Complete Recovery From Social Phobia And Ocd--heixi Therapy Posted: 07-09-07 02:33am
I once suffered from OCD, Social Phobia
and Depression and now have completely
recovered under the guidance of Mr. Heixi,
a famous Chinese psycho counselor, it is
he who has given a totally new life, now I
have translated his research findings in
Social Phobia, OCD as well as other
neurosis and share it with all the
tortured souls in this world, I wish it
will give you some hope in beating the
mental beast in your heart.
Please feel free to contact me if you
would like to talk to me for more advice,
I would like to share my experience of
complete recovery from the nightmare.
msn:heixi.jacky@hotmail.com
mail:heixi.jacky@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Complete Recovery from Social Phobia
Experience gained from the complete
recovery from 10+ years’ Social Phobia.
The treatment of Social Phobia includes 2
principles:
Principle 1
The correction of low self-esteem
(inferiority complex), and the build-up of
self-confidence, namely “total
acceptance of yourself”, In Eastern
Philosophy Therapy, it is called
“Original Form” or “to do
nothing”, it is the root-removing
principle.
Principle 2
Behavioral Therapy, Exposure Therapy,
Desensitization Therapy and NLP etc. A
large amount of social practice can
quickly remove the symptoms. It is
symptom-removing principle.
The combination of principle 1
(root-removing principle) and principle 2
(symptom-removing principle) can lead to
the complete recovery from Social Phobia.
If we only apply principle 1, some people
are still be able to completely recover,
theoretically all the social phobia
sufferers can completely recover only by
applying principle 1, but my years of
treatment practice has proved that
principle 2 can greatly shorten the
treatment process and many of my clients
have said it is a very important part.
Without principle 1, we can quickly remove
the symptom, but the root is still there.
Like that we cut a tree down without
eliminating its root. On the surface,
maybe we can behave freely and normally,
but from the bottom of our hearts,
subconsciously, we still feel something is
remaining there, we still feel we are not
truly confident, the root is not
eliminated, and it will thrive upon the
warm and damp environment, namely
“recurrence”.
Mentioned above is the comparison of
eastern therapy and western therapy and
their respective advantage and
disadvantage in treating Social Phobia.
My name is Heixi, a psychological
counselor from China, now I would like to
share 10 years’ research findings and
the experience gained from treatment
practice with all the people throughout
the world, I wish those self-help
sufferers can learn something from my
article, if my therapy can give you some
enlightenment or help in overcoming Social
Phobia, I think my long march towards my
dream, “saving all the tortured souls
from mental purgatory” , will have a
good start.
On the other hand, I wish professional
psychotherapists and counselors could
study my therapy and exchange their views
with mine, because I myself have tested
this therapy for many years during the
treatment practice and the practice has
proved that it is a complete solution for
Social Phobia rather than a hollow theory
from any psychological textbooks and
works. Please forgive my overconfidence, I
just simply wish I can give those who are
suffering in the hell of Social Phobia a
hand, I also welcome any comment and
criticism from any experienced
professional therapist.
The concrete measures are listed as
follows:
1. systematical and step-by-step
desensitization, gradually expose yourself
to the environment and situation you are
scared of -- control yourself and behave
normally within measure, try your best to
get a success experience every time---this
is the guideline.
2. Group training and exposure, namely
speak, sing or perform talk show before a
large audience until complete
desensitized, usually this period is 3
months, I believe currently it is the most
effective and quickest way to remove
symptoms, for example, the Carnegie
Sociality Training Class.
3. Treatment of low self-esteem and
confidence, such as “feeling of
shyness”, “feeling of inferiority to
others”, “being afraid of seeing
people eye to eye”. To deal with these
inveterate negative thinking mode, we must
apply the essence of eastern therapy such
as “completely acceptance of
yourself”, “let the symptoms be there
and do nothing to consciously change it”
, “go back to where you came from in
your heart”, eastern therapy can
completely eliminate the core and root of
Social Phobia, and it will never recur.
Thus, with the combination of western
therapy to remove the symptom and eastern
therapy to remove the root, sufferers can
completely free themselves from Social
Phobia and never fall back into it.
Here I must point out that in the
practical treatment, we should combine
group therapy and individual therapy as
well as customize our therapy according to
detailed and different symptom on the
basis of the guiding principle, all in
all, the key word is “flexibility”.
Some people may suggest that we only apply
eastern therapy since it can remove the
root and completely solve the problem,
there is no need to add western therapy
such as desensitization therapy, CBT and
Exposure Therapy.
At first, I also thought that way, it can
be theoretically proved, in real life,
some people only apply eastern therapy and
quickly recover.
However, in practical clinical treatment,
it is not as simple as that. If we only
apply eastern therapy without western
therapy, the curing effect is not
satisfactory and the treatment process is
too long.
Eastern therapy can also be called
“Natural Therapy”, The difference
between eastern therapy and western
therapy is like the difference between
Chinese medication and western medication,
the merit of Chinese medication lies in
the fact that it can improve the immunity
and completely free people from the
disease, but the tardy progress prevents
it from being the quick solution of some
acute disease such as massive haemorrhage,
however western medicine can quickly
remove the symptom such as sore throat,
snuffle or snivel in cold, but it have
difficulty to prevent people from
contracting cold because the immune system
has not been reinforced. So if we combine
the eastern therapy and western therapy
together, we can learn from each other's
strong points and offset each other’s
weakness.
In my view, OCD and the other neurosis
have the same essence with Social Phobia.
Concrete step for your reference:
How to expose yourself and go through
desensitization.
Suggestion 1: choose a job in which large
amounts of communication is unavoidable,
only intensive social practice can give
you the social skill you are lacking in.
For example, lecturer, trainer, salesman
are some very good jobs for social phobia
sufferers.
If you are a student, please try to avail
yourself of any opportunities to
communicate with people. If you are afraid
of speaking before a large audience, try
to frequently attend speech contest,
debate contest, singing contest and so on.
If you have difficulties in making friends
or you tend to feel nervous when staying
with people, try to attend any
communication society. Please do it step
by step from the easiest thing for you, be
well prepared before each challenge, try
your best to gain some experience of
success every time.
The guiding principle is “try to get
yourself involved in the situation you are
afraid of”, but do it step by step to
get systematical and gradual
desensitization.
Suggestion 2: Apply some eastern
philosophy methods together with intensive
exposure, be prepared for any failure and
unsatisfactory results, you will
definitely encounter some failure
experience at first, and you tend to feel
depressed and frustrated, accept the
feeling of depression and frustration. It
is normal of you to feel frustrated, it is
the normal response, please do not fight
those negative feelings, if you didn’t
feel frustrated when meeting failure, then
it would be abnormal of you.
Please pay attention to the principle of
“step by step”, if you suffered from a
very severe failure at beginning, you may
be scared of trying once more and avoid
any similar situation. So if you want to
make quick progress, you must do it under
the guidance of an experienced psycho
counselor.
Suggestion 3: Accept yourself. This is the
basis of all the social practice and
social exposure. Without this,even if you
remove all the symptoms on the surface,
you still tend to feel unconfident and
inferior from the bottom of your heart.
One famous local lecturer has once told
even if he can behave decently before a
large audience, he still feel he is
lacking in confidence.
Therefore, we can completely recover from
Social Phobia only when we eliminate not
only apparent symptoms but also inner root
with the combination of western therapy
and eastern therapy.
The analysis of Social Phobia
Analysis 1 ____ All the social
phobia sufferers are all regarding
themselves as inferior. That's the
pathological diagnosis. You have
difficulties in and you are unwilling to
accept yourself. The inferiority complex
is the key. You think you are inferior to
others, there are various symptoms, and
you feel you must change yourself, you
behavior can be divided into 2 types,
A(the symptoms) and B (your attitudes
towards these symptoms ). A:[1] “I am a
shy man” [2] “I dare not see people
eye to eye” [3] “I tend to feel panic
attack before people. [4]…… All the
symptoms are so real and they come from
years’ of personal experience. The
personal experience is very stubborn. Pure
cognition correction session has no way to
change it. B: the strong desire to
eliminate those symptoms, you feel that
you must remove these feelings, you cannot
live a normal life if they don’t
disappear. You always find yourself an
excuse when meeting social situation, “
I am a social phobia sufferer, I can
attend those situation after I recover.”
In this way, you avoid social life over
and over again and forgive yourself every
time.
A and B are the strong foundation of low
self-esteem believes.
Analysis 2---1234 in A are the
symptoms. Social Phobia sufferers are
always thinking if they can free
themselves from the symptoms, they can
live a normal life. So next we will
analyze these symptoms.
The normal people often feel
shy, nervous or panic too, but they retain
it within the normal standard. For
example, water remains liquid state
between 0-100 degrees centigrade. When the
temperature is over 100 degrees
centigrade, it turns into steam, so when
the severity of symptoms go beyond 100
degrees centigrade, normal people become
social phobia sufferers. So we can see
that the essence of these symptoms are
normal.
Analysis 3____Then what is the
essence of those symptoms.
Physiologically, I think they are the
pathological conditional reflex formed in
the long-time immersion in the
pathological living environment. It has
the same feature as our character, habit
and skill, we learned it, we repeatedly
review it in our minds, and we keep it. In
Pavlov’s experiment, the dog tend to
drivel involuntarily upon hearing the
bell-ring, like the dog, the social phobia
sufferers tend to show various symptoms
involuntarily upon see people or encounter
certain social situation. Once such
pathological conditional reflex is formed,
it cannot be eliminated forcibly just like
our habit, personality and learned skill,
if we want to remove it, we must follow
the law of nature.
Analysis 4---If a social phobia sufferer
subjectively wants to eliminate or
suppress those symptoms forcibly, for
example, some social phobia sufferers tend
to wear a mask of a great man and try to
imitate those talkative and decent men,
they are unwilling to be themselves, they
cannot accept themselves, they hate
themselves and try to be others, they want
to forcibly remove those symptoms, but
what they are doing has actually added to
the temperature of the water, if they
stick this way, they may enter the
malignant cycle of OCD.
In my view, the physiological essence of
all the neurosis such as phobia, OCD,
Anxiety Disorder as well as psychogenic
depression is the same, namely
pathological conditional reflex, they have
their own law of generation and fadeaway,
we cannot eliminated them forcibly at
pleasure.
We all know that there is only
one truth in this world, and there is no
exception in psychology field. Part of
this truth can be found in all the eastern
and western therapies, with the
combination of eastern therapy and western
therapy, we can touch the core of the
truth. Practice is the only way to test
the theory, we can only discover the truth
which has already existed in the Nature
for centuries rather than create a truth.
Theory must fit in the existed truth.
There is only one law to all the neurosis
such as Social Phobia, if we follow the
law, we can cure it, if we go against the
law, and we will never solve the problem,
therefore, we must not blindly control it
and forcibly suppress it.
I suggest those social phobia sufferers
should study western therapies such as
CBT, Desensitization therapy as well as
eastern therapy such as Morita Therapy and
Buddhism, Zen, meanwhile try to get
involved in social life and accumulate the
success experience, in this way, we can
remove both the root and symptoms of
social phobia and get completely
recovered.
Mentioned above is a general description
of my social phobia treatment principle,
it is commonness rather than
individuality, I would customize my
treatment program according to
everyone’s different symptom and
different severity, please do not blindly
apply it to different people.
How we get Social Phobia
None of those who is suffering from Social
Phobia is confident!
They are all timid, dependant, of low
self-esteem, sensitive, weak, just to name
a few.
Oh! Friends, when were you deprived of
such strong initiative in dealing with the
external environment even animals possess?
You now become so dependant and passive.
A healthy person should fully know how to
control the surroundings and how to
control himself or herself. To those
people, everything is undercontrol.
But to you, nothing is controllable.
Where is the problem?
Now let’s sit down, calm down and look
back.
In your childhood, there might be a strict
and bad-tempered elder around you, he or
she might from time to time suppress your
wish to make decision yourself freely, he
or she might from time to time say to you
“No, you are wrong” only because he or
she didn’t like your decision.
One inhibition followed by another, you
gradually give up your efforts to take
initiative because you know it will not
work.
What’s more, unconsciously you gradually
followed the requirement from that elder,
only by which you may gain compliment and
approval from him or her. You began to
inhibit your own wish just in order to
cater for that person. You adapted
yourself by being passive and obedient.
Therefore, living such a life this way for
many years has formed your personality, an
inhibited “you”, like that a growing
sapling with a thick trunk over it will
never become straight but bent.
“bent”, “deformed”,
“distorted” or “inhibited” is the
best description of your current
personality.
All in all, personality is formed by
environment, good environment leads to
good personality while bad environment
leads to bad personality.
Of course, we cannot conclude that all
those who are suffering from Social Phobia
has grown up this way, there still may be
some exceptions, but on the whole, what
mentioned above is a prototype.
Please pay attention to these questions:
Do you remember the first time the gaze
from other people made you feel panic?
Do you think other “normal” person
will react the same way as you when they
are gazed by other people for the first
time? How would they deal with such panic?
How have you dealt with the panic?
Then the following questions:
Do you remember the first time you
blushed? The first time you were suffering
from “heart attack” when speaking to
the public? The first time you felt ill at
ease? etc.
How do you think other “normal” person
will deal with these bad feelings or bad
reactions such as blush, heart attack? How
have you dealt with these bad feelings?
Whatever your answer is,
Let me tell you an ultimate truth: “Low
self-esteem and self-denial is the essence
of Social phobia!” .
Look how you describe yourself:
I am a wretched worm!
I am so stupid!
I am so weak!
I am afraid of death!
I am not good at communicating with
people!
I am so nervous when I meet people!
I often blush!
I am so shy!
I cannot make myself feel easy!
I am so panic!
I dare not disobey my mother!
I mush follow my father’s command
because he will shout at me, which will
make me tremble!
I almost never fight other people.
I always compromise whenever there is a
dispute.
I am a good person to all those who know
me.
I seldom refuse the requirement from other
people, even if I usually do that
reluctantly.
I am so passive, always putting myself in
great inconvenience.
I am so dependant, lacking in initiative.
My feeling or life is almost controlled by
others, not me myself.
No! No! No!
Can I live this way on! No!
I will transform myself! I will change
myself!
How will I do, let’ see.
Articles about Success! Biography of great
man! The Hero in the movie or fiction!
I will use all these to present a new
look! Here comes the new me! I will try to
imitate those I admire, imitate their
talking style, imitate their smiling way.
Oh! I have become talkative, I have got
rid of all the panic.
I carefully prepare for every chance of
talking to people and to the public. I
feel full of strength.
I am “seemingly” strong! I seem just
like the hero or decent guy in the movie,
they are eloquent and never panic over
anything!
But is this true? You have truly got rid
of you phobia?
Repeat:
Low self-esteem and self-denial is the
essence of social phobia.
Here I will quote a remark of Buddism:
“You will never reach the target if you
keep going forward, the only way to reach
the target is to turn back.”
This the only way out:
Accept yourself, accept everything that
belongs to yourself.
It is very difficult for you to fully and
completely accept yourself, but if you
don’t do that, you will suffer more and
more in the rest of your life.
Turn back bravely, fully accept yourself
rather than try to escape from it, it is
the first step to recovery, and this is
the step you must take if you really want
to completely recover and never fall back
into the trap of social phobia once more.
You always to want to become others, you
are never willing to be yourself.
Oriental Buddhism once again tells us:
“accept yourself, be yourself, there is
no one is this world can escape from
himself or herself and become others. “
This is the only way to success.
Be yourself, be the true yourself, only by
doing that, Social phobia will gradually
leave you.
My oriental philosophy Therapy
Many people want me to talk about my
therapy. The essence of my oriental
therapy is “counter-therapy” or
“reverse therapy”. To most of my
clients, I would apply customized NLP ,
Subconsiousness Theory , plus Intensified
Contact Training (seemingly like
traditional “desensitization therapy”,
but actually not the same), Cognitive
Therapy, Morita Therapy and Buddhism or
Taoism. If everything is OK, to be honest,
the curative effect is amazing!
To many sufferers, "Morita treatment" is
not very effective, because its natural
tendency is very slow. So to many people
it has little efficacy. But Heixi's
treatment has been proved again and again,
the curative effect is amazing even
miraculous.
Counter-therapy is the result of the
combination of Buddhism and my own
treatment experience. Its root is Oriental
Philosophy. Old Chinese philosophy
"Yijing" (Book of Changes) believes that
the whole world (including all the things
in this world) can be divided into two
contradictory parts, like sun and moon,
day and night, man and women, life and
death……, “Taoism” believes that
“if you want to get to your destination,
you should countermarch”, for example,
if you want to make money(get), you should
invest first (pay). The whole world has
been applying so many methods and tons of
drugs to deal with all kinds of phobia,
OCD, anxiety disorder, depression and so
on. The methods include Cognitive Therapy,
Behavior Therapy, Psychoanalysis,
hypnogenesis and so on. Every method has
its merit and do help a lot of people to
alleviated their symptoms, but ask those
people and even yourselves: have you
really completely recovered? I mean
“completely”, means you will never
fall back into your nightmare once again
and enjoy the life as freely as possible.
If these methods can really help people to
completely free from all the neurosis, why
many people are still tortured by SA,why
over 100 millions people are trapped in
the nightmare of depression and some of
them choose suicide as the solution? Why
many people cannot jump out of the cycle
of OCD? Where is the problem? Oriental
Taoism has the answer.
There is a maxim in “Tao Te Ching”(
book of morality): “the more efforts you
make to approach your destination, the
farther away you are from it”, why?
Because we are going the wrong direction.
But the methods mentioned above is still
very useful in removing the symptoms, for
example, in social phobia treatment,
behavior therapy will help the sufferer to
remove the symptoms, but if we want to
completely recover from it, oriental
philosophy such as Buddhism and Taoism is
a must.
Because “Counter Therapy" originates
from dialectic oriental philosophy, it can
be applied in many fields, such as
“anxiety before important examination or
interview”, “social phobia”,
“anxiety disorder” “insomnia”
“OCD” “Psychogenic Depression”.
The fact shows that once it is used
correctly and timely, the effect is
miraculous.
Sometimes, even I myself will marvel at
it.
I will detail some therapy practice in my
other articles, but different people have
different condition and should be treated
accordingly. I often adjust my measure
according to the feedback from my clients
to make them recover as soon as possible.
Last edited by jacky1980 on 07-09-07 02:37am; edited 1 time in total
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jacky1980
New User, Becoming EHEALTHy
Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Posts: 2
Posted: 07-09-07 02:34am
Complete Recovery from OCD
OCD Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is an
anxiety disorder characterized by intense,
recurrent, unwanted thoughts and rituals
that are beyond the person's control. So
when we speak of OCD, there must be 2
sides: one side is the recurrent unwanted
thoughts, and the other side is your
strong desire to get rid of these unwanted
thoughts.
So from these 2 sides, we can work out the
essence of OCD. The essence of OCD is that
you are not willing to accept the existent
objective facts and try to escape from
it.
As we all know, all the matters have their
own reason to exist in this world, they
all follow the law of nature to exist in
this world, the law of nature which cannot
be disobeyed at all!
Remember the first time such weird idea
came across your mind? Every person,
during his or her life, more or less,
occasionally would encounter such weird
idea or action. So, however weird it is,
it has its own reason to be there, it is
reasonable to be there, it just appeared
in your mind because of the law of the
nature, but it pops up on the wrong
person, it is you! If it pops up in other
normal persons, they may neglect it or
feel uncomfortable just for a short time
at most, then they continue their lives
and do what they should do, and forget
such idea, but you, you are not like them!
The bad personality created by the
environment you have been living in since
your childhood always renders you low
self-esteem and self-denial. When you
encounter such situation, you will not
turn outside ( by “outside” we mean
“do the things you ought to do and do
not mind however weird the idea or action
is), but inside (by “inside” we mean
you begin to deny or refuse such idea when
you encounter it, you begin to think
“why such idea came across my mind”,
“I cannot let that happen”, “I must
get rid all of these weird ideas, which
will make me comfortable”), now you
begin to fight these ideas over and over
again.
“Everything has its reason to be there
including all of your weird ideas if the
law of nature makes it to appear there,
even god cannot help you to escape from
it”, calmly and carefully taste these
words, you will get much. If you
understood this “ultimate truth” in
the first place, you would not become what
you are like today! If you understood
however weird the idea or action is, it is
created by so many factors including
external environment and internal mind or
personality, it is REASONABLE to be there,
you will not fight it or try to free
yourself from it, it would not haunt you
like this today!
But you never think this way, you have
been trying to fight it, try to deny it
rather than accept it, you would find that
the more fiercely you fight it, the more
fiercely it would counter-fight you. You
have spent all the energy in the battle
and feel so exhausted, but you enemy is
always stronger than you however hard you
try! Who has made it to grow so strong and
so powerful, YOU!, you are not killing it
but irrigate it, stop that at once! You
have gone the wrong direction, turn back
at once, what are you waiting for?
All in all, the essence of OCD is that “
you are trying to deny yourself”, “you
are trying to escape from yourself” , Is
that possible? Imagine if you pull your
hair upward wishing to lift yourself up
from the floor, will that happen? I
believe your answer is definitely
“No”, but I tell you, actually you are
doing the same thing as hair-pulling, and
you have been doing it for many years
maybe, will you continue to do it? It is
up to you!
OCD is an extreme expression or outburst
of Low Self-esteem or Self-denial. Please
note that not only OCD, all the other
mental disorders ( including all kinds of
Phobia, Depression, Insomnia, etc ) share
the same feature. To be more accurate, The
essence of all the persistent mental
sufferings is extremely low self-esteem
(inferiority complex) or Self-denial.
You are trying to abandon yourself, you
are trying to escape from yourself, you
are willing to do anything else except the
complete acceptance of yourself. You have
gone against the law of nature, so you
will be punished for doing so. It is
simple!
You keep going forward, trying to find
where the way out is, but the way out is
just behind, only by turning back will you
find it.
“Accept Yourself”, this is the maxim
you can find in almost all the oriental
lore such as Buddhism Scriptures. Yes, you
are so painful just because you cannot
accept yourself, you hate yourself, you
cannot tolerate yourself for even one
second.
Every morning just after waking up, you
start to fight yourself! Your activate
every muscle, using every method you can
find to “kill” yourself, you search
throughout all the Books and Articles
about Psychology, wishing to find a way to
eliminate those ideas which are making
yourself uncomfortable even painful. The
more exhausted you are, the more bravely
you fight! You wish to pay any cost to
kill the true “yourself”, which is an
objective presence in the world. You even
don’t give yourself one second to take a
breath. You will only give up when you
have no energy left, maybe you will find
when you come up with the idea of “give
up”, you will suddenly feel relaxed and
comfortable, but it will only last for a
short time. Some friends have told me that
they will suddenly feel comfortable when
they decide to see a therapist, only the
idea of seeing a therapist will make him
feel better, interesting? In fact, when
you decide to see a therapist, you are
actually doing the similar things as
“give up”. You might say to yourself
“ I really have no way of dealing with
it, I will see if a therapist can help
me.”
Ask yourself:
When will I be able to jump out of the
cave of OCD? When will I jump out of the
cycle of OCD?
Do you know the Newton Law on force and
counteractive force..
Where there is a force, there is a
counterwork. Where there is suppression,
there is confrontation. Where there is a
fight, there is a counter-fight.
That is just the feature of OCD.
So “acceptance” rather than
“fight” is the only way out.
However, when we speak of
“acceptance”, we must point out we
must accept it from the bottom of our
hearts, accept it heartily and completely
rather than only accept it on the surface.
Here, real and complete acceptance is a
must.
If you really accept from the bottom of
your heart, even if you are fighting,
actually you are accepting.
If you just accept it on the surface, even
if you are accepting, actually you are
fighting.
Dear friends, do you really understand the
2 sentences above? If you do, you have
taken a big step forward.
If you just accept it on the surface, it
is useless, what's worse, your OCD will be
more severe and you will suffer more
because actually you are fighting.
For example, Narcissism is not
self-confidence, actually it is low
self-esteem.
Now I will detail my understanding of OCD,
below you can find some questions and my
answers, the focus is the concept of
“acceptance”.
Q: now I understand, you mean we must
fully and completely accept all the
symptom of OCD, what’s more, we should
embrace it with our hearts to make it fade
away as soon as possible, but so far I
cannot use this method well enough.
A: You are wrong, when we speak of
“acceptance”, we don't mean
“acceptance” is a method, there is not
any method included. “give up” itself
is just “acceptance”, stop using any
method, accept it from the bottom of your
heart. Never strictly demand that you
should accept all the symptoms, never
strictly demand that you should embrace it
in order to make it fade away. Because if
you consciously demand yourself to accept
it, actually you only accept it on the
surface rather than accept it from the
bottom of your heart. The essence of such
“acceptance” is still “fighting”.
That’s just what I mentioned “If you
just accept it on the surface, even if you
are accepting, actually you are
fighting.”
Q:I think the acceptance of symptom itself
will not work, we should analyze the real
cause behind the symptoms. Only by doing
that can we find a way to solve the
problem. We don’t have to dwell on the
symptom, we should accept what is really
in our hearts, namely accept ourselves
from the bottom of our hearts, rather than
accept it on the surface.
A: It seems that you have been studying
and practicing Morita Therapy for a
measure of time, but those who never study
Morita Therapy are still spending all of
their energy in fighting symptoms, trying
to escape them all days and all nights,
therefore firstly we should teach them to
accept the symptom. Furthermore, real
“acceptance” is “give up”, give up
clinging on to any symptom.
And you say, “we should analyze the real
cause behind the symptoms. Only by doing
that can we find a way to solve the
problem”, come on, please stop doing
that, you should awe the nature, OCD is a
perfect closed loop, even if you exhaust
all of your brain cells to analyze it for
the rest of your life, you still cannot
jump out of OCD. Human being will never
defeat nature. Yes, your analysis is
perfect, you are really “intelligent”,
but you have neglected one problem “The
more analysis you make, The farther you
will go away from the solution”. You are
still cycling in this closed loop of OCD.
Here please let me quote one remark from
Taoism “the farther you go, the less you
know”. For example, a very knowledgeable
person will try any method learned in all
the psychology book to free himself from
OCD, but finally he will bound to fail. On
the contrary, an illiterate rube will
easily stay away from those weird ideas or
actions.
In fact, thousands of years before,
Buddhism told us one ultimate truth,
“The only way to stay away from the pain
is to give up any method to stay away from
it.” If you understand now and give up
any efforts to free yourself from OCD, you
will wake up from your nightmare.
So now, friend, give up any method to deal
with OCD, throw away all psychology books,
every method used will make you fall
deeper into OCD, there is never any
method. Get up! Live freely as you wish!
Sing!, dance! Work! Make friends! Life
itself is the best “medication” for
OCD.
For some people suffering from severe
symptoms, strong external stimulation can
be applied.
To put it another way, if a person is
immersed in deep meditation, a sudden and
unexpected strike on his head may pull him
out of the meditation state.
Severe OCD sufferers are in a
nightmare-like state, they cannot wake up
themselves, they must shift their
attention from their symptoms to life
under the guidance of an experienced
counselor. Strong external stimulation
means a busy and full life, or an emergent
task which need his or her full attention.
The essence of all the mental disorders is
low self-esteem or self-denial with OCD of
no exception. All the weird ideas have
their own reasons to be there. Remember,
“Whatever is, is right”.
However weird the ideas which come across
your mind is, they are rational. Most
people would neglect it, even if they
fight it, they will not cling on to it for
long time. On the contrary, your
personality, which is formed by external
environment you have been living in since
your childhood and the pathological
internal mind, makes you focus on it,
cling on to it. You deny its rationality,
try to escape from it, actually you have
denied one ultimate truth:” Those weird
ideas is an indispensable part of
yourself. “ You will never escape from
yourself, so “give up” any efforts.
Therefore, to the OCD, complete “give
up” is complete “accept”, to be
frank, only when you despair of defeating
OCD--saying to yourself: “OK, I give up,
I prepare to live with OCD for the rest of
my life, because it is an indispensable
part of me myself.”,-- you can wake up
from your nightmare and live the life as
you wish.
OCD is yourself, you are the OCD.
Some people may ask me:” Do you mean I
cannot defeat OCD until I despair of
defeating it.”
No. I don’t mean that way, because you
cannot force yourself to despair, that
will be another malignant cycle. Once you
know the essence of OCD, you will free
yourself from it without despairing. The
OCD is yourself, you can never defeat
yourself, give up any futile challenge,
and walk towards the life, then you will
get completely recovered.