Mindset shifts that helped me fully recover from OCD

Hello, everyone! Before I get into this post, I want to make clear that it, as is all of my content, is based on my own personal experience—I am not a medical or mental health professional. Also, (possible) trigger warning: for the sake of explanation, this post contains detailed examples of OCD scenarios.

First, a bit about my past:

Years ago, I was formally diagnosed with OCD, although I was exhibiting OCD symptoms way before I received my diagnosis. I experienced childhood trauma growing up, stemming from being raised in a dysfunctional family, and that ultimately resulted in my “lack” of inner safety (read this post for more on this). This “lack” of inner safety expressed itself through extreme, self-destructive “perfectionism” (what is perfection, anyway?): I developed an eating disorder, an anxiety disorder, depression, and OCD (plus misophonia). I received formal treatment for all of these from nutritionists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Although I am thankful for all of these professionals that tried to help me, none of their treatments made any lasting impacts on my mental and physical well-being (the meds just made me like 💩).

Within each of these dis-orders (not being “in order”, not ordering), there came a tipping point where I knew it was impossible for me to continue living this way—so I took matters into my own hands. And, long story short, through my own research into clinically-proven OCD treatments combined with my acquired knowledge of desired identity embodiment (mindset, manifestation, spirituality, mysticism, philosophy, and metaphysics), I was able to completely turn my life around…

What I did to fully recover from OCD:

This post is specifically about OCD recovery mindset shifts, so I’ll focus only on these (read my other articles to learn more about how I recovered from OCD). I’m listing the mindset shifts in the order I formed and expressed them.

Click to jump to section:

• 1) Your one life
• 2) ERP as a tool for desired identity embodiment
• 3) Relevancy/irrelevancy: “I am OCD-free” vs. “I am ____________”
• 4) Inner safety: “I am safe”
• 5) Problem-solution vs. experience-experience
• 6) Possibility
• 7) Thinking vs. intrusive thoughts

1) Your one life

This is the initial reflection that I had that made me want to change. It’s simply the realization that this life is the opportunity I have to tell the story I want to tell through myself—I am the author of my own story. Each one of our lives is a story, with ourselves (and God) as the authors. I thought to myself: how do I want others to remember me—most importantly, how do I want to remember me? Do I want to look back on my life and reminisce about all of the years I was living from avoiding fears instead of from allowing desires? Am I happy knowing that I have lived and will continue to live for what I don’t want instead of for what I do want? I went even further and asked myself the hard questions: IF (possibility—foreshadowing 👀) what I fear came to pass, would I rather live through that catastrophe and somehow find a way to enjoy my life again, or do I prefer (inner choice, true control) continuing to suffer indeterminably in order to (try to) eradicate this possible catastrophe (see, there’s the thing about possibility…)?

Even if I were somehow “avoiding” harm or death by listening to obsessions and engaging in compulsions, is it better to live 50 more years bound to OCD or 50 more days in complete freedom? Do I want to say that I died bound or that I died free? How do I want to present myself (your presence, your essence expressed) for those I love: do I want to have enough of me to give them so we can share our beingness and expand each other, or will I continue being consumed by OCD and miss out on those special moments, memories that will perdure through time? Will I keep neglecting my health by channeling my energy toward OCD instead of channeling it toward that which truly fulfills me? If I want to be giving value to the world and serving others, wouldn’t being OCD-free allow me to readily share my gifts? Do I want my mental space to be occupied by preparing for catastrophes or by planning for miracles?

These are reflection questions meant to rouse the desire within you, that desire to overcome OCD, that soul craving for authentic expression. These questions are all-inclusive; still, according to your own experience with one or more than one specific OCD subtype, you may pose tailored questions to yourself (and share them in the comments if you feel called to do so, so that others can reflect on them as well).

I know that it’s easy to affirm one wants freedom, but it goes something like “Yes, of course I want freedom, BUT…”. I know the fear can feel really strong, I’ve been there too. And I don’t want you to feel disappointed in yourself about thinking-feeling-behaving like this “but” is an actual impediment to your freedom—after all, this is what has been assumed to be and into being for so long. However, in this moment, I don’t want you to consider the “buts”, nor do I want you to consider the “How am I going to do it?” or the “When is it going to happen?”—right now, I just want you to get radically honest with yourself. Admit to yourself, ideally out loud, whether you do or do not want to indefinitely continue living as a person with OCD. Indefinitely because what you decide now is what you live “forever”—now is what is, and you’re the one that is. When the future arrives, the future ceases to be the future and is now too. Was there ever really a future? Now is when (where) you decide, and if you were to reread this article 10 years from now and decide to change then, then will have become now (it’s always now!). The first step is to, right here and right now, establish (literally make stable—direct your focus) what it is you desire. For me, these reflection questions gave me motivation, motive-action: I now had my motive, my reason, my one life that I want to make the best of; now, I just had to express my motive through action…

2) ERP as a tool for desired identity embodiment

This is my FAVORITE OCD-free mindset shift and the one that kickstarted the big change in my life because it led to action. Desired identity embodiment means what it means, to embody your desired identity—in other words, be the person who you want to be. Curiously, the acronym for it is DIE, which sounds violent (trust me, this was unforeseen 😅) but is also somehow perfect (I love a good “coincidence”!): you die to who you were to live to who you will be. You don’t “become” who you will be—you have to be them NOW. To me, who you were and who you will be are two different identities to be individually embodied, and you are disembodying one (dying to it, therefore taking away its life [because you are the life giver]) to embody the other (living to it, therefore giving it life).

ERP is the gold standard for OCD treatment and for a good reason: it has you practice behaving as the OCD-free version of you. A trigger presents itself, obsessions come up, there’s the urge to engage in compulsions to relieve the anxiety, and what do you do? Carry on with your day. You don’t go out of your way to follow through with the OCD cycle, but you continue doing (being) that which you set out to do (be).

Although ERP is extremely helpful for most OCD cases, it didn’t go quite as expected for me because, well, OCD quickly got into the structured ERP I was practicing (if someone’s wondering, none of my therapists offered me ERP as a treatment option [I was the one that had to mention it in the first place, and I was still not assisted in implementing it]). Plus, the structure of ERP itself, measured progression (fear ladder) and measured progress (SUDS scale), made it feel “clinical”—which, of course, is due to it being a tried and true method with clinical backing, but it didn’t feel like my “real” life. It felt like I was being tested to measure my performance, not going about my regular day.

I know ERP is meant to get you to live your life “normally” (exactly as you desire to live it, with less OCD symptoms or even without them). In my case, though, I didn’t find the benefits of practicing structured ERP (using my fear ladder for planning exposures and tracking my results using the Subjective Units of Distress Scale [SUDS]) translating into my life as a whole. Even though, based on my logged data, I was making progress, the arising of novelty is a given—and it is here, these new life situations, where OCD would rear its head again (because my “lack” of inner safety, the root of the “problem”, had not been addressed). Having mastered dealing with specific situations through ERP became obsolete when change arose, whether through similar but different situations or completely different ones altogether. OCD, of course, would use this opportunity to reassert itself as the most appropriate way to handle life.

Also, ERP had me pay attention to the feelings of discomfort while doing the exposures. While that is done to help facilitate the reaching of acceptance of the situation without doing anything to change it (purposely fully feeling the fear takes the seeming power out of fear itself), I was actively paying attention to it, the discomfort, instead of just being aware of it; I ended up concentrating more on the discomfort rather than being in the present moment with ALL of what it entailed, both the pleasant and unpleasant. Because of these reasons, I soon realized that I didn’t want to continue practicing structured ERP whenever life presented me (literally made me be present) with unexpected circumstances—was I going to indefinitely keep planning exposures to triggers that seemed to pop up faster than I could even plan for and miss out on actually having a life? I just wanted to live how I wanted to live.

Tying it back

So, how is desired identity embodiment tied to ERP? Well, as I mentioned, ERP has you get comfortable with what it’s like being OCD-free (foregoing compulsions) until it becomes familiar, what is normal to you, who you’re used to being. If done correctly and effectively, the OCD cycle is broken, and the discomfort you used to feel during triggering situations progressively vanishes—the triggers cease to be triggers. Practicing ERP is akin to being a different person (occupying a new state of being), one that is free of OCD. In one who has OCD, OCD has become integrated into their identity (“I am a person with OCD”), and ERP helps to sever the bond between the person (Consciousness) and OCD (state of Consciousness) by primarily addressing one’s behavior (exposure to triggers and no obsessive-compulsive response). In order to treat OCD holistically, behaving is only one of the three aspects to be addressed, with the others being thinking (including assigning meaning) and feeling—all of these constituting what I call desired identity embodiment.

When I applied desired identity embodiment to OCD, I didn’t quite have a name for what I was doing (not just doing, but being!) and couldn’t quite distinguish the pieces that went into it—I only knew that I had to now be the person I wanted to be in the future. This is why I unknowingly ended up doing what I like to call unstructured ERP: while going about my day, whenever a trigger would come up either expectedly (I had already experienced that trigger) or unexpectedly (I had never experienced that trigger), I behaved like who I wanted to be (or “behaved as”, since you already are in this position!)—this is the behaving aspect of desired identity embodiment. I acknowledged the trigger, arising anxiety, avalanche of obsessions, hankering for compulsions, and continued on with my day exactly like I would go about it were I OCD-free.

This journey wasn’t “perfect” in the sense that there were moments where I did give in to my obsession-compulsions, especially at the beginning—but it got easier and easier to allow the experience to be and myself to be, without needing to change anything. The shift in focus, though, was the catapult: the focus was now on living my desired life, not on my symptoms—not on OCD itself, but on myself. The focus was now on what I wanted instead of on what I didn’t want, and this supercharged my recovery because it gave me clarity—not of who I wanted to end up being after I went through ERP, but of who I was to be right here and right now. I ceased to channel my energy toward analyzing my symptoms and began to channel it toward living like (as) I wanted to live. I, effectively, made my symptoms irrelevant (more on relevancy/irrelevancy to come).

That is how I personally got to right now (in general, it is the framework I use to make changes in my life), and I continue to use it whenever fear arises from stepping into the unfamiliar while following my passion. I do acknowledge that ERP is meant to be progressive as to avoid a possible traumatic experience for the OCD sufferer that may result in exacerbating the OCD cycle (that is exactly the opposite of what we want!). In my case, though, I was just so fed up with OCD that I took a big plunge into the unknown waters of my desired life—this is how I kickstarted this transformation. When the most time-consuming compulsions were out of the way, the process became more progressive. I wasn’t using a fear ladder (my first fear ladder wasn’t even “accurate” because my fears kept dynamically taking one shape or another and changing in subjective units of distress), but I noticed that I started with leaving behind that which was causing me the most suffering instead of starting with the “easiest” trigger to face. In fact, the “easiest” (least distress-generating) triggers were the ones I left behind at the very end of this process: the triggers that brought on the most distressing compulsions were the ones that I naturally first addressed as I embodied my desired identity.

You, of course, don’t have to kickstart your OCD-free life by taking the “drastic” measure I took. If there is only one thing you take from this whole article, it is this: when practicing ERP, practice it through the lens of being the person you want to be. Instead of a treatment with a beginning stage and an end goal (which gives the illusion of separation between the present you and the future you—and what we want is for those two to become one [because they already are, even though it may not seem so]), ERP becomes a way of behaving that not only applies to OCD but also to your life as a whole: despite fears and the accompanying feelings, you carry on with your day focusing on what you want and without safety behaviors (you don’t “require” [outer] safety behaviors if you already embody [inner] safety).

Since I am specifically talking about ERP here and that it is a behavior-first treatment that then results in changes in thinking and feeling, I have mostly addressed only behavior in this section. I will, however, mention thinking and feeling throughout the rest of this post. Behavior is the third aspect of DIE (this acronym is kinda harsh, not gonna lie, but it turned out this way and I’m accepting it 🙏).

3) Relevancy/irrelevancy: “I am OCD-free” vs. “I am ____________”

This is tied to DIE. Remember that I said that, when I started practicing unstructured ERP, I shifted from being laser-focused on the discomfort to softening into the moment I was experiencing and taking it in, discomfort and all?

Relevancy/irrelevancy reminds of what Attention Training, a treatment for misophonia, does, as it teaches you to maintain your focus on what you want to be focusing on and not centering it on insignificant details (unpreferred sounds). As a small side note: I also had misophonia. Some say that a misophonia may be an OCD subtype, and that could very well be the case because of misophonia and OCD’s similarities (the trigger-obsessions-compulsions cycle). Based on my experience, I could go as far as to say that eating disorders are also related to or are even subtypes of OCD—it’s always the trigger, the obsessions, compulsions. One gets relief from the anxiety (reach satisfaction) and then the OCD cycle repeats itself, this happening indefinitely as one reinforces its apparent effectiveness against triggers by exercising it to get relief from the anxiety (it’s a vicious circle!).

I decided to call this practice “relevancy/irrelevancy” because that is exactly the stance you are taking: you are focusing on what you want to be relevant in your life; the rest is irrelevant. It’s all about making that which you want relevant and that which you don’t want irrelevant—pretty straightforward. The thing is, once you make that which you want relevant by focusing on it, the rest automatically fades out of focus to irrelevancy.

Now, for the meat of relevancy/irrelevancy. The heading of this section says “I am OCD free vs. I am (blank space)”. Let’s do a quick writing exercise: I want you to fill that blank space by putting there who you want to be, what you want your life to be. Did you write what I invited you to write? Good, because this is exactly how relevancy/irrelevancy serves you—you’re literally filling your black space of being OCD-free by putting in it what being OCD-free means for you and living it. If OCD is filling your space, what will fill your space when OCD is no longer around? OCD-free means the absence of OCD, but that doesn’t tell us anything about what is to occupy that empty space, except for just telling us what is not there anymore. There is never an empty space, only something that takes the place of OCD—presence is all there is.

Most individuals experiencing OCD claim that they want to get rid of their OCD, but they may lack the clarity of what their life without OCD looks like. And I want you to actually have this clarity for yourself. Why? Well, how can you get to your destination if you don’t know where you’re going and only know a single place where you don’t want to be? Saying you want to be OCD-free is fine, but it is quite vague: it could look like either staying with managing OCD symptoms for the rest of your life or completely ending every single OCD cycle in your life. And it’s not only this: as your desired identity, how are your well-being, relationships, finances, business/career, creative expression, and spirituality? Give yourself some time to reflect on your life with OCD out of the picture.

When one is diagnosed with a condition, they may incorporate that condition into their identity—and OCD is no exception (“I have OCD” = “I am a person with OCD”). What may be tripping one up is not knowing who they are without OCD. Having identified with OCD, it can be terrifying to let OCD go by letting go of it, not knowing where you will end up. Remember the previous analogy? It’s natural to feel lost when you don’t know what your destination is. If you know where you’re going, even though you may be navigating unfamiliar surroundings, knowing you’re getting to where you want to go gives you the faith required to continue driving to this place, even though you may at times feel uneasy because of its newness. But you settle into it; the irony here is that the path IS the destination, and the knowledge is what serves as the catalyst.

The knowledge of who your desired identity is is akin to seeing the little red pin on Google Maps that indicates where you have set your destination. You follow the directions, and there may be changes as you encounter less or more efficient paths to take toward your destination—and, as you travel and see new places that spark your enthusiasm along the way, you may even find yourself taking a detour and arriving at a different place than you previously envisioned, a place even better than the destination you had originally set for yourself. But it is the setting of the destination that actually got you excited enough in the first place to actually get your @ss out of your chair, into your car, and freaking moving, baby! If there is no place to go to, why would you bother leaving the comfort of your house?

Transcript

Here is a polished transcript of an audio about this very topic that I recorded, which expands more on it:

The I AM

The I AM is powerful because it is identity—the “identical entity,” the reality of being the same, unconditioned Consciousness, Oneness. “I am” statements identify you with your desire, dissolving you within it, merging you with it, becoming one flesh with it. This is why I am always talking about desired identity embodiment (being enthusiasm). Yes, your affirmations can start with “I have,” “I live,” “I feel,” etc. But the “I am” is my preferred way to go about affirmations because of the weight it carries, and I always find the way to word them with the “I am.”

I know some may see this spiel about the I AM as “woo.” I don’t mind my “woo-ness” (I quite like it, actually), but may the “woo-ness” not be a hindrance to taking the practical steps I’m laying down here. However, because of skepticism, I’m going to attempt (will probably fail about 50% of the time) to stick more to the mindset side of things, just because we know that it’s psychologically sound and that cognitive rewiring is proven to be possible. Here, I’m taking a psychological-philosophical approach: I want you to question yourself.

So, “I am OCD-free” vs. “I am sovereign in my life.” To be sovereign in your life is to live a free life—free to and free for instead of free of and free from. And let’s honor the I AM, pure Consciousness. You attach your I AM to a state of being. Now, to be OCD-free and to be sovereign in your life may sound like the same things. If you are an OCD sufferer, when you say “I am OCD-free,” that’s great, but you’re still including OCD in the picture, you’re painting the picture of your life and including OCD in it. Why not take OCD out of the picture altogether? Although, for example, in my work, I do talk about OCD and my experience with it, having been able to recover from it using the lived wisdom I have acquired. My approach heavily leans on mindset work, laced with psychology, philosophy, and spirituality. So, OCD can be relevant in your life if you choose for it to be so, but in the way you desire for it to be present: not to hinder, but to help.

If I’m affirming that I don’t have something, what do I have instead of that which I don’t have? I had to ask myself: what does it mean for me to be OCD-free? Initially, I only had a vague idea in my mind of what that meant for me. When you say “I am,” if instead of saying “I am OCD-free,” you say “I am sovereign in my life,” this last statement implies that you are the author of your life, you are writing your own story. You’re putting yourself in the position of power, explicitly stating your authority and authorship. You’re not stating what you don’t have, but what you do have; who you are, not who you aren’t. Once you clear this up, you see the picture clearly: this is who you are.

You choose the states that you want to occupy, and they make up your identity. By the way, when I say state of being, I mean a specific experience of life in regard to a certain aspect of Earthly existence, be it well-being, relationships, wealth, and business/career. As for personality, the personality shifts from one to another depending on how we interact with the world. It’s a personal reality, and each person we interact with is going to receive a different facet of us—when you’re only with yourself, you’re different compared to when you’re with your partner, with your friends, etc. The “I am __________” is the identity, encompassing the personalities. The identity is both fixed and changing: your identity is your own unique perspective on Creation and, as you constantly shift realities, your perspective is uniquely new with every single shift. When I say “I am Arella,” what does it mean for me to be Arella? It’s the I AM experiencing itself sui generis. It also means a philosopher, an artist, a mystic… everything I describe myself as being now. As I uncover more of my soul, some descriptors dematerialize out of my expression while others materialize into it.

Think about this: When you describe yourself to others, you don’t describe yourself by saying who you aren’t, but by saying who you are. Get used to describing yourself the way that you desire to be and supercharge your recovery by ceasing to identify with OCD in its totality—yes, even ceasing to identify with NOT having OCD. The states of being you want to occupy (sovereign, loving, abundant, fulfilled…) are already incompatible with the state of being of having OCD, making OCD automatically irrelevant! It may sound implausible, but the experience itself of living with OCD can become a faint memory, and you get to keep the memories that are relevant to your current experience of life alive, including those that may be OCD-related (as can be the case for someone who wants to serve others in regard to being OCD-free) but in which you are detached from OCD as your current personal experience (while still being able to empathize with others and personalize the service that you offer them).

Letting go of the OCD label

Being OCD-free means different things for different people. I want you to get clear on who you want to be—what is relevant to you? Go ahead and take OCD out of the picture: when you say that “I’m OCD-free,” you’re still carrying the OCD label with you. Being OCD-free implies that you have a past with OCD, that it was relevant to you at some point. And I’m not saying that this is bad, but that it is still extending your grace to OCD. Now, you can stop giving the spotlight to OCD. Now, you are in the spotlight. However, why not get a gain out of the things that you might not expect to get a gain out of? You can choose to see your OCD experience through the lens of “Everything is happening FOR me” (another great mindset to adopt). How can having experienced OCD serve you, not by keeping it alive in your reality as a condition, but by recognizing the wisdom the experience itself has taught you? Has it given you clarity on how you truly want to live your life, taught you to fully trust God and have confidence in yourself, shown you how to appreciate the journey for the destination it is, and even primed you to be capable of being of service to others who are where you once were at?

Make that which you want in your life relevant, and the rest becomes irrelevant. That’s it: you focus on what you want. So you want to be OCD-free, right? Well, what does that entail? Reflect on this. Who is the identity that you want to be? “I am” what? Complete it. Replace the “I am OCD-free” with “I am sovereign in my life”—this is an example. By making that which you do want relevant, you are making OCD irrelevant. Now, you don’t describe yourself neither as a person with OCD nor as a person without OCD: you completely divorce yourself from the OCD identity AND from the identity of having had OCD.

It doesn’t mean that you should never again even think about thinking about OCD, though—I myself am still talking about it to this day when it is relevant for me to do so and in the way that is relevant for me to do so. What it does mean is that you wisely look at OCD as an insider-outsider instead of purely as an insider: you can face the OCD state without getting sucked into it. For me to be able to express myself in the way that I do now, I need to be able to empathize with others embodying the OCD state without merging with the state itself. Although it seems as if I am going back to embodying the OCD state, my state of Consciousness is not the same as it was “before” (the eternal present is; the before is simply a different point of view). We are constantly shifting, and I am not the same person to begin with; therefore, I can’t really “go back” to being exactly who I once was. And you are not the same person to begin with: it is up to you to decide (well, God will let you know through enthusiasm) if and how OCD will occupy a specific place in your life, and if you are ready to allow it to be there in the ways that serve you first and foremost (so that it may extend into serving others as well).

The “ugly neighborhood” analogy

We know there’s only the present moment—the now. So, you visited the state of being of having OCD. And then you left. Now, let’s utilize a metaphor to explore relevancy/irrelevancy… Think about an unpleasant, unpreferred area for you to live in in your city. If you go driving and you go through that neighborhood, you’re like “Wow 😬 This is ugly.” And then you leave. Shortly thereafter, you forget about it. Weeks later, your friend mentions the name of that neighborhood. Maybe you remember it and go “Huh, I remember being there a while ago,” and your friend is like “Okay, cool” or something: you have forgiven (its ugliness, lol) and had forgotten this area because it’s irrelevant to you. It’s ugly to you. You don’t like it. You don’t want to live there. If you unexpectedly pass through it again sometime later, you are just like “Oh, it’s this place…” And then you go back to your lovely home. And you don’t think about this neighborhood anymore because it is irrelevant to you, therefore being outside of your awareness physically and mentally. But what IS relevant to you is your lovely home, which is where you live in and which is what you are surrounded by every single f*cking day—that’s what matters.

Continuing the metaphor, it doesn’t matter that you’re free from living in that ugly area in an ugly house. Let’s say you saw a really ugly house in that neighborhood, the ugliest one you’ve ever seen in your life (I’m actually giggling a little while typing this because it sounds a bit silly 🤭). You’re like “Damn, that’s not nice.” It’s not nice, okay? But once you leave it behind as you keep driving, you forget about it. You know that whenever you leave your house for a while, despite the unpreferred houses you may see throughout your journey, you’re always going to end up back home. But does it really matter that you’re free of living in that unpreferred house because you already live in your preferred house? Does what you don’t have actually matter? No, not really (and this goes both ways). What matters is what you do have because that’s what you’re focusing your attention on. This is what I’ve been saying this whole time! This analogy is quite useful. It doesn’t matter what you’re free of and aren’t. It matters what you are free to and are (whether that be preferred or unpreferred). From free of and free from to free to and free for. “I’m free to live my life however I want to live it.” “I’m free to live an abundant life.” “I’m free to live a fulfilling life.” These statements already imply being free of OCD.

4) Inner safety: “I am safe”

This is a good place to mention the second aspect of DIE—feeling. I can relate it to Behavioral Activation, the psychotherapeutic treatment for depression. Again, I myself attempted to implement it in a progressive, structured way, only to find out that progressive and structured don’t really jive with me. So, as with ERP, I unknowingly ended up using the principles of BA as I embodied my desired identity.

I’ve already gone deeper into inner safety in this article, so I’ll go over a few different points that complement what I have already written. Inner safety is the safety that one recognizes within, as opposed to the safety that one seeks without (outer safety). I make this distinction, inner vs. outer safety, in order to identify the state of being that one is operating from. However, what I call “inner safety” also inherently includes outer safety—if one feels safe within themselves (you trust God and have confidence in yourself), they naturally feel safe in their surrounding environment (mental and physical). When I mention “outer safety” by itself, I am referring to the reliance on external factors/circumstances in order to feel safe—this “lack” of safety is unrecognized safety (suppressed into repression), which leads one to believe themselves to be in danger, resulting in a constant, subconscious scanning of their environment in order to be able to identify and escape (in OCD, through compulsions) from potential threats.

Tying inner safety with applying irrelevancy to OCD, let’s mention certainty. Inner certainty is inner safety, and the “lack” of safety comes from the lack of knowledge—uncertainty. If, for example, you went into the salon to get a haircut and for some reason you weren’t allowed to tell the hairdresser what haircut it is that you want, Lord only knows what the result of that could be. You’d likely be antsy, analyzing whatever the heck the hairdresser is doing to your hair—you’re uncertain of the outcome of the process, and that is anxiety-inducing. “What if I come out of this appointment looking ridiculously hideous and have to wait months and months for my hair to grow back?” If, however, you went in and explicitly stated the haircut that you want done on you, you sit throughout your appointment calmly and collectedly, attentive to what the hairdresser is doing in case you require an adjustment—but you are not in a defensive state. What is there to defend oneself from if there is no perceived threat in the first place?

In the case of someone with OCD, they may feel anxious even during this second scenario, maybe going so far as avoiding it altogether. Sure, they told the hairdresser what haircut they wanted, and this is a reputable salon. Furthermore, this hairdresser may have been directly recommended to them, or they may be someone they already know. But none of that matters if this person is feeling threatened. Threatened by the haircut? Threatened by the possibility of the haircut ending disastrously. This is the fear of possibility (the unknown) that I’ve already talked about before, with OCD seeking to eliminate certain possibilities (which is impossible).

One of my core tenants, part of my framework of the three mindset cornerstones, is accepting and embracing uncertainty, which has tremendously served me for my OCD recovery. This does NOT mean to completely forgo the acquisition of knowledge in general—hey, if you’re gonna get a haircut, it’s better to know what you want beforehand if a specific result is what you want (unless you want to be heavily surprised, which can work too!). Let us not be fooled into thinking in extremes, whether that be choosing to be completely in the dark about a certain topic/question or compulsively researching on the internet to find out every single bit of (verifiable or unverifiable, proven or unproven) information and pros/cons about this certain topic/question.

This was me exactly: for hours a day, I used to compulsively research topics, questions that felt like not knowing the “right”/“correct” answer to would result in major suffering. These questions were mostly related to well-being—which is sooo ironic when this very researching compulsion was taking me away from actually living my life (looking back, I find it so silly and funny—if I can choose to either laugh or cry about something, expect me to throw in some humor and laugh [maybe also cry simultaneously] about it in the most accepting, loving way).

For who I was, these compulsions happened when researching things that I thought I “had to” research in order to be safe. After I found the information that I was looking for (which felt like a never-ending odyssey—once I found an answer, another doubt would pop into my awareness, and I automatically followed through with it), it turns out I: was applying that knowledge because I already knew it, ended up not even applying the knowledge because I was just seeking reassurance, or practically applied the knowledge for some time and then completely forgot about it. What I left myself in the dark about was what genuinely piqued my interest—not because I didn’t actually care about it, but because I was scared of shrouding this interest of mine with doubts and going down the compulsion rabbit hole with it, ultimately turning something I enjoy into something unenjoyable. Once I got out of this loop, though, I again found researching any topic that I wanted to know more about neutral or positive. Why? Because the tension of life-or-death if I don’t research “rightly”/“correctly” had dissolved into a safe knowing that, whatever happens, I am okay.

And, honestly, this “Whatever happens, I am okay” mindset is the only thing one can carry with them in this uncertain, surprising world to be okay while in it (if you’ve had lucid dreams and/or out-of-body experience, out of it too). Alongside this mindset, we also have the “Everything happens FOR me” mindset. There is nothing inherently wrong with being surprised: haven’t there been times where the outcome was even better than what you had imagined it to be? That is certainly a preferred surprise! Well, one can carry and enact these beliefs even in the face of unpreferred situations—you can always extract the positive that serves you.

Anecdote time

Little anecdote to illustrate the point that I’m making in the previous paragraph: I bruised my finger when I accidentally flipped over a dumbbell with 20 kg on it—and that freaking huuurt. I wasn’t sure if it was just a really bad bruise or if I actually had a fracture. Past me would have started crying and freaking out, frantically calling for help, beginning to dwell on why this could have happened and blaming herself for it, and ruminating on whether or not this would heal perfectly and leave her unscathed. Present me, however, has a different approach. I was like “😩” seconds after the blow; afterward, I put on some reggaeton and just started vibing. I still had one more exercise to go through to finish my workout for that day, but I stopped exercising because I didn’t want to tax my grip further (past me would have forced herself to push through the pain). I calmly texted a dear family member to take me to the clinic. I showered, got dressed, and had dinner (while still vibing to reggaeton).

When this family member came to pick me up to go to the clinic, I was chill. Yeah, it hurt, but it is what it is, and I’m going to take in all of the experience: the pain in the finger, the vibe of the music, the thrill of the novelty of the experience, and the appreciation for this awesome person supporting me in my life. I had doubts about how we were going to pay for this, but I reminded myself that God provides and that I am worthy of using this authorization form of going to the doctors if it serves me to show myself that I care about myself (and we ended up spending investing way less than we thought we would). Long story short, we didn’t actually know where to go to seek medical assistance because it was already night time. We called some people—nothing. We arrived at our known clinic—they told us to go somewhere else, but they gave us a suggestion. Past me would’ve refused to go to this unknown location—present me trusts her intuition. And it was telling me to allow myself to be helped by these people.

I arrived at this new clinic. Everything went smoothly. Got X-rays, and everything turned out to be swell! I’m not gonna lie, though: at the end of my visit, I started to tune into my old way of thinking, having doubts about what the doctor had said and whether I should go back again and check if everything is really fine “just in case.” And it’s understandable that I was experiencing this, it was a new situation for me. However, I know better. I continued walking toward the car and didn’t turn back—I trust God and myself.

So, you see, I turned this somewhat common, “negative” situation into a positive: it served me as a way to show myself and the world how I now handle “negative” unexpected situations by staying in alignment with how my desired identity approaches these fun surprises—maintaining my composure, acting from trusting in the intrinsic-extrinsic good, and still engaging in what I enjoy (reggaeton 😛). I chose joy over misery, no matter how that joy was being expressed in that moment. By the way, I’m typing this with a half-purple fingernail :) Basically, if something I don’t want to happen happens, I make it allow it to serve me in the way I do want it to serve me—positively, beneficially, expansively. That way, I’m always getting what I want 😌

Having fun

Interestingly enough, I synchronistically already mentioned this having turned enjoyable things into unenjoyable ones, breaking up with them, and then receiving enjoyment out of them again. Well, can we reverse engineer it? Can’t we do what we used to enjoy doing before waiting for the enjoyment to come back? That’s the question I’m raising here, and that’s the aim of the feeling aspect of DIE: to feel as your desired identity. And this is how you anchor the “Whatever happens, I am okay” and “Everything happens FOR me” mindsets: you show yourself that you are capable. You have the capacity to hold the fullness of life’s unpreferred and preferred surprises by indulging in them as they are and alchemizing them into preferred ones, and you have the ability to follow your enthusiasm in the face of infinite possibilities.

Now, if you’re in danger, the last thing on your mind would be to engage in hobbies—any fun could result in a catastrophic outcome from being “distracted” from the “threat.” You’re sovereign in your life, though—and not having fun is out of the question. You’re here to have fun, baby! What we want is to get you doing the stuff you enjoy again, which is exactly what your desired identity does. Doing these activities signals to you that you’re in a safe environment (within and without) that gives you the space to be yourself and play—the threats that OCD said were there are gone because they were never there in the first place. You can now rest, and if anything were to come up, you know you’ve got this.

That’s where I’m leaving the “Having fun” part, I don’t want to repeat myself. Again, you have free access to my other article that further details the feeling aspect of DIE. Just remember that you can choose to see uncertainty as thrilling—after all, thrill is excitement experienced in a pleasant way in the face of a positively perceived event and anxiety is excitement experienced in an unpleasant way in the face of a negatively perceived event.

Other musings

For OCD, the classic “maybe, maybe not” works when there is fear because it facilitates detachment from the trigger. However, it must not be interpreted as detachment to desires, but to fears. You may still be attached to what you want—and, by attached, I mean that it’s okay for you to want what you want. As an example, if one desires success but is afraid of failure, that fear holds them back from fully going after the success. In the name of avoiding making irremediable “mistakes” or not having chosen the “correct” path, they may hesitate to take action. Even here, where OCD is not explicitly present per se, the cycle of trigger, obsessions, fear, and compulsions is present.

There’s always this avoidance that presents itself alongside fear and, according to my personal experience, it may manifest itself through OCD, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, misophonia, and/or depression. Leaving aside the physical causes of these disorders, such as chemical imbalances (even then, one’s mentality plays a crucial role over the physicality), these disorders share the core mechanism of trigger-distress-obsession-compulsion-relief, although they are named differently, express themselves differently, and the mechanism may not be as cut-and-dry as it is in OCD. But medicine is acknowledging more and more the role of the mind in one’s overall wellness, and the tendency of what is being discovered is leaning toward the mind (conscious) having the chief influence over the body (subconscious).

Going back to attachment-detachment, the ideal is for you to know how to manage simultaneous attachment and detachment to your desires, akin to flying a kite: allowing the kite to be loose enough for it to fly up and keeping a firm grip on its string. You want the kite to beautifully glide across the sky for you to enjoy its stunning colors reflecting the sunlight, but you’re not letting it slip out of your hands. You know that flying the kite carries the inherent “risk” (possibility) of there being a strong gust of wind that carries the kite away from you—you might not ever see it again. But you “take the risk” (inner safety, accepting possibility) for the sake of what you want, instead of staying in your comfort zone (outer safety, “denying” possibility) for the sake of what you don’t want. After all, what is the purpose of the kite if it’s not allowing it to soar? Similarly, what is the purpose of your soul’s desires if it’s not allowing them to be manifested in the world?

Since I’m specifically addressing OCD in this (looong) article, you’re probably reading this out of curiosity or because you are occupying the state of being of OCD and harbor the desire to shift out of it and live fully and freely. If you’ve already indulged in the OCD and played it out until you can’t anymore, you’re ready—the only way to overcome it is to go through it.

By focusing on the do want only and not on the don’t want (clarity!), you clearly want to live fully and freely. And you are the only one that knows what that means for you. After the coming paragraph, I’m inserting a transcript in which I give you an example of preference vs. fear—where is the desire coming from? I think I may have sprinkled this concept throughout this article but, to put it explicitly and plainly, you can determine from which of the two the desire is coming from based on the level of friction you are experiencing.

Fear feels consuming, deserving an all-or-nothing approach: fight-flight (fight with compulsions that fly you away from the obsessions) or freeze if you arrive at your breaking point (which is good, it’s a sign that you are completely ready to break up with OCD [though it may be worth exploring what is underlying OCD and is expressing itself through it with the aid of core belief work and shadow work]). When something is unpreferred, it feels “ugh 🤦‍♀️,” nagging, annoying, inspiring impatience—but it doesn’t cause you to feel like your integrity (or that of those you care about) is being threatened. We want to eliminate the friction (through repeated exposure in the DIE way) in order to find out if what we fear is actually something we do prefer or if it is relegated to something we don’t prefer that we can turn into something preferred (including saying no to it).

Transcript (maybe don’t read this while you’re eating? [it’s not explicit—it’s kinda weirdly funny, actually])

For example: you care about the cleanliness of your home, but you find yourself “having to” deep clean your apartment whenever you want to clean it, whether that be because someone came over to your apartment, you had some guests over, maybe you have guests over often, maybe you have a pet, or maybe, for some reason, your apartment gets dusty often (that has happened to [for?] me 😅). Whatever the reason is, whenever you clean your apartment, instead of doing a maintenance clean, you find yourself believing that you have to deep clean it—and, for you, that is stressful. And you don’t only just deep clean it, but you really go at it: you disinfect everything, and you spend hours and hours cleaning. Maybe it doesn’t take only one day, maybe you lose sleep over it, maybe you don’t even sleep at all until you finish what you started and that is excruciating for you.

In an extreme case, let’s say this deep cleaning happens every few days—at least under my eyes, that would be extreme. And let’s say you are a sociable person, and you’re having friends over, maybe your partner, your family, pets. Whenever someone comes over and they step into your apartment, you start thinking that “Oh, they came in with their ‘outdoor’ shoes on…” and you didn’t tell them to take their shoes off, maybe you were trying to be “polite.” So, here we’re gonna get into preference vs. fear: deep down, you would have preferred for them to take their shoes off [before entering your apartment] but you didn’t say anything.

If this is your partner or someone you’re seeing, you’re dating, you’re getting to know, and whom you want to be in a relationship with, to keep them comfortable, you allow them to come into your home without taking their shoes off. And then you start getting these thoughts, like “Their shoes must be dirty from walking outside, maybe they stepped on, I don’t know, dog sh!t (💀), and they are just dragging the sh!t all over my apartment,” but you don’t know, you can’t really see it, although you think that maybe there are specks of it that you can’t see. And you start panicking deep down but you don’t show it. Then, when this person leaves, you’re left having to deep clean your apartment all over again—and, this time, it’s even worse because maybe you know this person had just visited a place that you know is not as tidy and hygienic as your own neighborhood is. So you panic even more, even harder.

Now, this situation is shrouded with fear: if you asked me, I would say “Yeah, have this person take their shoes off before coming into your home, into your space.” Personally, that’s what I prefer in order to keep my space cleaner for longer. That’s what I like, and a lot of people like that too. We could talk about boundaries here: in this scenario, you would have ideally upheld that boundary of anyone coming into your home having to take their shoes off before entering. However, as I said, fear is present. When I’ve been in a bit of a rush, it has happened to me that I left my home and then I remembered that forgot to bring something with me, so I came back, I opened the door, and I didn’t take my outdoor shoes off—I simply went into my room with those shoes on. If I had a carpeted floor, I would bother to take them off, but I don’t have that (and I prefer it that way, at least right now, because it’s easier for me to maintain the floor clean).

Anyway, I stepped into my room for a little bit, grabbed what I needed to take with me, and headed out again. Later, when I came back home, I didn’t even think about having done that—yeah, whatever, I know I have walked outside on the streets with those shoes on, and Lord knows all of the things that I have stepped on that I haven’t even noticed. I’m not aware of accidentally having stepped on sh!t because, if I clearly had, I would have noticed and I would have cleaned my shoes as soon as possible. But who knows? Maybe there’s a speck of sh!t on my shoes—I’m giving you the worst example of something that you could step on to walk into your apartment with (one of the worst, at least, and let’s leave it at that 😬). I’m not gonna deep clean my entire apartment, including disinfecting the floor, just because of what I might have stepped on. This stepping into my apartment with my outdoor shoes on has happened a few times—I don’t prefer it, and I have bothered to take my shoes off a few times. Most of the time, though, since it’s only grabbing something and then leaving quickly, I leave my shoes on.

Revisiting our example,

this person does care about the cleanliness of their home, and they probably would have people coming over to your home taking their shoes off before coming inside. Again, in this specific scenario, we are not only dealing with preference—we’re also dealing with fear. When the guest this person had over leaves… Okay, they could just mop the floor, right? But this person’s not just doing that. There may not even be any visible dirt—it’s not like this person went in, their shoes were grimy, and it can clearly be seen that the floor is dirty now and that it wasn’t before. Another person wouldn’t do anything about it, and yet another person may just mop the floor if they are really rigorous. But, whether they do or don’t do anything about this situation, it’s because they want to, it’s their preference. And if they do do a bit of cleaning, sure, it may be a little tedious, a bit annoying—they’re like “Yeah, I’m gonna do it.” They may say I have to do it, but this “have to” doesn’t have that sense of urgency of a life-or-death situation. [And, if you really think about it, there is no real “have to,” you don’t have to do anything inherently; you’re always choosing to do what you do, whether you are aware of it or not.]

Instead, this person does feel this sense of urgency. And they’re not going to rest until the “threat” is neutralized. The person they had over leaves and they immediately get to deep cleaning their apartment. And not just the floor—they may clean the whole thing. Maybe they start thinking that bacteria may have spread, that infected particles are floating in the air and that they have attached themselves to the walls. What ifs, right? The mind can come up with a bunch of different scenarios that address different possibilities. I’ve already talked about possibilities (I always love talking about possibilities) because it’s being afraid of the possibility of certain scenarios happening. They are not tangible, though. Despite that, one can believe that they will be if you don’t do anything about them. So that “makes you” do anything you can to eradicate the possibility (we’ve already talked about the fact that you can’t do that because it’s a possibility, whether probable or improbable [or, I should say, relevant or irrelevant]).

So, this person is doing it out of having to instead of out of wanting to. They feel they have to in order to protect themselves or others from disease: if others come over to their apartment or if they have pets, they want to protect them too. It’s born out of the deep care and love they have for themselves and for others, and it’s expressing itself in this disordered way. It’s called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder for a reason: it’s being out of order, out of alignment, with what you truly want in your life, what your soul wants. The love they have for themselves and for others is expressing itself in a twisted, strange way (this does start going into shadow work [which I’m not getting into here]).

Once you neutralize the fear, you can really determine if you don’t actually mind this situation or if it’s an unpreferred situation for you, and you can uphold that preference and say no to it happening again. In this case, it’d be having the corresponding boundary and saying “Hey, please take your shoes off before coming into my house.” And if this person gives a sh!t about you, they will. It’s not really an issue. That is, if it’s a preference. [And sometimes you do end up liking something that you didn’t like, or at least didn’t seem to like, before, you know? Or at least you don’t mind it as much as you did before. This might have happened to you with a certain food or dish.]

If the fear dissipates over this situation, you may find that someone coming into your home without taking their shoes off (you didn’t notice and you didn’t tell them beforehand about your preference) doesn’t bother you as much, not to the point of causing you distress. You may even catch yourself doing that too, and you don’t find yourself feeling the urge to deep clean your whole apartment just because you forgot to take your shoes off that one time you had to quickly pop in to grab something and then head out again. You get here when the fear has dissipated: it has dissolved into inner safety. From that place of inner safety, you can say yes to something or no to something—not because you’re afraid of it, but because you genuinely want it or don’t want it. It’s from a place of steadiness, crumblelessness, and that’s where we want to get. Of course, we may get out of our center of balance—and, when we’re anchored in ourselves, we are able to swiftly get back into it. You’re not relying on external circumstances to anchor you to safety.

To access this inner safety, the person in this example would have to engage in exposure (ideally in the DIE way) in order to learn how to embody inner safety while living their desired life; as a side effect, that lessens the fear until it’s no longer there. Then, from that place, they can consciously make the decision of how they’re going to respond to the diverse situations that present themselves in their life, not just this specific situation. [The benefits of exposure, when approached with the right mindset, ripple out into the other areas of one’s life.]

… I believe that’s all I wanted to say, I already gave it all away. When there’s fear, it’s this impetus that you feel like you can’t control. Metaphorically and/or literally, I want you to get to a place where your cleaning ritual and schedule doesn’t feel like a “have to” and instead feels like a “want to.” That you’re cleaning on your own terms (you actually always are on your own terms), not on the terms the fears dictate. [And take a moment to thank your fear for bringing to light the beliefs and behavioral patterns that are no longer serving you! Fear is your ally, not your enemy. And we want fear to serve us, not the other way around. The other way around is an illusion: the fear is always serving us, but when I explicitly say “serves us”, I mean we allow it to serve us in a positive way, as opposed to having it serve us in a negative way by bestowing upon it the power that is intrinsically ours and creating an idol out of it.] To you, maybe you deep clean your apartment once a month or however often, however often or not often you want to do it. The “level of cleanliness” is up to you, and that may not be sparkling clean every single day, but you know you want to have a clean environment, comfortable and hygienic, for you to do your activities, hang out, and just live your life. What matters is that you want to do it because this is a way you show you care about yourself and those you love. And that’s it.

5) Problem-solution vs. experience-experience

We tend to think in opposites, searching to replace the “bad” with the “good”. If we feel cold, for example, we naturally seek warmth. We lean toward what we find pleasurable, and we lean away from what we find unpleasurable. Note the difference in connotation between bad-good and unpleasurable-pleasurable: the former often being attributed more importance when it shows up (or, rather, when we decide it is showing up).

You may be thinking: “How can we be attributing more importance to the bad if we are constantly leaning toward what is good for us?”. Well, it’s because of the sense of urgency that we tend to perceive within the experience of what we attribute the meaning of bad/unpleasurable. If one is experiencing discomfort and dis-ease, isn’t one immediately prompted to find relief from these (apparent) maladies? This what happens when we’re operating under the problem-solution mindset: the problem is seen as bad, the solution is seen as good, and the problem ought to be replaced with the solution as fast as possible. This gives the fixing a sense of urgency.

If we are sick, for example, being from the sickness is likely to express itself through frantically going from doctor to doctor, looking to the without to heal us. Sometimes, the treatments offered to us work, and we start believing that the treatments themselves are the ones responsible for the change within us. While these treatments are valid authorization forms (you are allowing the treatments to be the solution) and do work for some people, a select-elect others find no treatment answering to their call for help. And that is when they, as if forcefully, are made to “stand still” for a while.

But it is not actually standing still—great movement is happening within. This “active repose”, this ceasing to look for a solution to the problem they are in and instead letting the experience itself play out in the way that it needs to play out while living a fulfilling life in the best way that they can despite circumstances (they don’t matter, anyway), is what ironically BRINGS the solution to them. They are not chasing anymore (signalling lack, struggle), but ALLOWING (signaling having, flow). This happens because the active repose lets the individual finally be with themselves as they would be were they free from the problem. As the problem becomes irrelevant, even though “remnants” of it may still be present, they focus on living their best lives despite the remnants. The physical remnants are what can remind one of who they used to be, so they are to re-mind (embody the new mentality) themselves of who they are now.

And, lo and behold, one day everything is “back to normal”, and it takes however long you want it to take: the symptoms have vanished, as if they were never there in the first place. But, by reason of the experience, you are transformed, now appreciating life’s light AND life’s dark because it has allowed you to see the beauty and perfection in the awe-inspiring All, and how it served, serves, and will serve you.

I got a little bit poetic-dramatic there, but I can’t help myself—that is exactly what happened to for me, and it is why I now do what I do, putting these teachings out there so others can recognize there is another way to live: consciously authoring (assigning meaning), changing the upcoming narrative as well as the prologue.

Taking it a step further

Now, I invite you to lean into this even more, ditch the “active repose” label, and just live your life. Even active repose may be understood as implying waiting—and if we embody waiting, more waiting comes our way. In this manner, to take things a step further, I extend to you the following invitation: experience an unpleasurable, “unwanted” situation simply as one of life’s many different facets to experience—and experience it, however it may be. This is changing one’s mindset from problem-solution to experience-experience: the problem itself is an experience, as is the solution, just that one is preferred and the other unpreferred. That’s it. There’s no “need” to immediately and desperately “escape” from the problem—if you do so, it’s as if a current pulled you in and you are frantically trying to fight against its direction, only to have yourself run out of energy and begin to dangerously lose your breath. If you allow yourself to calm down and use the current’s pull to your advantage, navigating it wisely, you will inevitably get out of it. You are in control, but the you in control is not the you that you think you are. You are not just your conscious mind—God’s wisdom transcends your own (uninformed: based-on-the-past, based-on-others) conclusions regarding your best process and outcome.

Furthermore, there’s certainly no urgency to leave any situation if it is taken in as what it is—an experience. This mindset shift allowed me to actually live in the moment, and that, paradoxically, allowed my healing. The only thing God asks of you is to follow your enthusiasm (divine inspiration, passion, love—to me, this IS desired identity embodiment, authentic soul expression), which includes turning that which is unpreferred into that which is preferred (inner alchemy) by allowing it to serve you. Let’s explore this further by relating my OCD experience to you and tying it to what I’m saying…

In terms of my experience, when I used to see OCD as a problem, I was desperately seeking a way out of this problem and into the solution, being OCD-free (remember relevancy/irrelevancy?). With OCD having become part of my identity (“I have OCD”), I was the problem that needed fixing, which exacerbated the sense of urgency to fix myself. I felt like I was in danger—and when one constantly feels like they are in danger, their nervous system becomes dysregulated. See where I’m going with this? We are adamant on healing ourselves, yet the very way we are used to seeing our situation is the very thing that is keeping us in limbo. To add to that, what you consider the problem and what you consider the solution are fundamentally incompatible. If you are in the problem, you are not in the solution. It’s as simple as that. You are either healthy or unhealthy—even being healed implies unhealthiness being a state once occupied (which is okay, especially if your calling is to serve others by reflecting to them the possibility of being able to shift from unhealthiness to healthiness, but there is distance between you and the state of unhealthiness [through your own shift, you recognize the healthiness others also have the capability to express]).

As I learned to embrace totality, I realized that both “I am a person with OCD” and “I am free and fulfilled” are simply experiences, neither inherently good nor bad, neither inherently the problem nor the solution—unless I chose to assign them that meaning. Everything is relative to each individual, and it is all subjective until we make it objective. Think about those who constantly complain about their unfavorable circumstances yet keep refusing to allow them to transform. Everyone has the capability to experience what it is they want to experience, whether it be relatively positive or negative (for example, if someone perceives identifying with OCD to be serving them by them considering it to signify the permission for them to be able to let themselves be vulnerable, then they will most likely unconsciously be keeping OCD around just so that they can allow themselves to receive help and attention from others whom they perceive otherwise would pay them no mind [they could allow themselves to be vulnerable without needing to identify with OCD, though—it’s a matter of choice]).

Now that I got to witness the whole picture of life, I became grounded (in heaven 😘), realizing that I was not buried alive inside a coffin that I could only break out from using some transcendental martial art moves à la Kill Bill style. It was just me unknowingly having shut myself inside the dark OCD room. I found a flashlight, though: knowledge, which allowed me to see the closed door. It turns out that the door was always there, closed but not locked, and I could just open the door whenever I wanted (felt ready enough) and go into another room if I so desired. I have options, and I get to decide which flavor of life I get to savor.

I was quite fed up with feeding on OCD, so I went for a taste of a different flavor—a richer, more complex flavor. Having cognitively grasped the experience-experience mindset as opposed to the problem-solution mindset, the transition felt easier because it stemmed from a genuine “I want”, not an “I have to”, “I must”, or “I need to”. Taking the charge out of a life with OCD makes you in charge of your life. This mindset shift gave me back the control that OCD had seemingly been having over me: REAL control is not controlling the outer world (yes, this includes your intrusive thoughts), but the inner world (your thinking).

Having the audacity to change

With this cognitive reframing, shifts naturally unfolded in my affective and behavioral patterns. “I need to get rid of my OCD in order to be happy and fulfilled” yielded feelings of uneasiness and unfulfillment, manifesting themselves in focusing on OCD’s presence instead of on my soul’s expansion even with OCD tagging along in the background: I thought that I had to “be completely cured” before doing what I love (oh, the irony). “I am living a happy and fulfilling life because I want to” yields feelings of excitement and expansion, no matter the circumstances: what matters is your embodied identity (it literally matters, it materializes).

To be frank, if someone would have told me years ago about how significantly making the shift I am describing here would contribute to my OCD naturally becoming dormant (as is every unmanifested possibility), I would have side-eyed them. This past version of me would have felt baffled at the sheer audacity the present version of has to have to be preaching this—understandable, she was (is, because of possibilities and simultaneous time, but I am not being her) doing research compulsions that had her spend 8+ hours on the computer looking up things like how to brush your teeth correctly and how to correctly wash your hair, things she had already been doing for years with no issues whatsoever (yes, looking back, it was that ridiculous, although it felt like a life-or-death situation).

“How can it be sooo easy to change just like that? How can it be so if, when I forgo doing my compulsions, I feel as if I’m actually going to die or suffer forever?” Fear. Fear can feel like this overpowering, inescapable force that has the ability to control us. But it can’t. It’s, again, an experience. Feeling fear is an experience, and feeling fear doesn’t mean that there is something you need to immediately do to get rid of it. In fact, that is what trips one up: associating relief from fear to compulsions.

However, I’m not saying that one should shy away from uncovering what it is that is generating the lingering fear—quite the opposite. It is worth identifying and replacing negative core beliefs and doing shadow work, as these can nicely contribute to relapse-free OCD recovery when done at the point in which OCD symptoms have considerably lessened. To be able to safely and effectively delve into exploring your core beliefs and your shadow (especially your shadow), you have to have complete awareness of who you are as to not get wrapped up in your reflections and confuse what you’re seeing in the mirror for the person who is standing in front of it. Specifically, when doing shadow work, you can really go way beyond OCD itself and recognize which repressed/suppressed aspects of yourself may have been expressing themselves through OCD, instead of going about it the other way around and plucking the leaves out while leaving the root intact. Shame around your own shadow can also greatly fuel OCD. I won’t go into this here, but I will go into it in a YouTube video (I will solely be focusing on uploading to my YouTube channel after I complete and share the pending blog posts I have been working on).

Well, I already said what I needed to say in regard to this section. How does one go about applying this information? I’ve mentioned it throughout and it also may be inferred, but I’ll put it plainly here to neatly close this part of the article: thinking from experience-experience (or, simply, experience) mindset. The problem is an experience. The solution is an experience. Out of these two experiences, choose which one suits you best and identify with it. Embody it through your thinking, feeling, and behaving: consciously choosing, every day, to live your happy and fulfilling life because you want to, right here and right now. Choose enthusiasm over fear (aren’t they both excitement, one being toward the preferred and the other toward the unpreferred, anyway?).

6) Possibility

I’ll just be blunt: every possibility exists and can be made tangible. I was gonna start this section by saying “I’m sorry to break it to you… 😔” but that sounded kinda mean—I talk to myself like that but I sometimes forget that others may not get my weird sense of humor 😅 And besides, why would I be sorry about telling you the truth AND showing you that you are not only capable of holding infinity but also of choosing which aspects of it you want to experience? I’m certainly not sorry about that ;) I value honesty, radical honesty, especially with oneself (it all stems from oneself).

After studying manifestation, I grasped the fact that there are infinite possibilities (although not all of them are relevant). Some months ago, though, after reflecting on the nature of OCD obsessions, I realized that the content of the obsessions are possibilities and that the fear present in OCD is the fear of a possibility—the unknown, uncertain, unmanifested—coming to fruition. It is not fear directed toward the known, certain, tangible actuality. I’ve already talked about how OCD’s reasoning is flawed because it tries to eradicate a possibility—and a possibility cannot be eradicated! It is ethereal substance, an intangible reality out of the infinite ones. A single possibility is one of the aspects of everythingness, and everything cannot be everything without every single conceivable (already uncovered) and inconceivable (not yet uncovered) possibility.

I already jumped straight to the point from the get-go, but now the thing is what you’re actually doing with this information. Well, I already gave it away in the first paragraph of this section: you choose which aspects of infinity to experience. In other terms, you choose your experience of life. Know that it is all your choice (even if those choices may be coming from a deeper level of your being you are not yet conscious of) and that you are in control, control that allows you to choose to surrender to the unfolding of your life instead of resisting it (resistance generates suffering). You answered the reflection questions in this article’s first section and your life is unfolding according to your true passion, which is experiencing your uniquely fulfilling life, so trust yourself in your own unfoldment.

The concept of infinite possibilities might sound scary, especially if fear is attaching you to some of these possibilities: you may be attempting to avoid these possibilities by doing your best to drastically lower the probability of them coming to fruition. Remember, though, that this only serves to keep you in the OCD cycle—and this avoidance includes reassurance seeking, which is why I cannot allow myself to coddle you and tell you that what you fear can’t ever happen. But because it can, doesn’t mean it will (remember relevancy/irrelevancy). And even if it does happen, why can’t that unpreferred experience be used in a preferred way? Why not decide that you not only can get through that experience if it were to happen, but that it can actually serve you?

Core beliefs

Now we’re starting to touch upon beliefs. It is my point of view that this fear of possibility, which expresses itself through diverse trigger-obsession-compulsion cycles according to OCD’s selectivity (have you noticed how OCD latches only onto certain aspects of your life?), stems from core beliefs of powerlessness and worthlessness. If you’ve read my article on inner safety and more for OCD recovery, you have learned about thinking, feeling, and behaving in alignment with your desired life, which naturally allows you to let negative core beliefs out and let positive core beliefs in. For some individuals and to varying degrees, DIE, which chiefly relies on relevancy/irrelevancy, is the way to go. For others or for some areas of their lives, it may be useful for them to dive into themselves to identify their negative core beliefs, realize their nonsensicality (subjectivity, irrelevancy, and inherent falseness) and recognize their service (how they used to serve who you were, and how they served you as an opportunity to experience inner alchemy [transmuting the “bad” into good, radical transformation]), and allow them to leave thanks to your awareness of them.

In regard to OCD, I want to tread the topic of beliefs carefully, as it is my sincere desire to have you adopt your preferred core beliefs in the way that serves your desired identity embodiment, as opposed to them being used as the crutch that is reassurance seeking. But, since the immediate adoption of your preferred core beliefs has the potential to be a significant positive catalyst in your life, I will share with you how, even while still experiencing OCD, I adopted mine without turning them into reassurance seeking (seeking certainty [lack of it]) but into inner safety (being the certainty).

First, uncover negative core beliefs through thought cascades: take a negative or an obsessive thought (NOT an intrusive thought, which are irrelevant, unpreferred thoughts that themselves give way to obsessions about having to get rid of them—read the example so that you can identify the difference between these two) and trace its origin back by asking “If this is really true, what is so bad/wrong about it?” or “What am I afraid will happen if this is really true?”. Example from my actual life: “I might have not locked my front door correctly” ➡️ “Someone might break into my house and steal my belongings—even worse, they might harm me” ➡️ “I’ll never be able to recover from this: I won’t have enough money to buy a replacement for what was stolen and I will be permanently scarred, mentally and physically” ➡️ “I’ll be miserable and suffer for the rest of my life.”

Let’s pause at this last thought: the fear of suffering (even more so than the fear of death). I couldn’t go further than “I’ll be miserable and suffer for the rest of my life.” Let’s ask the question again and see what that reveals: ➡️ “I won’t get to live the life I want.” Isn’t it so ironic for me to have been afraid of not getting to live the life I wanted when I was already not living the life I wanted because I was refusing to let go of this afraidness? Again, I asked the question: ➡️ “My life will be wasted.” And again: “I will prove to be worthless.” Ah, worthlessness. It’s obvious: I wasn’t living my desired life because I believed myself to be unworthy of it, believing myself INTO being unworthy of it. Manifesting an unfulfilling life under the guise of “being safe”—and, to OCD, being safe means staying stuck in a loop and playing small so that you don’t face what you are truly believing (because, if you did, OCD’s illusion would immediately dissolve and it (you) wouldn’t be able to “protect” you anymore—you wouldn’t have an excuse to play small anymore [oh, how terrible! 😩 {sarcasm, heheh}]).

I was afraid of proving to be worthless because, deep down, I believed ➡️ “I am worthless.” How do you know when to stop asking the question? When, after asking the question again, the answer repeats itself—that’s when you know you’ve gotten to the root. Now, it’s uprooting time, baby! Let’s dissolve the illusion: you are not worthless because you exist. Because you exist, you are worthy. That’s all there is to it. Do you think God makes mistakes? What we humanly define as a mistake is relative: don’t be fooled into believing that human definitions are the ultimate truth. Yes, even your own definitions are a relative truth—a belief. Creation is perfect, despite what any one of us says about it. And you, “merely” existing (hah, “merely” existing—you are a f*cking miracle!), expands Consciousness. The greatest offering you can give to God is to be yourself. You offer God your unique experiential perspective. Believe what you will about yourself—that doesn’t take away from the fact that you are here and now. I mean, God loves us so much that he even allows us to believe we are worthless if we so desire—we are always getting what we want! We are free.

After reading the previous paragraph, allow yourself to simply marinate in the truth: your new belief. You need not do anything at all about it, despite the DIE framework, especially if you’re just starting out your OCD recovery. The reason why is because I don’t want this turning into a compulsion for you. Having read the paragraph, continue going about your day, even while still experiencing OCD symptoms. The realization of truth begins to sink deeper and is interiorized. Then, (maybe) slowly and (definitely) surely, your actions begin to change. Why? Because you’re acting from actualized, interiorized truth—not from compulsion (there is no longer a felt need to drive, force yourself together with avoidance of what you don’t prefer).

To be frank, identifying this core belief happened for me as I travelled on my path: I didn’t think to use the thought cascade method consciously, even though it was a tool I already had under my belt. I recognize now that thought cascades can directly help you get to your root fears and identify negative core beliefs in order to be able to remove/replace them. The thought cascade is a tool that you can consciously start using right now, as opposed to how I ended up using it (together with other established and unestablished (yet—I’m on it 😉) tools and methods) unconsciously and then consciously realized I had done so.

Disidentification

As I had previously mentioned, the beliefs of powerlessness and worthlessness are at the root of OCD. So, evidently, one would have to adopt the opposite of these beliefs in order to lay OCD down to sleep: “I am power-full (capable)” and “I am worthy (deserving)”. If, during your exploration, you find the negative belief of being unlovable, deeper than it may lie the belief in being powerless and worthless (being unlovable equating to being incapable and undeserving, therefore feeling threatened). If being unlovable is a negative belief you have been holding onto, you 1) are believing you don’t have the capacity for nor the ability to love, and 2) are believing you don’t deserve love.

Now that you have identified your negative core beliefs through thought cascades, you disidentify with them by realizing the truth. I already addressed worthlessness; for the sake of the doubter, though, let’s say that what I said about worthlessness isn’t inherently true. That there is no God/Source/Creator that wants and loves you or anyone. Well, so what? Who cares!? If this somehow turned out to not be objectively true, YOU can choose to make it objectively true in your life by believing it to be so. Why not believe that which serves you, that which allows you to openly express love? I don’t see a good reason why not to. And fear is not a good reason, unless you are consciously choosing to live a fearful life—once you become conscious of the fact that it is your own choice, you finally consciously own the responsibility that you possess over the choice to remain where you are or to move to where you want to be.

The thing is you have to replace a core belief with another core belief—that’s the whole “process” of letting out and letting in! In regard to DIE, the preferred core beliefs are the “desired identity.” Now, you have to embody them, embody it. This is done through what I have already described in another article: thinking, feeling, and behaving. To me, this equates to following your enthusiasm (intense result of being within God’s essence and having God’s essence within), as this naturally (I know I am using this word a lot in this article, but it feels right to do so!) has your thinking, feeling, and behaving be in alignment with your soul’s unique essence (perspective).

I reiterate: read my blog post on inner safety and more for OCD recovery, which details thinking, feeling, and behaving as your desired identity embodiment. Again, simply put, it is following your enthusiasm, a new way of putting it I’ve recently adopted, inspired by Bashar and my own shift from getting in my own way (rationalizing, doubting, playing small and “safe”, and acting from fear) to getting out of my way (letting God lead without me throwing a temper tantrum because “things didn’t go my way”—b*itch, they went and continue to go even better than you expected them to go!). Things really do fall into place (effortless, didn’t-even-“try” synchronicities!) when you are this way. It isn’t complicated—it is authentically being, and being expresses itself through action. It’s sooo easy that we have to go ahead and complicate things, huh? Or, maybe, you don’t have to 😉

Following your enthusiasm means taking the action that you feel enthused about right now, acting on it until the focus of your enthusiasm naturally flows onto other things. Enthusiasm, to me, is divine inspiration (love) and is not confined to human reasoning. This feeling of divine inspiration is what allows you to recognize the next steps to take in your own unique path. To end this section, I advise you to learn to differentiate between acting from fear vs. acting from preference (“have to” vs. “want to” [I myself consciously say “have to” sometimes because, to me, if I have to do something it’s because I’m wanting to do it]). Also, notice when it’s time for you to move from one thing onto another one (when met with [illusory] “limitations,” such as running out of your current budget or following governmental laws [we have decided to play the game of life, so we render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s])—be persistent (flexible), but not insistent (rigid). And remember to, when there is apparently not enough to go around, always see how you can use the resources at hand to do more with less—this, ironically, shows you how you can do less with more (more wisdom equals less unnecessary action).

7) Thinking vs. intrusive thoughts

Adopting this distinction is technically a mindset shift, since you are shifting your thinking about these terms; whenever they come up, you’ll interpret them differently because of your shift in perspective.

I already wrote an article that addresses the distinction between thinking and intrusive thoughts—this is the link to it. After you finish reading it, keep this in mind: making this distinction is not meant to be or become reassurance seeking. Cognitive reconfiguration for OCD recovery requires self-awareness and emotional regulation, being able to acknowledge intrusive thoughts for what they are and to recognize the why behind your thinking. I don’t want you to take this and go at your intrusive thoughts with it by repeating to yourself “These are intrusive thoughts, not my thinking” over and over again to soothe yourself. Cognitive reconfiguration is to come from a place of embodied inner safety.

If you are at a place where you feel completely out of control and like you can’t distinguish your fears from your preferences, do not attempt cognitive reconfiguration and instead focus on behavioral and affective reconfiguration. Personally, that’s how my journey played out: behavioral and affective reconfiguration practiced hand-in-hand as I took action aligned with my enthusiasm. It’s all connected, so cognitive reconfiguration happened while at it. However, the realization of the nuances I am now sharing with you came to (for) me after I had come a long way in my OCD recovery, having been left with a few minor trigger-obsession-compulsions that were waaay less distressing compared to the ones that I initially exercised. These realizations were small pieces of the puzzle that, although mostly completed, fit perfectly into place and made the picture whole. If you have already overcome most of your trigger-obsession-compulsions, then cognitive reconfiguration may be just what you need (want). If this is not you (yet), let the information I am giving you in this section just sit with you until you feel ready to incorporate it into your life in a tangible way (if you so desire). Trust me, you’ll know when you’re ready for change, including being ready for the resistance that change might bring up inside and outside of you—until then, you need not force it.

Done.

Get it? It’s a reference to the “Done.” signal ;) I ended up writing waaay more than what I initially thought I would write 😅 I want to add here that when I say this, “OCD recovery”, is a process, it is because I am choosing for it to be a process, as you are too if you do choose it to be so. It’s always a choice. So if I say “OCD recovery”, I’m implying it’s a process—and that’s okay, that’s how I did it.

But you don’t have to buy into it being a process and associate it with tediousness and waiting for change; you know that I’ve gone into this cold turkey many times and, although it may be a bigger shock to the system, you “settle into the new state”, as I mentioned. Other times, and how I have been dealing with my resistance toward my preferred reality as of lately as I undergo integration, is by “settling into the state” before taking the necessary action by giving myself a deadline (whether internally or externally) to act. It is easier this way because I am giving myself time to back down if I so want, making my actual preferred choice clearer to me before and when the deadline arrives. Essentially, this takes a lot of the pressure (stemming from the fear of making a mistake) off of you, knowing that you can say no to this opportunity if you want to do so—if you end up saying yes to it, however, there you have your answer ;). If you can (choose to), do this for the sake of allowing yourself to make your preferred decision without the illusion of pressure. If it’s investing in yourself by acquiring a preferred product or service, for example, and you feel called to do it (whether you end up going through with it to the end or not), allow yourself to go through with it and see what happens.

Freedom is the ultimate permission. Being “unstuck” from indecision gives you the mental and physical space to focus on what matters to you instead of staying in a perpetual battle between saying yes or no to an opportunity, even if your ultimate choice ends up being a “mistake” (and that is relative—you assign meaning, how will you make that serve you?). Ultimately, you are always following the flow, whether you exert force against the current or not.

Since, societally and medically, OCD recovery tends to be treated as a process, I am consciously choosing to play the game of process. It all starts with awareness—I’m saying this so you keep in mind that you get to decide how you want to play the OCD recovery game. If you honestly believe you can go into this cold turkey, go right ahead (“miracles” do happen, you know). If not, go through the process you believe for certain will get you to the other side, whether you use ERP, ACT, and/or any other conventional/unconventional healing modality. Do what you truly believe in. Whatever the “interim” looks like, you are the one allowing that to be the solution/answer by choosing it to be so—it is the authorization form (also literally the form [way] in which you authorize something to happen [the way you are allowing it to come about, you are the author and this is the form through which you are tangibilizing {anchoring} your allowance]) you are consciously or unconsciously using to get to where you want to go (an “excuse”, ex-cause, out of cause, be as if you are not the sole cause [sometimes, it’s a fun game to play!]).

Anyway, that’s all of the knowledge acquired through personal experience I have to share with you in this post; let me know if you find any of these mindset shifts useful. I have written more posts about all of the pieces that added up to me living an OCD-free life (yes, it IS possible!), including any mindset shifts that I might have missed in this post. Also, if you desire assistance in applying any or all of the mindset shifts I have mentioned in your own life or simply desire for me to expand on them, let me know too and I will do my best to serve you :) Thank you for being here!