What’s the OCD Stress Connection?
The National Institute of Mental Health states “Anyone can develop a mental illness” and “Everyone experiences anxiety at one time or another”. At the same time the NIMH endorses chemical imbalances and hereditary as primary reasons for anxieties and other psychological challenges.
Some would ask “How can anxiety be a common part of the human experience and yet be viewed as an illness?” Are we to believe we all have dysfunctional hereditary traits or chemical imbalances that will make themselves know at certain times in our life?
For those suffering from OCD, a sub-categorizations of “anxiety disorders”, it means the existence of obsessions and compulsions are not necessarily a preset conditions, rather a possible outcome if certain learned perceptions, sensitivities and thresholds of stress. Not everyone experiences OCD in the same way or with the same intensity. Just like anxiety. OCD cannot simply be viewed a random choice of genes or chemical imbalances. There are other factors at work. There is an OCD stress connection.
The merging science of epigenics is proving challenges like OCD are quite a bit more complex then the simple explanations the medical community has held for the past decades. The field of epigenics states 97% of our DNA is changeable. Only 3 percent of DNA is genetically predetermined. 97% of DNA can be altered by various means and perceptions influencing how one processes stress and their capabilities to do so.
Current dogmas surrounding “anxiety disorders” tend to overlook personal influence and choice. The process of how we think, what we believe in, emotional sensitivities; our life style choices, how we relate to ourselves and the world around us, contribute to the amount of stress a person experiences. These are attributes science has difficulty quantifying, so it chooses to dismiss them. It is not difficult to see the views currently held about OCD paint an incomplete picture.
Yet at the same time studies are showing that being mindful, using meditation, cognitive reasoning, releasing negative perspectives and many other processes, techniques and life style choices actually change brain chemistry and cellular interactions. How you relate to adversity and life experiences has a greater impact than the experiences themselves..
When Society Wants Easy Answers, It Accepts Simple Reasoning
Most of us don’t understand the complexities of how stress is created and maintained in the nervous system. It’s not uncommon for stressful people to have no awareness of the pressures they are under. The way many people have learned to deal with stress by trying to push it aside or focus on other things. But you can only do that for so long.
This is often the case for those suffering from anxiety or OCD. They have awareness of their anxieties, yet often downplay or dismiss other areas of their life contributing to stress. They may talk of certain fears or discomforts, yet overlook others. They may tell you everything else in their life is OK, that it’s just the OCD. They have gotten so good at pushing aside things they don’t want to deal with, they no longer realize they are doing it.
It is why medication has become the preferred method to help cope with adversity and improve emotional and mental well being, even though it is widely known it is a band aid, that medication does not help resolve issues.
Yet ask anyone who goes to an AA meetings and they will tell you, no drug, self prescribed or by a doctor will make anyone a better person. At best, medications relieve symptoms. The cause of symptoms can be scientifically studied, but the results are still interpreted. While cause and effect can be distilled into neat little categories, it tends to overlook how we perceive, create, and process everyday life situations and how we produce stress.
Medications may be a necessary first step, especially for severe conditions. Yet in today’s society they are prescribed for even the smallest set backs and it is where most treatments stop. It is as far as most will go in seeking help. Unfortunately this approach has become quite acceptable.
It’s a well know fact; medication, including psychotropic drugs do not produce the same effect from one person to the next. Some respond better to one type of medication than another and some don’t respond well to any prescription medications. Dosage amounts vary from patient to patient. Side effects are down played, even though they can be quite extreme and for long term users, the results are greatly unknown. Age, sex, body size, body chemistry, physical illnesses, diet, mental stability and habits are are all factors influencing a medication’s effectiveness.
Depression is often referred to as an abnormal functioning of the brain
Yet is a well know scientific fact that the interaction between genetic tendency and life history only “appears” to determine a person’s chance of becoming depressed. It is not predetermined, meaning a great deal of depression is triggered by stress, how we perceive and process life events. This stress includes having to deal with the side effects of medications and medication/substance withdrawal
Those suffering from OCD are usually aware their symptoms intensify as stress levels increase. This should be of no surprise. Stress in part is a reflection of what we feel we are capable of handling and how well we deal and relate to situations. Areas we feel we have certainty in, feel good about, feel we can resolve, figure out or handle, are not likely to create stress. Of course what is stressful is subjective and will vary from one individual to the next. No subject matter can be deemed to be too silly, too ridiculous, too normal or non-applicable as a source for stress. We each carry our own associations to what triggers discomfort. We make our own judgmental comparisons of what is or isn’t acceptable. What we accept or reject is primarily a learned response.
Sensitivities, Stress and OCD
We may have predisposed sensitivities or awareness levels to certain internal or external stimulus, but it would be incorrect to simply defined these as chemical imbalances or genetic dysfunctions. The complex dance of how we cope or deal with our sensitivities is what leads to the quality of life we perceive.
We each deal with stress in the best way we know how. We all have thresholds we learn to deal with in one way or another. These can become the places we most resist change and they help define the relationship we form with our own discomforts. Relationships are always changing and sensitivities become the spring board to other symptoms, including intense anxiety disorders.
It’s difficult to see beyond our own thresholds and limitations, so it’s easy to accept the idea discomforts are illnesses due to hereditary. Yet any actions or behaviors that cannot easily be explained or resolved can become classified as illness. While these classifications can be useful, they should also be viewed with a grain of salt.
When experiencing intense stress, real or perceived, it can be difficult to notice anything but the immediate symptoms of discomfort. Perception is not and cannot be genealogical, it is not part of our DNA makeup. The latest scientific data is solidly pointing to what many have know for years, our predispositions are not set in stone and we have influence over our emotions and thoughts
What the AMA Doesn’t Want You to Know
Not having awareness of stress does not mean it does not exist. Even though the AMA has long stated that over 75% of all hospital stays are directly attributable to stress, the majority of people have limited awareness of how much stress their daily lives produce and how much stress they hold on to.
That over 75% of all hospital stays can be attributed to stress, meaning the physical manifestations of illness are in part brought upon by our inability to cope with life challenges. In recent years science has just begun to devoted research into how we can change our abilities to cope more effectively. This research is barely scratching the surface of understanding this complex dance of humanity.
It is why alternative approaches, at least in some circles is more openly accepted these days. Still many are opposed to any treatments not prescribed, applied or requiring surgery.
Helping people better cope with stress has been proven to help people lower blood pressure, overcome obesity, relieve heart failures, arthritis, asthma, strokes, muscle aches, headaches, bone degeneration, and immune system dysfunctions. It most certainly helps with depression, anxiety and OCD, yet coping with stress is still viewed as an after thought to other medical procedures typically recommended.
Western medicine has always been more interested in curing people rather than focusing on prevention. Advertisements show smiling people who run through fields with happy families and buried under the glorious music in fine print is a list of side effects. Symptoms are stated to be hereditary, implying they are not controllable. There is even talk that many human conditions are now socially contagious diseases. But over 75% of all hospital stays can be attributed to stress?
Even when the AMA agrees with holistic approaches, their focus leans toward the idea people on their own are incompetent to maintain their own well being. When people become sick or ill, they are broken and need to be fixed. Sometimes this is true.
But something is missing.
Empowering people to find comfort in self, in being responsible to influence their own well being is dismissed. Positive outlooks, healthy environments and proper eating are grazed over as recommendations. The focus pounded into the mind of the public revolves around the concrete applications of surgery or medication. It is the nature of today’s medical profession.
Fix them when they broken, we can’t do anything about how it got this way, so it must be the result of the forces of nature and the only way to stop it is to eradicate it, medicate it, eliminate it, vaccinate it and you need a degree to make this happen. The old adage of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is being out advertised by those who stand to make big money. Even though the medical field provides great assistance to those in need, the public has been trained to leave their health concerns to someone outside themselves.
Many doctors can’t understand why a high percentage of the population leans towards various forms of alternative medicine. People want to be responsible for their own health and well being and when modern medicine doesn’t have all the answers, they look elsewhere..
1000% INCREASE OF STRESS
It has been reported, driving can increase stress levels a thousand percent higher than when the body is at rest. Driving and talking on your cell phone can increase it another few thousand percent. These are assumed to be simple everyday activities. So what does that say for the events in your life you know are stressful. How do you deal with it? More importantly, how quickly can you process it, because many with OCD have not become effective at releasing stress. But they have become effective at holding on to ideas and emotional injustices.
If over 75% of all physical symptoms can be directly attributed to stress
Isn’t it silly to believe that symptoms of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, ADD, and OCD should in anyway be less attributed as symptoms of stress. If the body is manifesting most physical illnesses through inadequate processing of stress, how is it that anyone can believe thinking patterns and emotions states of the individual are not fully contributing to these conditions and disorders?
One of the challenges with OCD and for that matter, any anxiety disorder, is the stress can be perpetuated and well hidden in the beliefs, values, memories, wants and expectations of the individual. Until a person is willing and able to change the complex dance of patterns keeping them stuck, nothing changes. What makes this even more challenging is the patterns of thinking that most need to change are ones the most valued. This can create an interest collage of emotions loops the person is unable to resolve in their current mind set.
When working with clients stuck in obsessive thought patterns, much of the focus stems on reducing the perpetuating stress the client unconsciously creates within themselves. Many have the idea conquering stress is about controlling it. Unfortunately most people have no idea how much stress they carry and how much stress trying to control it additionally creates. This is usually not apparent to new clients, for their focus has been else where.
Once this is handled, the client can begin releasing many of the patterns they’ve held onto or been stuck in. The final outcome is to achieve new levels of clarity and once again begin living life fully. Our client’s have found by shifting their own inner reality; their perspective of the world begins to change, thus allowing redundant processes and anxieties to resolve. At last a life they can feel good about and isn’t that what we all want.