| thank you for responding
Thanks your advice,
I think there was something I read about writing out obsessions too. I don't know if I am practicing the technique correctly, but what I got from it is that the harder you try to "avoid" thinking about something it generates anxiety and keeps it there. That's why thought stopping didn't work for me, because I automatically started obsessing "am I obsessing" and when doing any action "you are acting on a compulsion" even when I wasn't it. Well this technique has been pretty good so far. Whenever getting "anxious" about obsessing about trying to rid my mind of OCD, I just think about it over and over (on purpose)...or I might purposely imagine big letters "O C D" in the sky and keep it there. Using an anxiety scale at 3:45 this afternoon w/ Lex and ativan working before trying this technique I scored 33 (which is low moderate). About 1/2 hour later that anxiety scored dropped to 28 crossing into mild range score 28 (the cutoff is 30). Not a huge drop but helpful. I'm finding hard to clear the clouds of obsessions from my mind but for brief periods I feel almost "normal". Unfortunately sometimes my meds. cutout and my OCD comes back w/ full force...my anxiety lurches in seconds from somewhere in the 30 range to 66 (my usual score off meds.) which is medium severe according to this scale ( i found it in a book it's not beck's/burns/ham). Using the Yale Brown OCD scale, at baseline I am at 4+3+3+3+3=16.....4 for time constant intrusion, 3 for severe anxiety, 3 for substantial impairment, 3 for little resistance, 3 for little control. Meds. drop it to 4+2+2+2+2=12 which is an improvement, and trying the technique of the book I can temporarily (1/2 hour) bring it down to 4+1+2+1+2=10, 1 for anxiety and resitance. So although I still have near constant intusion it's less irritating and putting in a great fight! Control over obsessions is somewehat improved, but it's still only moderate. Still I'm optimistic!
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