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Positive Emotion Generation And How It Can Help We Sufferers


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I wanted to share my experience of working with this, as I believe it may help others. So I have drawn up a simple guide. 

I am very greatful to our forum friend Snowbear for explaining this to me, and helping me personally to seek to utilise it. 

The Bad Emotions 

When we experience an OCD intrusion, it is playing - through a theme - on underlying threat, fear, revulsion or the turning on its head of one of our core values (such as love, care, cherishment, protection). 

So when we experience it, it will generate a very powerful response utilising bad emotions such as dread guilt anxiety fear - and these produce an urge to push away, an urge to carry out compulsions. This often leads to the creation of a vicious cycle of distress and repetitive obsessive thinking. 

Tackling the intrusion at source by powerful defusion and with healing positive emotions can stop this adverse development in its tracks and ease us away. 

Important ; don't try and force the intrusion away, or neutralise it with an opposite thought - these actions will only make it stronger. 

But rather look to gently, though wilfully, ease your focus away and into positive emotional deployment like love and kindness. 

Coupling it with mindfulness is especially powerful. 

Why should that be?  Well, as presented to me by my wonderful therapist, we carry out all our obsessing and compulsing in the active "doing" part of our brain - programmed to look for problems and endlessly seek solutions - even when it is following the wrong trail. 

Mindfulness switches us out of this part of the brain and into the benign, just being, part of the brain - where our mind is simply focused in the present, in the moment,and quiet - just observing. 

So, when we switch our emotional response from being consumed and eaten up by powerful, bad, emotions - at the same time switching from active brain mode to benign, and mindful,  mode - we can stop vicious cycles from forming, ease down fear and anxiety, and recover our equilibrium. 

As always with my presenting style, this is a very simplistic guide; but,throughout my own life, I have found the simple way is usually the best way. 

Have a good day everybody. :)

 

 

Edited by taurean
amendment
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Great post, Roy. I was unfamiliar with the love/kindness method but I have seen you discuss it before. I've saved this post into my bookmarks.

I have a question though, how can you ensure that redirecting your emotions to more positive ones when we have intrusions doesn't then turn into a compulsion?

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It's a great question from our learned scholarly undergraduate :)

But I think I will leave that open for potential discussion - I know what I think, but it might produce a, positive, debate :)

 

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Sounds good :a1_cheesygrin:.

I wonder whether it's something to do with focusing more on the emotions that are being generated rather than the actual thoughts itself perhaps, in a mindfulness-based way. I've always struggled with mindfulness when I've been in peak distress though I have to say.

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Incidentally, this is something we touched on in the OCD-UK member's chatroom last night - I credit this, and the intense distraction of using the chatroom, as key tools in helping me break a recent damaging cycle of distress. 

The chatroom can be a very good place for new ideas to form /be debated. 

I liken it to nebulae in the world of astronomy - the nurseries where new stars are formed :)

(To use the chatroom, become an OCD-UK member folks!).

Edited by taurean
typo
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This concept is an add on to normal CBT,  like The Four Steps. 

Yes, we are not targeting the thoughts so much as the bad emotions generated by them. 

Taking away focus from them, and refocusing into love kindness etc,. is a powerful tool. 

Whilst I think it works most effectively in conjunction with mindfulness I too struggle to enter the mindful state when badly distressed.

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11 hours ago, Lynz said:

how can you ensure that redirecting your emotions to more positive ones when we have intrusions doesn't then turn into a compulsion?

Good question, Lynz.

The simple answer is that PEG (positive emotion generation) isn't something you do in response to OCD. :no: 

I think when people are fixed in the mind set of 'I have a problem, how do I fix it?' it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of PEG only in those terms and treating it as a salve for a wound. It's not intended to be that at all. It can of course be used as a salve, but if has the potential to be much, much more and far more powerful, even life-changing. 

Individuals can adopt the principles as much or as little as they want. Even a little bit of PEG will be beneficial, and to date (thousands of years of philosophy and practise) nobody has reported suffering harm as a result of giving it a go. :) 

PEG is a life skill, like learning to swim so you don't drown if you fall into deep water, or learning to dance so you can enhance your enjoyment of music through the addition of movement. 

Love/kindness meditation and 'easing away bad feelings' is just one aspect of PEG. It covers the generation of a wide range of emotions depending on what result you want to achieve. There are exercises you can do to enable you to generate any chosen emotion at will - proof that we are not a passive victim to our emotions but that we actually control them and can change them consciously.

There's also an overlap with cognitive therapy in that part of PEG is making cognitive changes. These include adapting how you look at the world around you, choosing how you perceive and recall events in your life, and viewing yourself as having place in society as a whole rather than seeing yourself only as an individual.

It's about expanding yourself as a human being, fulfilling your true potential, engaging with the world in a positive and meaningful way which allows you to make a positive contribution to humanity. 

Big themes? You betcha! :yes: But the personal benefits are HUGE. 

Instead of life being a struggle with threats coming at you from all sides and every day feeling like you're solving one problem after another, you choose what you will experience as your life. Note, I'm not saying you control events, just your emotional response to whatever events you experience. 

Sadness, grief, anger, envy, guilt, shame - any of the negative emotions you can name - these are part of normal life, but we've developed a culture where they dominate our thinking and where it's believed they need to be avoided for life to be good/happy/worthwhile. 

PEG is about putting all those negative emotions back in their proper place, neither more powerful than the positive emotions, nor more worthy of our attention. It's about coming to understand that negative emotions are not something to be feared, avoided or eliminated. 

A healthy life is about balance, being able to experience positive and negative emotions alike without needing to permanently reside at either end of the spectrum and without fear of being at the negative end when it occurs.

If you know with the confidence of practised ease that you can lift yourself out of depression, or defuse monumental anger, or erase unnecessary guilt, or regain a balance on the suffocating shame you feel...all in a matter of minutes - what's to fear from allowing those 'negative' emotions to be present for a while?

Perhaps because a regular practitioner of PEG knows it will be brief and that they control when the emotions arise and when they end, having some of these negative emotions actually enhances life rather than diminishing it. 

Becoming an expert in PEG is not dissimilar to a Buddhist reaching the mental state of Nirvana. Only there's no religion, no beliefs, no culture, no cult.

PEG is a life skill - learning how to switch on and off your emotions (positive and negative) on a whim. :) 

'The positive psychology movement' are a group of psychologists who are doing the modern day science research into how and why this works, how the brain controls emotions rather than emotions ruling the brain, but the principles go back thousands of years are are ratified by many of the world religions and ancient philosophies. 

In case anyone is interested, more than ten positive emotions have been identified. The ten most common ones are: love, joy, serenity, gratitude, amusement, awe, pride in achievements, interest/curiosity, inspiration/emulating role models, and hope. 

Hope is a very important one as it is the paradox of being a positive emotion we feel when miserable! 

Learning to harness each of these positive emotions so you can switch them on at will and with ease, enables you to switch focus away from any negative emotions when they arise.

The emphasis is on creating positive emotions, not pushing away negative ones.

PEG changed my outlook on life and enables me to deal with the emotional challenges involved in tackling my OCD after 40 years of stalemate. It's not a treatment for OCD in itself. 

But it's an extremely useful tool to have in your mental tool box.:) 

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It is a powerful tool.

But we still need to use CBT and when we do that, the intrusions should begin to lessen in power and frequency anyway. 

Remember people talking about others who always seem to be happy?  Why is that?  They make it their business to be happy, they have a positive bias and a happiness psychology. 

When we have learned the new habit of focusing ing into positive emotions we can assume that positive bias, that default of a happiness psychology and it will become natural to us. 

Add a dose of mindfulness to the PEG recipe and, when we get good at this, we can hopefully "spoke"  wheels of distress before they get started, shut down an anxiety response and replace it with the relaxation response. 

 

Edited by taurean
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16 minutes ago, taurean said:

we can hopefully "spoke"  wheels of distress before they get started, shut down an anxiety response and replace it with the relaxation response. 

I see where you're coming from, but doesn't the mind set of 'stop the wheel of distress before it gets started' hold to the unhelpful belief that any kind of distress is 'ideally' to be avoided, eliminated or feared? :unsure:  

The whole point of PEG is to end this cultural fear of negativity, even to embrace the negative as necessary for the experience of a balanced, complete life.

I'm struggling a little to see how you can keep the belief 'distress should be avoided' and not fall into the trap Lynz pointed out of making PEG an unintended compulsion, simply using the good to push away the bad. 

Rather, what you need to aim for is acceptance and brief experience of the bad before purposefully lifting yourself out of it with the generation of one of the positive emotions. 

I know 'serenity' is a meaningful goal for you, Taurean, but to truly get to serenity you have to pass through the distress and move beyond it - you can't side step the distress and hope to feel serene. Make sense? 

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13 minutes ago, snowbear said:

but doesn't the mind set of 'stop the wheel of distress before it gets started' hold to the unhelpful belief that any kind of distress is 'ideally' to be avoided, eliminated or feared? :unsure:  

I think the likelihood of an unhelpful response to OCD leading into a vicious cycle of anxiety and distress can be greatly reduced if we use PEG and mindfulness when an intrusion occurs. 

Prevention is far better than cure. :)

16 minutes ago, snowbear said:

I know 'serenity' is a meaningful goal for you, Taurean, but to truly get to serenity you have to pass through the distress and move beyond it - you can't side step the distress and hope to feel serene. Make sense? 

In those times when I am not in an "episode"  of OCD, I can go for long periods in a serene mindful state. This week has been just such a period when little has bothered me. 

So by being in that mindfulness state, I haven't sidestepped distress - rather more there was no distress because distress didn't form :)

 

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It's good to hear that you're able to go long periods without difficulty. But if you're simply rattling along the road, letting the wheels spin and hoping not to encounter any ruts or bumps, that's not mindful serenity, is it? :unsure: That's what I'd refer to as 'unwary limbo'! 

Any bump or rut in the road of life can upset your apple cart and throw you into the ditch of distress.

What you should be able to achieve with PEG (with practise) is to find yourself thrown off the apple cart into the ditch, to be IN a state of distress (even quite an extreme state) and being consciously able to stop the upturned wheel, change the emotion and move forward again in positive mode. 

Try, if you can, to break free of this pervasive idea that distress is something to be avoided at all costs.

Instead aim to learn how to manage it mindfully (without being overwhelmed by it), control it (separate your thinking from the emotional state) and turn it around (create your own serenity in spite of the distressing events which surround you.) 

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That's nicely put Snowbear and very reflective of what many of us experience. 

Having suffered a very bad relapse into OCD depression and anxiety for five months, I think I have done my time on distress for a while, and will be happy if I can continue on in a nice mindful happy state  for the time being :)

 

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20 hours ago, snowbear said:

Good question, Lynz.

The simple answer is that PEG (positive emotion generation) isn't something you do in response to OCD. :no: 

I think when people are fixed in the mind set of 'I have a problem, how do I fix it?' it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of PEG only in those terms and treating it as a salve for a wound. It's not intended to be that at all. It can of course be used as a salve, but if has the potential to be much, much more and far more powerful, even life-changing. 

Individuals can adopt the principles as much or as little as they want. Even a little bit of PEG will be beneficial, and to date (thousands of years of philosophy and practise) nobody has reported suffering harm as a result of giving it a go. :) 

PEG is a life skill, like learning to swim so you don't drown if you fall into deep water, or learning to dance so you can enhance your enjoyment of music through the addition of movement. 

Love/kindness meditation and 'easing away bad feelings' is just one aspect of PEG. It covers the generation of a wide range of emotions depending on what result you want to achieve. There are exercises you can do to enable you to generate any chosen emotion at will - proof that we are not a passive victim to our emotions but that we actually control them and can change them consciously.

There's also an overlap with cognitive therapy in that part of PEG is making cognitive changes. These include adapting how you look at the world around you, choosing how you perceive and recall events in your life, and viewing yourself as having place in society as a whole rather than seeing yourself only as an individual.

It's about expanding yourself as a human being, fulfilling your true potential, engaging with the world in a positive and meaningful way which allows you to make a positive contribution to humanity. 

Big themes? You betcha! :yes: But the personal benefits are HUGE. 

Instead of life being a struggle with threats coming at you from all sides and every day feeling like you're solving one problem after another, you choose what you will experience as your life. Note, I'm not saying you control events, just your emotional response to whatever events you experience. 

Sadness, grief, anger, envy, guilt, shame - any of the negative emotions you can name - these are part of normal life, but we've developed a culture where they dominate our thinking and where it's believed they need to be avoided for life to be good/happy/worthwhile. 

PEG is about putting all those negative emotions back in their proper place, neither more powerful than the positive emotions, nor more worthy of our attention. It's about coming to understand that negative emotions are not something to be feared, avoided or eliminated. 

A healthy life is about balance, being able to experience positive and negative emotions alike without needing to permanently reside at either end of the spectrum and without fear of being at the negative end when it occurs.

If you know with the confidence of practised ease that you can lift yourself out of depression, or defuse monumental anger, or erase unnecessary guilt, or regain a balance on the suffocating shame you feel...all in a matter of minutes - what's to fear from allowing those 'negative' emotions to be present for a while?

Perhaps because a regular practitioner of PEG knows it will be brief and that they control when the emotions arise and when they end, having some of these negative emotions actually enhances life rather than diminishing it. 

Becoming an expert in PEG is not dissimilar to a Buddhist reaching the mental state of Nirvana. Only there's no religion, no beliefs, no culture, no cult.

PEG is a life skill - learning how to switch on and off your emotions (positive and negative) on a whim. :) 

'The positive psychology movement' are a group of psychologists who are doing the modern day science research into how and why this works, how the brain controls emotions rather than emotions ruling the brain, but the principles go back thousands of years are are ratified by many of the world religions and ancient philosophies. 

In case anyone is interested, more than ten positive emotions have been identified. The ten most common ones are: love, joy, serenity, gratitude, amusement, awe, pride in achievements, interest/curiosity, inspiration/emulating role models, and hope. 

Hope is a very important one as it is the paradox of being a positive emotion we feel when miserable! 

Learning to harness each of these positive emotions so you can switch them on at will and with ease, enables you to switch focus away from any negative emotions when they arise.

The emphasis is on creating positive emotions, not pushing away negative ones.

PEG changed my outlook on life and enables me to deal with the emotional challenges involved in tackling my OCD after 40 years of stalemate. It's not a treatment for OCD in itself. 

But it's an extremely useful tool to have in your mental tool box.:) 

Wow, such a great post Snowbear, thanks. :thankyousign:

Can you recommend any books or anything for me to read? I'd be interested in learning a bit more about it as it's all very new to me.

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There's loads online, Lynz. Just google it!

This blog entry is a fairly good intro to give more of an idea what it's about: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/positive-psychology-movement/

If you're looking for a book on it, Barbara Fredrickson (one of the leading psychology researchers involved in it) has written two:

'Positivity' is perhaps nearest to the kind of cognitive ideas you might encounter in OCD treatment. 

'Love 2.0, Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection' is more about forgiveness (self and others) through developing a sense of love/connection with the rest of humanity. It goes more into the idea about the positive philosophy being 'like circles in a pond radiating outwards', so less directly related to standard OCD treatment, but perhaps relevant if you have particular issues with anger and mental contamination and need to work on your ability and willingness to forgive someone. 

Note: neither book talks specifically about OCD or mental illness. This is positivity for healthy minds to enhance their lives further. But it's not rocket science and what applies to making healthy minds healthier certainly applies to poorly minds in need of a bit of a boost. :) 

 

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