many of its varieties including anorexia.

These disorders vary in what triggers the anxiety,

When they occur,

What thoughts are associated with the triggers and how the anxiety is handled.

One thing they have in common is they all have anxiety as their motor.

If you have followed my previous guided meditations in order,

They have installed new automatic ways to respond to the triggers and they have given you a few non-medical ways to reduce your anxiety.

These comprise a powerful set of skills but they must be practiced.

The first meditation in my series which I called I Am The Captain Of My Ship reminds you that you are not your body,

Your thoughts,

Your emotions or your desires.

Although it often does not seem so,

You are greater than these in this company of tissues,

Thoughts and desires called you.

You are the boss and they are the employees.

If they have become problematic,

Then you need to show them who's boss and coordinate their participation in your life.

Otherwise they start running your company in ways you don't want.

You are the captain of your ship and they are the crew.

If they have become problematic,

Then you have a mutiny on your hands and you need to show them who's captain.

No boss or captain will regain control by staying at home,

Hiding in his or her office or staying in his or her cabin until the employees or crew members stop their unruly behavior.

If they are handled this way,

Then they will only grow more unruly and problematic.

In other words,

Avoidance in its many forms does nothing to resolve the problem.

People with PTSD avoid anxiety by trying to control everything and being ready to jump into action anytime.

People with panic disorder and phobias do so by avoiding situations.

Like orthopedics avoid it by staying at home,

Staying in safe places.

People with general anxiety disorder avoid it by futilely worrying all the time as a replacement for meaningful action.

People with anorexia avoid their anxious feelings by setting new weight goals and controlling their eating behaviors,

Focusing on their goals instead of their feelings.

And people with obsessive compulsive disorder avoid their obsessive fears by keeping themselves busy with repetitive compulsive behaviors until the fears subside.

All of these are ways to avoid or escape the anxiety,

Ineffective ways to control the anxiety.

As a meditator,

We know all things are impermanent.

They come and go.

They rise and fall.

This includes your health condition,

Your desires,

Your thoughts,

And your emotions.

And anxiety comes and goes.

Somehow if people practice any of their avoidance behaviors while the anxiety is subsiding or growing,

They may get the wrong idea that these behaviors can make the anxiety go away.

They start practicing these behaviors with spotty results.

If the anxiety subsides enough times while they're practicing these behaviors,

They get the wrong impression that these behaviors are working.

So they keep practicing these behaviors.

However,

Anxiety always subsides whether or not these behaviors are practiced.

If it doesn't subside enough times while they're practicing these behaviors,

They will change behaviors or try to anesthetize themselves one way or another.

Some compulsive anesthetizing behaviors like alcohol,

Drugs,

And sugar can be very harmful to the body as well as to your own social functioning.

And while they may numb the body's anxious feelings,

They do not resolve the anxious thoughts.

Therefore,

Neither the boss nor the captain will regain control of his or her enterprise practicing these avoidance and anesthetizing behaviors.

I wonder what makes a disorder.

Most often in the field of psychiatry,

Anxiety is thought to become a disorder when it affects one's role and social functioning.

I personally think that this is not a good enough definition.

There are plenty of very unstable working people right there in the offices.

Perhaps you know of here.

Now I'm not a psychologist or a doctor,

But I personally believe the only difference between psychologically healthy and psychologically unhealthy people or unhealthy person is his or her body response to the anxiety and the anxious thoughts.

A psychologically healthy person may very well have the same anxious thoughts,

But their body may not be so sensitive or high strung,

So to speak,

Or so inextricably tied to the anxiety as a psychologically unhealthy person is.

In other words,

The same anxious thoughts are there,

But the body reacts differently.

Thus,

Much of psychiatric medicine aims at reducing the body's response to thoughts,

Not the thoughts themselves.

Of course,

Meditation involves not attaching to thoughts and the thoughts between the thoughts,

Letting them go.

As we all know,

That is easier said than done,

Especially for people with obsessive thoughts and fears,

Both conscious and unconscious.

For people whose fearful thoughts capture their attention and whose bodies remain attached or highly strung to those thoughts,

Then the only solutions are psychiatric medicine which numbs body responses to those thoughts or something other than drugs that change the body's response to those thoughts.

Enter creative visualization and guided meditation,

Which we have practiced quite a bit.

I'm going to tell you now how to play Come On,

Make My Day.

This game is for all people who have problems dealing with their anxiety,

But especially for people with obsessive thoughts who react to obsessions with compulsive repeated behaviors like washing,

Checking,

Touching,

Or asking a bunch of questions to be reassured.

The behaviors are varied,

And when one behavior is controlled,

Another one may pop up.

Even the obsessions are varied,

And when one stops,

Another one will pop up.

This is called symptom replacement.

Getting good at playing the game Make My Day will be very useful in handling all the new compulsive behaviors and obsessions that may keep popping up.

You may not be able to cure the disorder,

But with this game and the skills that I have introduced so far,

You can learn to live with this disorder.

In the movie Dirty Harry,

Clint Eastwood dares the bad guy to attack him because that would give him a reason to kill the bad guy.

In other words,

Harry was eager to face off with the bad guy,

And he would goad the bad guy into making a move by saying,

Go ahead,

Make my day.

Now I'm not going to accuse that part of you that plays you like a puppet with your obsessive thoughts of being a bad guy.

It's not really bad because it thinks it's protecting you by warning you all the time.

This has,

However,

Become out of control and is making you uncomfortable.

It's your job,

Boss,

Your job,

Captain,

To show that part what you want.

You are the boss,

You are the captain,

And you can be Dirty Harry,

So to speak.

Goading that part of yourself to come on,

Bring on the obsession while you maintain your cool.

Exposure programs do this with varying degrees of success,

But they often do it with real anxiety-provoking situations.

But they rarely do it with meditative techniques that we have practiced in my previous programs.

Now Dirty Harry was a well-armed,

Well-trained gunman.

In fact,

You are well-armed to prevent and reduce your anxiety if you have practiced my previous programs thoroughly.

And you're pretty well-trained too to handle everyday anxieties.

However,

If your anxieties have become problematic,

You need further regular practice dealing with them in advance before they occur.

Come on,

Make my day.

This is how you play this game.

Simply find a time in the day to say,

Come on,

Make my day,

To that part of you which has in fact been playing you with obsessive thoughts.

To bring on one of those obsessive thoughts and try to scare you.

Here's the point.

Instead of playing you,

You are going to play it.

It has a good time playing you when it wants.

However,

That part doesn't like being played when he or she does not want to play.

In the end,

He or she doesn't want to play anymore.

She may try to find another obsessive thought to scare you with.

Unfortunately for that part,

You are more than willing to play that one too on your own terms.

On your own terms.

On your own terms,

Boss.

On your own terms,

Captain.

You call out that part to make your day for different time periods.

Making sure that you are less anxious at the end of the game than you were at the height of it.

Here are the rules and you may want to write them down.

One,

To play,

Just say,

Come on,

Make my day.

Imagine being in the anxiety provoking situation,

Seeing what you would see,

Hearing what you would hear,

Feeling what you might feel like with oil or dirt or bloating,

Tasting what you would taste like oil or sugar.

Do it with your eyes closed.

Make it as real as possible.

Make the picture in your head bigger,

Closer,

Move them to locations in your mind that make them more foreboding.

Make the sounds louder or say the fearful words expressing the situation.

What if I fail,

What if I fail,

Etc.

Again and again.

Imagine the muck and the germ on your hands,

Whatever.

However,

Keep making it as real as you can without engaging in any avoidance or compulsive behaviors such as hand washing,

Checking,

Or number counting and so on and so forth.

Until the end of the allotted time or until your anxiety is reduced to an acceptable level even when you don't want to go on.

It's kind of like being in a scene in your own scary or anxiety provoking movie and getting into your own cool collected dirty,

Hairy character and staying in that character.

If you cannot raise any anxiety,

Then you need to change the situation.

Two,

Play once or twice daily for different lengths of time.

Maybe taking Friday off,

Monday 20 minutes a session,

Tuesday 25,

Wednesday 15 minutes a session,

Thursday 30 minutes a session,

Saturday 20 minutes,

Sunday 10 minutes.

It would be best to play the first game of the day early morning,

Getting up an hour before you usually do,

And the second game an hour before dinner time.

I even had a client getting up at 3 a.

M.

In the morning and shining his shoes and scaring himself with those things a couple of times a week.

Three,

If the anxiety is still high at the end of the time period,

You continue playing until it has reduced to below the early alert stage.

So you may need to set aside 60 minutes,

Even if it's only a 10 minute session day.

Four,

Do it rain or shine until the obsessive fear doesn't bother you anymore.

If it returns,

Start the week of practice over.

If it is replaced with another obsession or compulsion,

Start playing the game with the new obsessive thought.

If there are two thoughts bothering you,

Then do one earlier in the day and the other later in the day.

Do this religiously,

Showing that anxious part.

You are willing to play him or her as long as is necessary until it stops.

How do you know which obsessive thoughts to choose when there are so many different ones?

Go from the ones least scary and least bothersome to the most scary and most bothersome ones.

You have the relaxation tools you need to deal with your alerted,

Distracted,

And overly concerned stages of anxiety if you have practiced my previous programs.

And don't judge this as successful or not until you have done it four to six months.

In the end,

That anxious part of you will want to take his or her toys and go home because you aren't fun to play anymore.

So you know what to do.

Later,

Say four to six months after intensive training,

If you again find yourself being overly concerned or bothered by certain anxious thoughts,

Then it's time for a week or two of make my day again.

Believe me,

You will find the time between one anxiety attack and another will get longer and longer and you will become less and less disturbed.

Obviously,

If you are not very disciplined,

If you are easily discouraged or you have not reaped much benefit from my previous programs from anxiety,

Then you will not want to play make my day and you may seek out professional help and medications.

Peace.