I often write about my friend who has “OCD” — obsessive compulsive disorder. Because the issues he faces are the same ones we all face.
His are just more extreme, more obsessive but they’re the same. Just two days after giving his full effort to just one simple technique he called me…
“I’m cured,” he said.
This was after months of severe anxiety states. He was shaking a lot of the time, sweating heavily at night. His thoughts were racing constantly and he couldn’t control them.
He had to stop work several times and his life was grinding to a halt as he avoided as much as he could and withdrew into his private world of pain.
The reason I’m telling you all this is to show you the amazing power of attention. The technique is simple — distraction…
Attention is where your power is. Attention is the volume control for thoughts — as I’ve told him a thousand times.
The “cure” lasted ten days. Ten days of almost complete normality with no sign of OCD. And it took only two days to go from gibbering wreck to happy and enthusiastic using only distraction. Amazing!
Old habits die hard
And his cure would have been permanent but for the fact that ten days later after burning the candle at both ends, he had some little twinges of anxiety that triggered the old way of thinking. Slowly for a further 4 days, he ramped the whole thing back up again.
Again, this has powerful lessons for all of us. “Old habits die hard” as the saying goes. After making changes, we need to be sure to bed them in well.
It’s like riding a bike
“This OCD” I tell him, “is just like riding a bike. You’ll always be able to do it. Just DON’T GET ON THE BIKE.” Unfortunately he did — despite the most severe warnings. I talk to him for hours and hours and hours. “I can’t do this without you,” he says.
The truth is that all this talking is really unnecessary in the sense that it has only one purpose. To convince him that distraction IS the answer — to explain to him that his way can never work, and to get him to commit 100% to the simple method of distraction. Once he commits; two days. He is normal after two days. Twenty years of OCD gone.
If you stick your hand in the fire… it ALWAYS burns
So… round and round we go. As I speak he’s fallen back into the old way. Now he needs me to talk him out because it’s very foggy in there. He can’t see his own way out. I hope and pray that this time he’s learned and he won’t need to stick his hand in the fire one more time to realize… IT ALWAYS BURNS!
Thoughts are… just thoughts
The lesson for you and me is that thoughts aren’t us. They are for the most part conditioned reactions that we believe in and identify with. Once you can see thoughts as just thoughts, you have the power to remove your attention from unwanted ones.
Now you have a choice — to pay attention or not. Whether it’s because you want to stop a bad habit or stop a thought loop about a girlfriend that just dumped you, the process is the same. Distract from thoughts you don’t want (ie. ignore them) and their power is gone.
The amazing power of attention
Once you know this simple process, you’ll find a thousand ways it can serve you. Someone says something hurtful? Distract. Worried about tomorrow? Distract. Craving unhealthy food? Distract.
This one simple technique ALONE can have a massive impact on your health and happiness because you always have choice. There is always a choice of where to put your attention. You can stop reacting to everything in the same old conditioned way — the way everyone else reacts — predictably.
Master the process
Now you make your decisions consciously. You are in charge — not old habits, old ways and the same old reactions. If distraction can end 20 years of misery in only 2 days, what can it do for you?
Learn and master the incredible power of attention and you’re going to get happier and happier.
It’s been 8 years I am searching for a cure. Just to tell you thank you so much, I started the attention (distraction) method and my OCD is fading away. Many thanks!!
— Jad, Canada
Update: I received this feedback from the friend I talked about in the article:
Sometimes there’s things you don’t want but it’s a reality. But I now know thinking can bring nothing but more suffering. I don’t do OCD anymore. Thanks to you. Love you brother x
— Paul Attwell, UK
Best wishes,
Michael Kinnaird
Happy Guide 
Ok I really need help here mike
So I was happy and free of hocd and everything and then this friend (not the guy we were talking about before) of mine who isn’t gay started doing gay things to me like holding my hand and stuff. I would flip because I’m not gay but he just did it as a joke and thought my reaction was funny. He kept on doing it and then one class I asked a friend how to make him stop because I think it’s weird that he’s doing it to me and said that I’m a homophobe and the whole class started calling me a homophobe and its made me freak out because I’m not! I’m fine with other people being gay but just you know…don’t be gay with me because I’m straight!
And then someone said (who people think is really gay) “maybe he’s doing it because he think you are gay”
And this caused me immnense anxiety. It still does.
The whole class went “oooh” and it made me freak out. It causes me so much anxiety because I’m afraid people think I’m gay. But they don’t! I’m pretty sure it was just a joke and people know I date and kiss girls and am not gay at all. I don’t even have gay tendencies. So no one thinks that but still what he said makes me freak out with immense anxiety and its making my life spin and crash and please mike I reallllly need your help badly please help me PLEASE! It’s driving me nuts!!!
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Oh how they will love to wind you up, just laugh along, don’t care about it, shrug it off, show then you ain’t bothered and JOG ON.
“Hmmm yeah I don’t like men holding my hand so I’m a homophobe, yeah right.”
Whatever, keep the mood light, or it’s just fuel for them to wind you up.
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No it’s just that it puts extreme anxiety into me and makes me worry if people think I’m gay BUT THEY DONT but its making me freak out and I’m not sure what they think anymore and it’s just causing extreme anxiety and I need it to stop but how do I do this? It’s terrible!
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It’s the same method for whatever you don’t want on your mind, you ignore and have a don’t care attitude, and you ignore the anxiety too because you know why it’s there. It’s good to exercise if you’re anxious, to get rid of the adrenaline. They don’t think you’re gay, so there is no action needed, just forgetting.
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Teddy, sexual arousal is either caused by natural preferences, or by attention, thus changing your preferences by choice. It’s really that simple.
Does your friend want help? I find it is best to only offer ideas gently to people if they haven’t asked for your help. Dip a toe in the water, see what bites.
For arousal created by choice, the answer is to consciously choose. If one does not choose it, then remove all attention from it, as discussed at length already.
Dreams can happen as a result of ignoring ideas that one previously marked as highly important or even feared. The mind wants you to pay attention because of your previous meaning, so it comes in dreams. This is the norm when one begins to change the meaning quickly to “don’t care.”
What we do is the same, we give no meaning to the dream, we don’t ponder it, we shrug it off like it was nothing, because that is staying consistent with our new understanding, and choice.
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1. If you mean wet dreams are the norm after you start ignoring, do they eventually go away?
And yes he does want my help and he’s recently got into another mess. What happened to him is that he and his girlfriend had a fight twice in a week. Both of those fights ended with him saying an extremely long apology and sorting everything out, and telling her its not her fault. Then he told me he searched up: “how to repair a relationship after a fight” one of the site he saw said that generally the girl is the one who says the long apology and sorts everything out, and the girl is the one who tell the guy it’s not his fault. When he read this, he started freaking out that he was more feminine then his girlfriend, which is ridiculous. But he can’t get it out’ve his mind. So what should he do? And also was that website right?
Thanks, your other info helped him with hocd a lot, now there’s this mess
Teddy
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Well put! :-) Hear ye, hear ye!!!!
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Hi mike I have 2 questions. I recently met an hocd sufferer who used to suffer what I suffered with. But he has 2 big problems. I tell him what you told me, but he keeps on watching gay porn and then switching to girl on girl. He used to be completely sure of his sexuality, but now he questions if he really even has hocd. He does this because he gets groinal responses. This as he describes is a tingling feeling and some swelling. The penis may grow an inch or so. I try to tell him this is a symptom of the hocd but I just say that to make him feel better. He also gets homosexual wet dreams sometimes like once about every week. I try to tell him this is the hocd again but I don’t really know.
So my questions are
1. What do those groinal responses mean?
2. What do those wet dreams mean?
3. Why does he get these?
4. How do I help him?
Thanks
Teddy
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Well, you know that if anything DOES occur in future, that it’s only because you confused your mind by attaching an aroused state accidentally to a different IDEA or image, and it’s great you remembered that, because you see, it’s all on the level of mind, of a strange association that happened, not natural arousal from the same sex.
Now the mind works by meaning and attention, so if you like, you threw a spanner in the works, got all worked up about something because it confused you. So that “spanner” may or may not affect things in future. When something is given SOOOOO much meaning, its effect tends to die away, because the mind works quite primitively in this way. It keeps checking that the thing you FEARED, is now gone, so an occasional repeat may happen. That’s why you simply stay in your truth, and that appeases the primitive part that all is well and it can stop the repeats.
As you think, you lay down new tracks. So, the mind wants to make things easy, it keeps us running on these tracks, so if it ever happens again, it’s because of these factors… the way the mind responds to fear, and thought-habits.
If you “put something on your RADAR” it generally slowly disappears off it. The SPEED that it does so depends on the clarity and RELIEF you feel about your truth. That’s why the process is always to reach the point of letting go FIRST, either by understanding, or if that isn’t possible, FAITH. Sometimes the web of madness is so great, faith is the best route IF a person will do it.
So… understand that any future repeats, even if you find yourself attracted or whatever, is due to this spanner in the works, habits, radars, fear responses. It MEANS NOTHING.
NOW always your response to an event determines what happens next. If it happens and you give MEANING again, you QUESTION it, you FEAR it, you get FRUSTRATED, ANY MEANING WHATSOEVER, you will grow it rapidly again.
You now have experience of the amazing power of attention and MEANING, you now have CLARITY about your sexuality, and how this spanner in the works happened. So now, the appropriate response if you caught yourself repeating a habit, is TO LAUGH, no? It’s FUNNY NOW??? Isn’t it? It should be if you see it right.
Now all the meaning has gone, you simply, genuinely DON’T CARE…. whatever happens, so what? Who cares? put attention somewhere else quite naturally.
Because you turned it around so fast, I would EXPECT you to rapidly return to your normal state, but who cares!? You are clear, if it comes, you know it’s just mind tricks, habits, radars, fear responses. Smile… it’s been amusing, and gently ignore, just indifferent.
It’s actually VERY simple for you now… DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, because anything else is ATTENTION. Now, if some thought comes, or you catch yourself in a habit, immediately recall your clarity, your truth, just as a feeling, a split second remembering and let it go, put attention somewhere else. AND this we naturally do for stuff we don’t care about. “DON’T CARE” indifference, is the only attitude that does not have meaning. You see? CLEAR?
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So then as you said, people can eventually become gay if they keep on putting attention to this thought. I have stopped doing so, and it feels great so far. But my question is, and this is probably the last one, if before all this OCD crap happened, I never questioned, was 100% straight wouldn’t even THINK about it. Then as the ocd took over I started to look at gay qualities and became a little more attracted to men then before, as you said what happens with all the attention and thoughts. If I keep this up until I die, will I soon revert to my original self where I was 100% straight and never questioned it or will I stay here, a little more attracted to men than before? Or will I go back to my old self where I wasn’t like that and not attracted to men at all, being back to my old 100% straight self?
Thanks for your help, I am feeling much better. I just said I wasn’t gonna care about the OCD at all no matter what crap it told me. I can see it was all in my head, and that it was actually the OCD itself that caused the half boner. But now when I look at that, I tried to remember what actually happened.
And believe it or not Michael, this is what happened.
OCD will take whatever you give it, no matter if it is ACTUALLY true or not. Looking back on the moment, I have this crazy memory where I can completely remember a moment. And what really happened is that I got a spontanious boner, as we all do sometimes and then the OCD capitilized on the moment and GAVE me the thought with my friend. BUT I WAS ALREADY AROUSED, AND THAT DIDN’T AROUSE ME AT ALL. But the OCD mind will just lie and make it very easy to believe. And until looking back on it, I thought what the OCD told me was true. It told me that it was the thought of me and my friend that aroused me, and I believed it at first. Now looking back, I see that this wasn’t the case. When I figured it out, I started ignoring and BOOM results. But I can’t stop, and I won’t stop. I just realize it was all up in my head. I mean, sexuality is determined at birth, and you can’t change that. I like women, and I just simply don’t like men. I can’t change that even if I wanted to. Because when I was so worried that I thought I got a boner from imagining me and my friend, as I said, I checked at home but wasn’t aroused AT ALL. And I thought, WHY? If I was truly gay or bi or anything, I would get aroused at anytime. THIS WAS BECAUSE I NEVER WAS AROUSED. OCD JUST TOLD ME I WAS, BUT NOW I CLEARLY SEE THAT WAS WRONG, THAT IT WAS A LIE.
But now I’m slowly but surely back to my old self, or well, I think. But just please answer this last question that I wrote before my somewhat “success” story of OCD. AND ANYONE ELSE WHO READS THIS,
LET IT BE KNOWN THAT OCD IS COMPLETELY CURABLE ITS ALL IN YOUR HEAD, JUST DO WHAT MICHAEL SAYS AND DON’T THINK, THINKING IS THE FUEL FOR OCD AND ONCE YOU STOP OCD WILL BE GONE
Please answer that last question
thanks for all the help.
But please answer
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