Dear Melissa:

I am an expert on obsessive thinking, I should have something for you, some suggestion. Now that I understand (an evolving understanding of your situation through time, most recently, today I learn that obsessive thinking was a problem before your bf issue): I know the draw, the …mental itch to obsess, an itch one has to scratch, again and again. I know the force drawing you in. That force, that itch is in reality a CONNECTION of neurons in the brain, a connection, a pathway that if highlighted and photographed you could actually see it. This pathway in reality is activated by energy and chemicals. People who do not obsess do not have this particular pathway. In effect nobody has the particular pathway you have, it is like fingerprints, only instead of 10 we have thousands of pathways.

Now, some chemicals (psychiatric drugs), in the course of trial and error (try THIS, let’s start with this dosage), after two weeks or a month: how do you feel? Should we increase the dosage? Or try something else, etc. etc.) some chemical, drug may block the pathway for a while. Maybe longer. With a cost: side effects and all-hell-breaking-loose for many when you try to get off those drugs.

Another way is the do-not-scratch-the itch method. The pathway will weaken over time if you do not participate in re-activating it again and again. It is like a well worn pathway in the woods. Over time if you don’t walk on it, vegetation will grow there and cover the path your feet made (not completely gone but way less traveled). It takes some FAITH in resisting the chemical drive to walk the pathway (give in and walk the pathway, again). It takes understanding that you will be okay if you don’t walk it. Again and again you… force CALM to inhabit your experience. Again and again you disengage from the obsessing pathway and engage in paying attention and focusing on your breathing, on sight, touch, smell, etc. that is disengaging the obsessing pathway and engaging the here-and-now breathing, seeing, hearing, touching pathways.

The persistence required is great, over time; the commitment immense. This is how I successfully stopped OCD rituals. I still have the pathway, the itch when stressed (and that is when most vulnerable) but way less often.

anita