Synopsis "ocd in the trenches a manual for people with ocd and those who care for them"
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a bewildering, confusing, paradoxical, torturous, and very, very uncomfortable neurobiological disorder which can wreak havoc not just on the individual sufferer, but also on their relationships, home life, school and work. Indeed, if you do have someone with OCD in your life you are probably wondering, ?How did I get into this or even more likely ?How do I get out of this?!? You want to know how to best assist them, but don't want to get sucked into the rituals and just downright weirdness that goes with OCD. You?d like everybody to be able to go on with their lives and live happily ever after. You?d like the OCD to go away and leave everyone alone! Well, as usual there is good news and bad news. The good news is together we can make OCD significantly better so that life can go on. The bad news is that, like other neurobiological illnesses (Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Huntington?s, etc.) OCD is a physical problem that, once activated, is generally with someone for life at some level. Unlike those other diseases and disorders, however, OCD responds very well to modifications in behavior which in turn send feedback back to the brain, which in turn assist the brain in healing itself from the OCD. We now know from brain imagery research that not only can behavior therapy change how the OCD brain functions, but it can also help the brain to restructure itself (e.g. grow new neurons) to work around or correct the faulty circuitry which is causing the OCD! So this is pretty good news really ? but only if you know exactly how to treat the OCD. OCD treatment is very specialized and requires counter-intuitive techniques that general practice counselors do not usually have knowledge of. Like all living things the OCD has a will to survive and will resist attempts to kill it or disable it. We must be knowledgeable and clever in our efforts to fight it, or we could end up throwing gasoline on the fire and making everything worse! As your author I not only have significant OCD myself, but have also had the privilege of working with hundreds of OCD patients in all different settings across America over a span of more than 15 years. I have also taught one-day seminars in over 100 cities for thousands of professional learning to treat OCD and Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders. This wealth of experience has allowed me to develop innovative techniques which have led to a higher success rate in achieving symptom remission. If you were to engage in counseling with me to treat OCD the process represented in this book would be the one we would follow!
