OCD – Obsessive Compulsory Disorder
Feeling a compulsion to do something or to carry out a whole ritual repeatedly in order to feel some level of satisfaction and comfort. No amount of will-power is enough to stop this compulsion and no medicine can treat it.
Medically the cause of OCD is never known, as with many other “mental” disorder. This is because its cause is an experience that has had a high impact on the person and that has left the person with a deep feeling of helplessness and riddled with guilt. The event is most often buried down in the unconscious mind and the sufferer has no recollection whatsoever of it.
OCD most often develops as a child or adolescent when any experience can easily make a long-lasting impression on the unconscious mind and when we can easily feel guilty.
OCD is the result of a coping mechanism developed as a way to cope with feelings of danger or lack of safety and the mind perceives that it cannot cope with what’s happening.
As a result once the event is over, often it is unconsciously repressed (especially if the event took place during our early childhood), or we even make an effort to consciously forget about it, shifting our attention from the intruding thoughts of the event (which are typical of post-traumatic-stress disorder) to more pleasant thoughts in an effort to forget or get over the experience.
Post-traumatic stress symptoms (flashbacks, nightmares, intruding thoughts, OCD, panic, anger, constant worry, IBS etc.) are all ways our mind is trying to draw our attention to the traumatic event in an effort to resolve it.
Because the unconscious mind does not recognise the linearity of time (past, present, future) it does not realise that the traumatic event is over and in the past, which is why it keeps trying getting our attention to it.
This explains why as soon as we think of the event, if known, the physical reactions we get are the same, as strong, as when the event happened, even if it happened many years ago! We can safely say that a traumatic event forms a glitch in our mind that is normally believed to be very difficult to fix.
Fortunately hypnosis offers a lending hand even when the event is repressed and it can prove difficult to retrieve even in hypnosis, as the projected pain of re-experiencing can be a strong avoidance factor for people. I these case in order to undo or lessen OCD we can work with the feelings of lack of safety and guilt, in a way that the unconscious mind understands that the danger is not present anymore and there is no need for it to try and take control of the situation any longer, as a way to cope with helplessness and to feel at peace with itself.
Remember: “Nothing is Impossible, the word itself says I’M POSSIBLE!”