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Brain Lock: Step 2 - Reattribute “Unlocking your brain” Helps answer the question: “why don’t these bothersome thoughts, urges, and behaviors go away?” Information: There is now strong scientific evidence that in OCD a part of your brain that works much like a gearshift in a car is not working properly. Your brain gets “stuck in gear”. This is why it’s hard for you to shift behaviors. At UCLA they use the mind’s own power to actually change the chemistry in the brain. No neurosurgery needed. You can do it with your mind. Using the Impartial Spectator you can distance yourself from your OCD by creating a gap or safety zone Reattribute step intensifies the mindful-awareness process. Reattribute helps us understanding why the thought is so strong and why it won’t go away is the key to increasing your willpower and enabling you to fight off the urge to check or wash Changing your behavioral responses to the uncomfortable feelings and shifting to useful and constructive behaviors will, over time, make the broken gearshift become unstuck Scientific facts: The Orbital Cortex: the brain’s ‘error-detection circuit”. Here, thought and emotion combine. The orbital cortex can inform you that something is right or wrong The Cingulate Gyrus: wired into your gut and heart-control centers, located at the center of the brain, the deepest part of the cortex. It’s responsible for giving you the feeling that something terrible is going to happen if you don’t act on your compulsions ** Conscious thought is required to control shifts from one behavior to another ** How to Reattribute: Identify what the problem is — “this is my brain sending me a false message. I have a medical condition in which my brain does not adequately filter my thoughts and experiences, and I react inappropriately to things that I know make no sense. But if I change the way I react to the false message, I can make my brain work better, which will improve the bad thoughts and feelings” Recognize — recognize that the feeling and discomfort is due to a biochemical imbalance in the brain Acknowledge — acknowledge that your symptoms are not what they seem to be. You’re learning not to take them at face value Keep the faith — trust that you have the strength to fight OCD. Forgive yourself for having these thoughts, because they’re not your thoughts, they’re false messages from the brain Remember: The acceptance that the painful obsessional thought is something that is beyond your capacity to remove - and that the thought is just OCD - enables you, the sufferer, to see yourself as a spirit being who can resist this unwanted intruder. It’s almost impossible to fight off an enemy as vicious as OCD if you are bogged down with feelings of self-hatred. “It’s not how you feel but what you do that counts” --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/foundfamily/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/foundfamily/support