OCD and Mindfulness

An interesting post was published today on the British Psychological Society's website about how mindfulness can help treat OCD.

According to Dr Hamilton Fairfax of the Department of Clinical Psychology at North Devon District Hospital,  practising everyday mindfulness when engaging in tasks helps to neutralise the emotion of panic that OCD generates, which is behind the compulsive behaviours that manifest themselves as the rituals and habits that are most commonly associated with the condition.  The typical sense of feeling linked to OCD is feeling something, but not being able to control that feeling so that it gets out of control.

One point of my own consideration is Fairfax's belief that mindfulness should be quoted from sources and needs to nod back to it's eastern routes. While I have been keen to move away from the traditional connotations of meditation, I have started to wonder recently if I should at least nod to the Bhuddist roots.

"Part of the practice is to really own our bodies." says Fairfax, comparing our minds to monkeys jumping from branch to branch. "It's the essence of stopping and feeling what you're doing."  He demonstrates this point by pouring a glass of water, but explaining how we go through the motions vs   how to do it mindfully - noticing the thoughts that go along with pouring the water and what these thoughts relate back to;  how the bottle of water feels and the glass looks.  It's about being aware, with non-judgement, which results in lower anxiety levels.  Mindfulness is a way of doing things with OCD without having the stream of thoughts created from the condition getting in the way.

I do have ODC tagged in my flow diagram as something to feature in the app but until this point I had never looked into why mindfulness could help sufferers of OCD.  I wonder if I could link this information in to the pages about small ways to start being mindful, which should be done in the next couple of weeks.