Episode 9: What Mindfulness Means to Me

Episode 9: What Mindfulness Means to Me

I'm so excited to publish this episode, as I believe mindfulness with OCD is SO confusing and has so many different meanings. Mindfulness absolutely is a concept, but is it what we believe it to be because of what we hear, or what we misunderstand? 

The speakers in this episode are able to give their own definitions based on lived experience and share with us what that looks like for them. I hope so much that it translates to you and that you can pull from their experiences and examples of practicing mindfulness that will help you see that it's an incredible and helpful tool to include in your own journey toward recovery. 

If this podcast helps you or inspires you, please consider donating or sponsoring us monthly through our Patreon account at www.patreon.com/intrusivethoughtsunmasked
Check out the different levels of benefits you can receive by helping us keep these conversations going! 

If you are struggling with shame, or other emotions that come alongside OCD and are feeling isolated and need support, please come join my online community where you can get weekly sessions with certified peer support specialists and support groups, and monthly classes and events. Join us when you are needing a community of people who 'get it'!
https://the-ocd-support-community.co.mn

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Intrusive Thoughts Unmasked, the podcast where we explore what it's really like to live with intrusions, the emotional landscape that comes with them, and the common experiences so many of us share. I'm Chrissy Hodges, and I created this podcast to bring lived experience into the light for those navigating intrusions and mental rituals with OCD. My hope that is here, you can finally pick off the past so often we're gonna hide this disorder. I want you to feel free, understood, and accepted exactly as you want. Today we're going to explore the segment when my speech of three different speakers, and they'll be sharing what my phone is.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

My name is Brigita Fitzpatrick. I am a volunteer advocate with OCD Island. And I have 20 years of lived experience of obsessive compulsive disorder. Today I'd like to share with you about two integral elements of my healing journey: mindfulness and self-compassion, or using another phrase that I really like: loving kindness towards ourselves. To introduce to you my journey with mindfulness, I'd like to quote John Kabadzin, a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher. He says, You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. I've been a spiritual person from a young age. I used to read books on Buddhism, reincarnation, near-death experiences, and yoga as a teenager. In the 90s, I attended a group in my local town where we would meditate following the instructions of an Indian spiritual teacher. But after a while, my interest in meditation waned. I found it extremely boring and convinced myself that it just wasn't for me. Through the years that followed, I kept hearing stories about how people took up mindfulness and it changed their lives. Every now and again, I would decide to start a daily mindfulness practice, only to give up on it again after a week or two. I guess I should pause here to answer the question: what do mindfulness and meditation mean? Mindfulness is the mental state of being fully present, aware of the current moment, and accepting thoughts and sensations without judgment. Meditation is the formal practice or technique used to cultivate this awareness. Getting back to my personal story, in the last 20 or so years, I've come across countless accounts of how we can rewire our brains through the practice of mindfulness to achieve more presence and a newfound sense of calm in our daily lives. A little quiet voice inside me kept encouraging me to give the practice a go, even for just five minutes a day, and then keep it up. But eventually, laziness and all thought patterns took over, and what remained was a sense of frustration and disappointment in myself that I'd given up once again. Well, that all changed in May of 2024. For the previous nine months, I had been going through what I now describe as the second dark night of my soul. To use a different term, I had an OCD relapse. The definition of an OCD relapse involves a significant sustained return of symptoms, the pre-treatment severity, often triggered by stress, life transitions, or reduced therapy adherence. In my case, it had been a combination of stopping the medication that I had been on for the previous 17 years, and an event in my personal life that triggered an overwhelming sense of grief and loss in me. As a result, I found myself once again in the terrifying grip of intrusive thoughts of harm and suicide. After two days of not being able to sleep and being completely overwhelmed by fear and panic caused by never-ending loops of intrusive thoughts, one morning I found myself alone in the house and putting my hands around my throat and squeezing it. You see, I had been following a nonsense thought down a rabbit hole, a thought that said, the only way that you can prove to yourself that you wouldn't be able to go through with choking yourself is actually physically putting your hands around your throat and trying to squeeze it. I described this thought as nonsensical now, but at that moment it felt logical yet petrifying at the same time. The intrusive thought eventually convinced me to obey. I slowly started increasing pressure on my throat. It lasted a few seconds, then I stopped. Even though I proved to myself that I indeed could not go through with killing myself, instead of the relief I had hoped for, my anxiety went through the roof. I'd realized that for the first time in my life, I had acted on an intrusive thought. After this episode, I was convinced that if I was left alone, my mind would eventually bully me into committing suicide. That evening, I went to the local acute psychiatric unit and begged to be admitted as I believed that I needed constant supervision. I got admitted and ended up spending six weeks at the unit. I was put back on medication and I got in touch with a wonderful and highly experienced OCD specialist, Dr. Claudette Portelli from the OCD clinic in Malta. And we had 10 online sessions together. She guided me through exposure and response prevention therapy while I was still in hospital. I dutifully did all the ERP exercises, but just like in the case of my first ERP treatment years before, I found it no help. On the contrary, it made my anxiety levels increase. Looking back on the experience of ERP, I now understand that while it can be an effective type of treatment for many living with OCD, it is not the ultimate holy grail for treating this mental disorder. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for everyone. It certainly didn't work for me. After those six weeks at the psychiatric unit, I was assessed and discharged. I found transitioning back to the home environment quite challenging, even though I noticed that all the psychiatric medication that I had been put on at the hospital was slowly beginning to take effect and gave me a bit of room to breathe. I experienced the next few months as challenging and tiring, but not without moments of relief and clarity. Right out of hospital, I instinctively knew I needed to be around people and to have a purpose again. I had been a stay-at-home mom for the previous 19 years, looking after our three wonderful children, but now that they were all teenagers, I felt I'd lost purpose and didn't know who I was anymore. Thankfully, I was able to get a job in my community working for a local development network as a Meals on Wheels coordinator. My job was to oversee a service that provided hot meals delivered to the homes of elderly people in our area. But aside from the administrative side of things, due to a lack of volunteer drivers, I had to deliver meals myself on most days. I must admit that it took a great amount of determination every morning to get myself to work and carry on with my duties in spite of the waves of anxiety, the loops of intrusive thoughts, and the feeling of constant tiredness that I was still experiencing on a daily basis. But I understood I just had to push through it all. As winter turned to springtime, my favorite time of the year, I began to feel a little more hopeful about the future. It was around this time that I decided to give mindfulness another go. After some Google search, I registered to take part in an online meditation course for beginners, led by a wonderful Tibetan Buddhist monk and teacher, Yungei Minyar Rinpoche. What attracted me to his course was something I'd heard him say in a video. He described how he'd suffered from severe panic attacks as a child, and how over time, through his meditation practice, he learned to treat panic as a guest or an opportunity for curiosity rather than an enemy. He talked about his realization that rather than fighting anxiety, one should be friended. He said, and I quote, My anxiety accompanied me like a shadow. But when I got to know it through awareness, we became very good friends. The idea of making friends with my anxiety made me really curious. And I dived into the course with a lot of hope. I started doing the daily exercises set out in the curriculum. The course was very well structured, catering for complete beginners and very clear to follow. Although I wasn't exactly a total beginner, I felt that I had to start from scratch. To start with, we were given short exercises where we had to focus our awareness on various different objects of meditation, like sound, smell, touch, taste, or breath, etc. As I was on the road a lot at the time, delivering meals to several different clients, and the distances between the homes of clients were at times quite substantial. You see, I live in the Midlands of Ireland in an area of farmlands and boglands. I got into the practice of doing the mindfulness exercises while I was driving. There was one particular exercise I really enjoyed, keeping my attention on the scenery in front of me. Lots of quiet country roads with trees and flowers coming alive in the springtime, the sunlight and shadows on the lanes in front of me. I practiced simply observing without thought as I drove past a tree to another one in the distance. With a little practice each time, I got better and better. And I experienced for the first time in my life what it is like to be an observer of reality without mental chatter. The gap of no thought didn't last longer than maybe 15 or 20 seconds. But it was enough to make me experience an empty mind and realize that although there were no thoughts, my consciousness was still there. Some kind of essence that was me, but it was impossible to describe in words. Another type of meditation that I must mention here, which gave me instant results, was focusing on the breath as the anchor to meditation. The instruction simply was to place our awareness on the area of our body where we experienced the movement of our breath the most strongly, be it inside the nostrils, at the back of the throat, or the tummy or chest rising and falling with each breath, and just keep our focus there. When thoughts arised, and they always did, all we needed to do was simply acknowledge them without judgment, and then gently pull our attention back to the breath. A thought arises, it's perfectly natural, notice it without judgment, then return to observing your breath, was the instruction. Rimpoche likened this practice to going to the gym and pushing weights. Each time you return back to your breath, you strengthen your awareness muscle, he said. From the first time I gave this exercise a go, I experienced a wonderful sense of calm and peace slowly building in me as I used my breath to anchor awareness. Mindful breathing exercises are incredibly powerful, and I wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone suffering from anxiety and OCD. As I proceeded with the course, the next phase was to observe our emotions with our judgment. Mignor Rinpoche's instructions were to observe the physical, visceral sensations, our emotions triggered in our body. His advice was to approach this kind of practice with a lot of kindness towards ourselves and to start off by doing one or two minutes at first, to then very gradually build up to 15 minutes at a time. As instructed, I began paying attention to the sensations of anxiety in my body. For me, it was the chest area where I felt the anxiety the strongest, and I still do. This dense, heavy, unmovable energy felt like a large rock sitting over my heart. Sometimes it felt so heavy, took my breath away. I could feel it all through the day, like an ever-present silent shadow, never letting his guard down. I started practicing directing my attention to the bodily sensations of anxiety every time an intrusive thought or harm or suicide sneaked into my consciousness. I tried, let's call it, dropping from my head down to into the body, no matter how uncomfortable it felt. Over time, I noticed that as I placed my awareness on the physical sensations of distress and discomfort, the intrusive thoughts started to lose power and they eventually disappeared. This realization filled me with a sense of relief and hope that I hadn't felt for a very long time. In spite of the thoughts that meditation is boring, that I'm doing it all wrong, that I have much more important things to do, and so on, I insisted with keeping the practice up on a daily basis. And over time, I became a passionate practitioner of mindfulness. After months of practicing staying with the uncomfortable physical sensations caused by anxiety, as opposed to running away from them, I finally started to understand what Rinpoche meant by saying it is important that we befriend discomfort. Through personal experience, I came to the realization that while the physical sensations of overwhelming emotions like anxiety and fear felt uncomfortable and at times even painful, it was the act of trying not to feel those uncomfortable emotions that caused the suffering, not the emotions themselves. I now believe that in spite of our knee-jerk human instinct to push unwanted experiences away, we all need to welcome these experiences. We need to learn to stay. It is only through staying and bringing our shadows into the light of our consciousness that we have the ability to eventually release those shadows. Dear listener, before you make the mistake of thinking that I've become enlightened through meditation or that at least I've become the perfect meditator after over a year and a half of practicing daily, I must disappoint you and confess this simply is not true. Unfortunately, I've had to come to the somewhat painful realization that my mind is naturally active and chatty. It is so chatty, in fact, that during meditation, I still most often end up following thoughts and getting lost in them only to realize 30 seconds or a minute in that I was gone again. But you know what? In that second that I realized that I was gone, that's awareness. And so now, instead of judging myself for having been carried away by a thought during practice, I'm learning to appreciate those moments of awareness and clarity when I realize what has happened. Mindfulness has been an integral part of my healing journey, for which I'm extremely grateful. It has become one of those tools in my well-being toolkit that is readily available to me anytime I need it. All I need to do is pause and take a deep breath, and I'm connected to who I really am once again. To those of you who are just starting your mindfulness practice, I suggest to try this very simple yet powerful little exercise. At random times during the day, pause and simply take a deep breath in and out. Then do it two more times while focusing on your inhale and exhale, and a slight pause between the two. It is a short and simple mindfulness exercise, but one that, when done regularly, can yield several mental, emotional, and physical benefits, such as stress and anxiety reduction, improved mood, better sleep quality, lowered heart rate and blood pressure, reduced muscle tension and pain, and increased energy levels. So, dear listener, will you give mindfulness a try?

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Hello everybody. So so honored that uh Chrissy has asked me to join all of you today here and be part of this podcast and talk about something that is is really one of my favorite things to talk about. Mindfulness. And so many, so many, so many different things that I can say about this. And do my best to boil it down to some of the core principles that I think about when it comes to mindfulness, and in particular as it relates to living with OCD. And I think, you know, one of the things that I have noticed about getting into conversations with people about mindfulness is this notion of I don't really know how to do that because I can't get my mind to turn off. I hear that from people all the time. Usually comes up when we're talking about meditation. I I can't meditate because I just can't get my mind to quiet. And I I always try to make it a point, right, to remind people, let people know that that that's not the goal when we're when we're talking about mindfulness or or meditation. It's impossible to turn our mind off. We'd probably be a little bit worried about you, right? If all of a sudden your mind was just totally turned off. We're not trying to get off to stop when it comes to mindfulness. What we're trying to do is really get a little bit more into a place of noticing. Noticing what our mind is is generating and producing in a in a given moment. Noticing our thoughts. Not getting thoughts to go away, but but really learning how to how to notice them. Recognize that we are this consciousness, this awareness that is is noticing or noticing our emotions or noticing sensations that we're feeling in our body. And there's a lot of different ways to practice. It doesn't have to look like meditating. Sometimes we kind of have this notion that you know mindfulness is all about being on a mountaintop in nature, away from life or away from civilization. Kind of think that that's what it means to be mindful, and yet the reality is there's opportunities for mindfulness in every single moment that we find ourselves in. If any of you can can relate to this, I know I certainly can when when because it relates to to O C D that moment where we get really, really, really activated by something, whether it's external or internal, or when our when our O C D gets really flared up. And spikes and we get flooded with that. Like for me, it's usually the like a really hot sensation that runs through me. Kind of that panic feeling that that shows up when I get really, really activated. I think a lot of times what what for me starts to show up is I'm like, how do I function? Right? Like, how do I function now with this really uncomfortable stuff here? How do I kind of this this feeling of like, okay, my life has to be put on pause now until all this uncomfortable stuff goes away? Is there wisdom in in recognizing that when we get really, really triggered, sometimes we just have to ride the wave and and and just kind of ride it out and realize like life's gonna suck for a little while? Of course, of course, of course, of course. That's that's part of the journey of of living with OCD is giving ourselves a lot of compassion that like, hey, life is gonna just look different here, maybe for a little while. And I need to be really, really gentle with myself as I'm riding the wave of this this activation. And I also want to infuse and and and introduce some ways that we can practice mindfulness in a given moment like that, which is recognizing that our brains are really, really, really, really good, particularly those of us living with OCD. Um, our minds are really, really good at kind of subscribing to this idea of life will be okay once I don't feel anxiety, life will be okay once I don't have intrusive thoughts, life will be okay, right? Like it's it's always off in the future. It's just what our mind does. It's always projecting into the future. Kind of like I'll I'll start living my life when fill in the blank. And and mindfulness is this really powerful tool to really push back on that, right? And and recognize that life is it's happening right here, right now. As we as we sit here together, as I speak to you, as you listen to my voice, as you take in, right, like whatever you're seeing right now around you. Um, this is life, right? This is the this is life. These are the these are the moments of our life right now. And I know this stuff can sound really kind of out there and cheesy and obvious and simple, and yet I think it's I I I know this within my being that the it's actually very profound. That life is always happening right here, right now. And we miss out on a lot of life always thinking that it's off in the future. And so to me that's kind of what mindfulness is all about. Is is paying a little bit more attention to simple, profound things happening right here in front of us in every moment. The color of the sky, the branches on the tree. I'm just looking out my window right now, actually, and kind of noticing things that I see, right? Like the the color of the bush across the street. There's beauty in those things, and I think the more the more life that we live, right, and then the widely spread, I guess I can only speak for myself, right? The more life that I live. Started to realize like those things really matter a lot more than maybe I would have believed even just ten or fifteen years ago. Finding beauty and meaning and and anchoring in the simple profound moments that we find ourselves in right here, right now. That doesn't mean that the simple, profound present moment isn't sometimes extremely painful, right? Or isn't sometimes extremely uncomfortable in the case of living with OCD, right? When we're when we're when we're in a moment of real activation, or we're we're in a moment of just an onslaught of intrusive thoughts that are causing a lot of shame. What causes, I think, a lot of the suffering is is when we're we're engaged with a a push and pull of those things that we're feeling in the moment, right? So for instance, shame or an intrusive thought that's causing a lot of shame. That thought in and of itself is it wildly uncomfortable? Of course. Is it really, really tempting to to get pulled into it and ruminate about it and figure out what it means and go down the rabbit hole that I know all of us are so familiar with? Of course, it's tempting to do that. But the thought itself isn't what causes the suffering, right? It's it's it's our response to it. Mindfulness really is this recognition that when we're hit with an intrusive thought, there's a there's a stimulus, which is the intrusive thought, and then there's this space that happens after that where we get to decide where we actually have a little bit more choice than we realize. How are we gonna respond to that thought? That's where our power lies. We can respond to that thought with, oh my gosh, I'm gonna ruminate about it. What does it mean? This must mean I'm a terrible person. Um, all those different things, right, that are are so familiar to us. Or mindfulness in a moment like that looks a little bit like that thought really is uncomfortable. Hate that that thought is there. Really wish that thought wasn't there, but it is. And I'm gonna 2% allow myself to just name that it's there. Hey, I notice my brain is generating this thought. It's uncomfortable. Ooh, I'm even noticing a lot of anxiety coming up, noticing my brain starting to project into the future about what this is gonna mean for the rest of my day, the rest of my week, the rest of the month, the rest of the year, right? The projecting into the future, I'm gonna notice all of those things. What's it like to just allow that thought, accept that that thought is there? Doesn't mean we love that it's there, but I'm gonna accept that it's there, allow it to kind of be a part of the dance right now in this moment, and I'm gonna go out and take the garbage out, take the dog for a walk, and do my best to engage with the simple, profound present moments that I find myself in. And what I've noticed is that the more that I can do that, the more OCD tends to loosen its grip a little bit. Does it totally go away? Of course not. Is it just this simple, easy, joyful process? Of course not. It's a process of dancing, right? Dancing with the present moment and and all and all that we find ourselves experiencing in in the present moment. I think what's really cool about mindfulness too is that it kind of gives us access to these like this this part of ourselves, which I believe to be like our true essence, right? Who who each and every one of us are at the core, kind of that like heart-centered space that is who we all are as as human beings. Mindfulness gives us access to that, even if it's for like a point two-second moment, even if it's a really, really brief moment. And and OCD is really, really good at spinning us off into all these terrible stories about who we are. Um, and when we are practicing something like mindfulness, it allows us to touch, I think, sometimes that part within us that is who we truly are. For me, that's been a really profound thing. That might not be the way that a lot of you look at it out there, and that's totally fine, right? But that's kind of my my viewpoint on it all is like OCD can spin me off into all these different shame-based stories and just mental noise that pulls me away from life. And when I'm a little bit more engaged in the noticing practice of, hey, I notice this thought, I notice this emotion, I'm practicing being mindful. I've always described it as it feels like I go in there and I kind of touch, even just for a moment, who I feel like I truly am, which is a much more expansive, open, loving being than my mind likes to sometimes convince me that I am. That's the thing that's so hard with OCD, right? Is just that I know I keep coming back to it. It's just all those really, really scary, convincing things that we start getting tangled up in as far as who we think we are. And I think mindfulness is one pathway back to our true essence, who we truly are. And remember too, my friends, that this is a practice. I don't call it a mindfulness perfect, we call it a mindfulness practice because we never fully achieve it, right? We never fully master it. But it's a moment-by-moment practice of shifting our relationship to our thoughts, not trying to get them to go away completely. Be gentle with all of you out there, my friends.

SPEAKER_03 31:05

I'm Lauren Rosen, and I am a licensed psychotherapist, author, podcast, co-host, and I also live with OCD, and I'm really glad to get to be here to to talk about mindfulness and what mindfulness means to me. And it's I think meant a lot to me over the years and and has, I don't think it's dramatic to say that it's quite transformed my life and and it's been so central to my career as well now. It's a topic that I am very passionate about, that I really uh enjoy sharing with other people. And I think just as a starting point, I like to recognize that there are a lot of misconceptions about mindfulness out there and what it is and what it's not. I think that when I was first introduced to the concept, I had you know images of monks sitting in the lotus position. I definitely had a lot of expectations about one, what one would feel uh in that practice of specifically of meditation, even though that is different from mindfulness itself. But I had a lot of of ideas that I would I would feel zenned out and blissed out, and I shouldn't have any thoughts if I were doing that. Oftentimes I think these expectations of what mindfulness is and what I would say are misconceptions really stand in the way of people practicing it, busting some of those myths. First and foremost, you do not have to feel anything any particular way in order to be practicing mindfulness. You don't even have to practice meditation in order to be practicing mindfulness. So, in terms of what mindfulness isn't, it's not a state of being. You don't have to remove your thoughts from your head much as you might wish that you could. That's not actually what mindfulness entails. It's not a breathing exercise or like a series of breathing exercises, which is oftentimes I think people think, oh, well, I'm supposed to breathe a certain way. All of these things and these misconceptions can really make for um for a lot of challenges in terms of people getting into the practice and investing in in the practice ultimately. Oftentimes people sit down and they they try to meditate, for instance, and they think, oh gosh, like I'm still having all these thoughts. I must be doing it wrong and ultimately are turned off from something when that's that was never actually a necessity to begin with. In terms of when I'm talking about mindfulness, what I'm speaking to is this non-judgmental awareness of what's happening in the here and now. And it's a definition that's used a lot. Most of that is attributed to a man named uh John Kevinson, who started a program called Mindfulness-Based Trust Reduction that's become quite popular uh throughout the uh United States and has there's been a lot of research on uh in terms of it being supportive of people's well-being for a great many uh challenges and conditions. This concept of having a non-judgmental awareness of the here and now, it's it sounds pretty simple. And I think that the practice is simple, though not necessarily easy, and sort of breaking down why each of the components of what mindfulness is are important, and like I'll speak to how they've been meaningful in my my own experience. We tend to judge our experiences as good or bad as humans. And uh it's something that um I think Daniel Kahneman speaks really well to in his work in terms of the biases that humans have, the recognition that we we tend to want to put these things into black and white categories of good, bad, um, right, wrong. It's um it's evolutionarily adaptive. It's like this this really quick way of essentially determining whether or not we're in danger. We do, we judge, we judge quickly so that we know when we need to flee quickly or fight or do whatever we need to do to ensure our safety. Of course, I'm talking about in a very specific context where where it is life or death, but that's the one that counts generally because of the fact that like that it's when the chips are down, like that that's what leads to survival or not. And so we do tend toward judgment, and judgment gets us into a lot of trouble outside of this one very particular context of being in danger. And so, you know, we tend to view things as good or bad, like thoughts and feelings, and enter the experience uh of somebody with OCD. We have thoughts, thoughts about all sorts of things, and maybe I'm a bad person, and and maybe I'm immoral, and and maybe I'm living a lie, and all of these sorts of things. Of course, there are a great many, but just drawing a few from my own history, well, back in the day, that these thoughts come up and we're like, well, I don't want to have that thought. That's a bad thought. I have to say, you know, it's not like that's my favorite thought or one that I would necessarily go out and choose, but ultimately it's not good or bad. It's just this event that's happened in my mind. And that that is non-judgment. That is what mindfulness affords in that realm is the ability to see, like, oh, I'm I'm having a thought. It's an objective sort of third-party awareness. Like, I'm having the thought that I might be living a lie. Oh, and I'm feeling really anxious as a result of that. I'm noticing that my heart is racing or my chest is tightening, maybe there's a lift in my stomach or tightening in my throat. So that is a non-judgmental awareness of feelings. What I will say is what that afforded me when I was in the throes of OCD, this opportunity to not be a slave to these experiences when I wasn't acknowledging them from this non-judgmental perspective, when I was judging them as like, I don't like that, I don't want to make it go away. I would just start resisting it in some way or another, trying to disprove this idea that maybe I was a bad person or that I like, I was living a lie. Um, and then I'd get trapped. I'd spend all this time trying to figure out whether or not I was living a lie in this particular example. And what mindfulness did for me in that respect, and what I've seen it do for a lot of people now, is to take some space to go, oh wait, I'm okay, I'm having this thought and I'm having this feeling. What do I want to do now? How do I want to respond now instead of reacting immediately in a way that completely hijacks life, right? Whether that's I'm gonna seek a lot of reassurance or I'm gonna ruminate about this, or I'm gonna wash my hands excessively, or I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna check to make sure I didn't run someone over. Obviously, this, I mean, this can look so many different ways in the context of OCD, but having that pause built in is one of the greatest benefits of mindfulness. There's a well-known quote, I think, that's used a lot in our community, uh, that's uh attributed to Stephen Covey. Uh, and the the quote is between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response, and our response lies our growth and our freedom. I think that that's what mindfulness is down to, is like making that space, that space between stimulus and response. If I judge, then I've lost the thread and I am no longer able to have this space to make a different choice, to choose deliberately how I respond to this experience, and I will get stuck. That's one of the ways that mindfulness has been very meaningful in my own recovery and that I've seen it be meaningful to a lot of others. So there's this non-judgment piece, and then there's the the aware, it's a form of awareness, right? Mindfulness is this form of awareness non-judgmentally of what's going on in the here and now. And I think so many of us with OCD and anxiety spend so much time in the future, sometimes a lot of time in the past as well. And so learning how to ground in what's actually happening in the present moment, especially for people who attend for mental compulsions, who really like try to resolve things in their own minds, which certainly was a camp that I fell into. Understanding how to absorb yourself in what's actually happening in the here and now, to disengage from thinking without pushing away the thoughts that have come up is also one of the strengths of mindfulness practice. And that's where practices like meditation can become so useful. I'm just going to speak to what that can look like as well, because I know that that's been really um instrumental in my own recovery and like I said, watched it be that for many other people. But finding an anchor, of like a place to anchor your attention in the present moment. Oftentimes we do use the breath, not a breathing exercise, but like actually placing your attention on the breath. But oftentimes I'll have people start by paying attention to the sounds in their environment, um, especially when you tend to be really stuck in your head all the time. Going further inward can can be difficult. And and I think having some sort of tether to the external world can be helpful in this. If I put my attention on the sounds in my environment, what what's going to happen is that before long my mind is going to wander. And this is when I have this opportunity to practice mindfulness. I can go, oh, look, look what's happening in this present moment. I'm going to objectively, that is, non-judgmentally, notice that I'm having this thought. And the thought may be an obsession or it may be about something totally different. But having that moment to practice recognizing when you are having a thought, when you're engaged actively in thinking about something, trying to sort something out, is super helpful when you have a disorder that is predicated on endlessly trying to resolve doubt, to be able to see that moment of like, oh, I'm trying to figure this out right now is the essence of freedom, really, from that process of trying to figure things out without that moment of awareness, you're stuck. And so again, the awareness, the non-judgment, and like what's actually going on here and now, and when we're doing a basic mindfulness meditation, all that involves is if when you notice that your mind is wandered, you gently invite your attention back to that anchor in the present. So the sound. And it has such a clear application in daily life, right? If I am having, I've had this thought that I'm living a lie and I'm feeling anxious, and I want to figure that out. Maybe I start trying to figure it out. I'm deliberating, like, well, but no, but I am honest, and this is how I know I'm honest. Maybe I'm trying to reassure myself. And then all of a sudden I'm like, whoa, wait a second. I'm thinking, I have this opportunity now to gently bring my attention back to wherever it was before I had that thought. Obviously, there are going to be a lot of things that are beyond the sounds of my environment. Let's say I'm having a conversation, maybe with Chrissy Hodges, and I've noticed this thought, I've noticed this feeling, and I'm I'm on my way to try and figure it out. I I can notice and I can go, oh, wait, I want to get back to this conversation that I'm having. Like I can, I can ground and listening to the words that are coming out of her mouth. Obviously, that's not happening right now, but I presume it will be at some point. And I can really hear what she's saying, and I can also bring qualities to this moment that are meaningful to me. Like, and that can be my focus instead of how do I resolve this question that is ultimately probably unanswerable anyway. From my vantage point, like it's a remarkable practice. And I think it again, there's so many misconceptions about like, well, if people sitting in the lotus position and and levitating and you know, having all sorts of like positive vibes only, and it's not that you can be mindful of any emotional experience that's central in recovery too, right? If I can non-judgmentally notice that I'm feeling anxious, I can allow it to be there and I can soften toward it and I can open toward that experience so I can get on with my life. So, yeah, so many ways in which I uh mindfulness can be such a a beautiful skill for for those of us with OCD, and and hopefully all of this is uh is helpful to somebody or supportive and better understanding that this is actually a very practical concept. I think maybe that's the the last thing that I wanted to say about it is that one of the pieces that I think makes mindfulness so remote for many people or seem inaccessible is that it's this esoteric, what are we doing? And like, yeah, I'm not sure how to do that, and that's only for this kind of a person, and and really recognizing. What we're talking about is shifting awareness and being able to have a more broad perspective on what's happening inside of us and around us. Having this third-party objective viewpoint, like a bird's eyed view on life, so that we have the freedom to do what matters to us.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Thank you so much for being here today and for unmasking with me. I hope you enjoyed our episode when we talked about what mindfulness meant to me with the three different speakers. I do think that mindfulness is such a confusing topic and there's so many different ways of looking at it. And these three speakers, I really felt like brought what mindfulness means to them in different ways and also in a way to clarify how we can use it in working toward recovery from OCD. I really hope it was helpful for you. It was absolutely helpful for me. If this podcast supports you, inspires you, or helps you feel a little less alone, I'd love for you to consider supporting it on our Patreon. Your monthly pledge helps me to keep these conversations going and create even more resources for our community. You can pledge as little as$5 a month for our episodes at Intrusive Thoughts Unmasked. To join us, go to patreon.com slash intrusive thoughts unmasked. And remember, when you're here, you do not have to wear the mask. You are seen, you are understood, and you're accepted exactly as you are. We'll see you next week.