The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

by Norman Doidge

The first step is for a person having an OCD attack to relabel what is happening to him, so that he realizes that what he is experiencing is not an attack of germs, AIDS, or battery acid but an episode of OCD. He should remember that brain lock occurs in the three parts of the brain. As a therapist, I encourage OCD patients to make the following summary for themselves: “Yes, I do have a real problem right now. But it is not germs, it is my OCD.” This relabeling allows them to get some distance from the content of the obsession and view it in somewhat the same way Buddhists view suffering in meditation: they observe its effects on them and so slightly separate themselves from it. The OCD patient should also remind himself that the reason the attack doesn’t go away immediately is the faulty circuit. Some patients may find it helpful, in the midst of an attack, to look at the pictures of the abnormal OCD brain scan in Schwartz’s book Brain Lock, and compare it with the more normal brain scans that Schwartz’s patients developed with treatment, to remind themselves it is possible to change circuits.

seperate the self from the sickness and then recognize that actions can be taken to mitigate the effects