I was turning my back on my illness for most of my life, sunk in the vicious circle of OCD over and over again, obsession after obsession, compulsion after compulsion, I was convinced that I was really like that. If you are a person with OCD I don't need to go too much into the feelings that this generates, besides anxiety, anguish, guilt and shame, a constant mental and even physical exhaustion for always trying to control absolutely everything around you and without realizing it, reinforcing more and more the vicious circle of OCD....
By that time my focus was on trying to control my thinking, I tried all kinds of tools, but the reality is that the mind always ended up beating me, I'm not saying that you can't control the thinking, but perhaps for how my mind was at that time I should have started many boxes before.
The reality is that I was fighting against a pathology that I had absolutely no idea why it was happening to me nor how to treat it, which generated more and more anxiety, shame and guilt.
Then, something bad happened, I really started to resist every obsession, putting all my energy into stopping those thoughts from coming, but the result was the other way around, I started to see that the more I resisted the more present the OCD became, which led me even more to feel obliged to comply with what the OCD was telling me which meant that I could not find any way to break the vicious circle of obsession-compulsion and also indirectly reinforced it.
As you can imagine, I was really desperate for a solution and I always maintained the conviction that taking a medication is not solving the underlying problem, on several occasions I had been told that possibility but I never gave up on the dream of being able to improve my quality of life, enjoy my achievements, my moments, my affections and have peace of mind without the need to generate dependence on a drug.
Don't turn your back on OCD...
That's when I discovered that I had finally been all my life turning my back to the pathology, without wanting to know about it, without going deeper, without being able to separate it from me, so I decided to do the complete opposite, instead of turning my back on it, I changed my focus and started to look at it head-on with the full intention of really knowing it and knowing how it works, and from that moment on; everything started to change, and I finally realized how:
- Identify all the stages of OCD every time it appears.
- Recognize the critical stages of the vicious cycle of OCD.
- Act to break the vicious circle until it disappears
- To help people who are going through what I am going through.
Because I finally realized that our health condition is like any other, it requires effort, care and requires that the patient has the tools to be able to cope with it, just as the person with diabetes learns to control his sugar levels or the hypertensive to perform a proper diet and exercise or the asthmatic to avoid exposure to cold or agents that can trigger an asthma attack.
Each patient must recognize the corners of their pathology to know how to overcome it. When I say understand it, I mean to study it, to understand how it behaves, why it exists, what makes it stronger, what its strategies are, what its process is, where its weaknesses are, etc.
Getting closer empowered me in a way that I started to see OCD without fear, just as another pathology that has a process, a behavior pattern, and a way to treat it that allows us to live with a better quality of life.
Understanding that this is the key allowed me to :
- To be able to face the OCD with tools and not let it hurt me.
- To know how and when to break the vicious circle
- Transpolate my experience and positively impact people's lives.
- To help people identify the phases of the vicious cycle of OCD and break it.
I really look back and feel satisfaction in starting this journey of recognition and responsibility to take charge of my health condition.
I can now enjoy my accomplishments, have peace of mind, be in the present moment without the need for control and live more peacefully.
Having walked this path and crossed it inspired me to tell my story and be able to create and share with you valuable information so that you, too, can begin to separate it, understand it, know how to face it, and finally feel better.
