meditation & affirmations have been effective fast

There’s a man on YouTube that struggled with OCD over a decade ago and he makes videos talking about the recovery process he went through (how he helps his own clients) and insights on what had worked for him and that included mindfulness and meditation. **I know the concept of meditation for OCD sounds counterintuitive** but the more I research it and having done it twice already (yes I know twice isn’t a convincing track record but bear with me) the more I realized I needed to implement it as a form of **self care** in my journey. In his video, he described that the reason that a lot of the times meditation doesn’t work for OCD it’s because we often times try too hard to clear our minds, but that’s just not how OCD works. I found that for me during these two times that I meditated, simply choosing to not react to any thought(by way of rumination) and instead focusing on my breathing, the physical sensations around me and afterwards naming some things in detail in my surroundings, helped me out a lot. **Obviously the medication and IOP is helping with rumination and my mind is overall 75-85% clear as far as rumination and that motor of constant spiraling and new thoughts is not happening anymore. So perhaps in order to do this you should ideally be at a point in your OCD recovery journey where that “motor” has stopped. But once you get there, meditation will possibly work if you truly try it with an open mind.** Here’s the method I tailored to my own unique needs: I set a timer for 10 minutes. And I say to myself some biblical affirmations first and foremost, to set the tone for where I want my meditation to go. So for me it’s **psalms 27:13, psalm 119:105, and proverbs 3:5-6.** Memorizing these and saying them in whispers to myself at the beginning of the 10 minutes before I sit in silence, helps me out a lot. It served as a reminder for how I should view any intrusive or unwanted thought that does come: a darkness I am finding my way out of while firmly and safely in the real world. Surrounded by others who are also going through their own battles; and that is very grounding for me. **Now, if you are not religious, you do not have to start with biblical affirmations.** In fact, I find that many of my affirmations that I made in moments of clarity to myself have been effective too, and I love how they hit all the right themes of the ocd I dealt with, I whisper them to myself as needed when it feels right during that deep breathing session: **“The thought is an illusion, there is only the breath and the body”** (forces me out of my mind, away from entertaining thoughts that aren’t real. So I can instead focus on my deep breathing and the physical sensations around me) **“a thought is only a cloud passing, but stillness is a constant,”** (affirmations to me that the world around me hasn’t changed just because my thoughts have. Clouds move and disappear but my life is solid and real.) **“every breath is letting go of the intangible.”** (Intangible=delusional ocd thoughts) **“My only priority is breathing, not figuring it out.”** (OCD demands certainty, but once you get to a headspace where you have successfully convinced your mind that only the task at hand is important. It gives your mind a break from trying to figure it all out. Which you don’t have to do in the first place, but OCD puts that weight on you.) **"My mind is creative, I can separate it from the constant reality that surrounds me,"** (great for irreality ocd. We tend to think of these crazy imagine scenarios that would only make sense in a fictional setting, but because of a chemical balance in our our brains, these thoughts are given a false sense of significance when in an otherwise healthy brain they would be seen as junk mail. Affirming this feels like a release for me.) And really visualizing the thoughts as smoke that is dissipating or clouds that are passing is very helpful also imagining myself as a person standing outside of the thought and simply observing it. Without the need to “undo it” with other thoughts for 10 minutes straight is oh so helpful. I woke up this morning actually and the first thing that I thought about was “wow I am truly free. Those really were just intense thoughts?” which, before I was getting to a point where my insight was so low that I genuinely considered the possibility of the delusional thoughts being true. I think that’s a positive step towards recovery. Last night and yesterday when I did these, I found out that I slept much better. Last night I did not wake up in the middle of the night. I slept an entire six hours. And after my meditation, I felt very tired. Calm; my mind was almost too lazy to think anything or argue with old recycled thought. Yesterday night I did fall asleep very fast but I did have one moment where I woke up close to 4 AM which is a common side effect of my medication but usually when that happened I would stay up for an entire hour? So what changed I laid back down and I simply blacked out. My brain went straight for deep sleep, which has never happened before. The only thing that really changed was the fact that I meditated. I am not saying that meditation and mindfulness can cure OCD. **I wanna make that very clear because I do not believe that at all. OCD is obviously a chronic condition and I do believe that practicing self-care in ways that can help to externalize the thoughts and take away. Their power is important in recovery when you combine it with medication as well as therapy and ERP.** I hope someone finds this helpful because I was very hesitant about meditation before I tried it. But now I am glad that I did. It is highly effective for those 70-85% into their ocd recovery. (Yes it’s made up figure but you get the point) hope you have an easier day today.