Wren

Yes, I agree with ocdjonesy, because you do sound a bit hyped up right now I was a fairly serious mediator before ending up in NHS mental health care. I carried on for a bit afterwards. I'm not doing great right at this minute, so I'll try and come back to this thread later and talk more about my experiences, but most mediation teachers and centres have better awareness of mental health now than they did the past (as do most people). As such, they are likely to tell you to get professional mental health treatment first, before you seriously commit to meditation practice. This is both for their sakes and yours - they don't want to be liable for making you worse, and some forms of meditation when done without good supervision have been reported to trigger mental health problems in susceptible people. Mindfulness meditation for me is a form of ERP because I'm asking myself to sit and watch my thoughts and emotions without reacting to them, but this is only possible with a knowledge of how ERP works, in my opinion. When I tried to do mindfulness of thoughts before knowing much about mental health, it would trigger dissociation in a fairly bad way. There are now mindfulness teachers who are trained in mental health but they are hard to come by, and you need to be wary of unqualified people.

@comfortscorned It wasn't your fault, I just confused, my mistake.

Sorry wanttogetbetter1, I was replying to comfortscorned without realising that they were not the original author of this thread. To answer your original question, I hated Brain Lock, but lots of people like it. It's one of those either love or hate it type of books I think, however it is out of date now. The 'Overcoming' series of self help books are often part of 'books on prescription' programmes, so are a good place to start. 'Break Free from OCD' often gets recommended here.

I think you will struggle to find a book like that, although some people find reading books written for therapists, rather than the client, to be helpful, but such a book might overwhelming and confusing if you don't already know the fundamentals of CBT well. You can always ask questions here if while working through a self help book you don't understand something, people here have lots of knowledge.

Thank you all for your replies. I'm not explaining myself very well and getting overwhelmed, so I'll try and come back later and reply properly. Thank you again!

I'm having trouble describing what it is I'm trying to say with this, so this might not make sense, but something which I've never quite understood is the thoughts/feelings or emotions/behaviour triangle diagram which is always taught as being the basis of CBT.... My problem is, surely it's possible to have emotions without thoughts? Otherwise people without language, and animals, would have no emotions? Am I being stupid here? It bothers me because often there seems to be no obvious thought which causes my negative emotions, so trying to find out where the emotion comes from can lead to obsession as I try to analyse my thoughts. Part of me thinks that maybe I have something like alexithymia, so I have a hard time distinguishing emotions from physical sensations - I did have anaemia for a year once, because I dismissed the symptoms as being from anxiety - and that's why I'm not getting this. I asked an NHS psychologist and she just said there will always be a proceeding thought to an emotion and didn't elaborate further. Thank you.

Thanks Snowbear, I always appreciate how much time you out into your posts.

I always thought I had a choice between lovely certainty, and a drab grey life of awful reality, but I'm starting to see that it is possible to still have pockets of joy. It's the clinging on to that joy, trying to make it something absolute and long lasting, that is causing the problems.

For me, it's not that it has a positive side, it's just that getting a feeling of certainty can feel great, like a high. It's a bit like how someone with bipolar might enjoy being manic. But like mania, it's a delusion, not true happiness, so not a positive and it doesn't last.

Certainty feels fabulous, I feel a lot of affinity with addicts.

That's why reassurance fails, because for five minutes we get a lovely rush of certainty.... but unless you've got a secret super intelligent AI in your basement, certainty is a logical impossibility, so very quickly your logical brain thinks "hang on, that not true is it?" and then the OCD brain goes "omg maybe it's all true, oh no, oh no!". And so it goes on.

I think part of the problem is the statement 'none of this is real!' is a statement of certainty, so it's a form or reassurance. I probably shouldn't have written it, but my fear of hurting people by telling them depressing things got the better of me. In reality there is a 0.01% it is real, because certainty isn't accessible to human beings, (unless you have a fundamentalist religious level of faith, which brings its own problems!) so accepting that 'this is 99.9% unreal!' is the way to go.

I think there are several reasons.... I have harm OCD, and I love my 'pack', so it makes sense that I would stay away from them so I can't harm them. It's also the case that the fear of social exclusion can be as frightening as death, because in a state of a nature, we wouldn't live long without a tribe. Being reclusive is a way of staying within the pack, but in such a way as they will never find out the 'real you', so you won't get excluded for being 'bad' etc. Shame is a massively strong emotion. There's also the problem that dealing with people who struggle to empathise with what we are going through (which is understandable) can feel tiring and lonely. Everything I've written sounds sounds horribly depressing, and I've even made myself feel bad reading this, but I promise you things can and will get better! It's all based on faulty thinking, none of this is real! Being around people will help you get better.

Some people are on meds for life, there's no shame in it, if it works. I know side effects can be bad though.

Just saying hi! Good on you for asking for help, hopefully you will get to the top of the waiting list soon. Wishing you a good day today.