A Self-Coaching Tool That Works

If you have OCD, managing your obsessions and compulsions is a top priority for you. I hope that you've already discovered ERP to actively manage your brain and get your life back.

Instead, I'll address how we can use OCD as a window to get a glimpse into the ways human brains function. Further, I'd like to offer you a self-coaching tool that's helped me, as well as my coaching clients, get more of what they want in life. 

A Lesson in Discovery

 
History illustrates how we learn more about things that are normally hidden from view. In this case, it specifically concerns how we digest food. In 1822, Alexis St. Martin, a 19-year-old French Canadian, was accidentally shot by a gun in the store of the American Fur Company.

When the surgeon, Dr. Beaumont, arrived on the scene and examined St. Martin, he found a portion of the injured stomach protruding through the abdominal wall. The stomach had a hole in it that would admit the surgeon's fingers, and the surgeon describes pulling out St. Martin's breakfast. At the time, this was considered to be a fatal injury. 

However, with good care, St. Martin lived, but his recovery was a long process. St. Martin's continuing disability cost him his job at the American Fur Company, where he worked under indentured servitude. Losing his job meant that he needed community support, but St. Martin wasn't considered a Mackinac Island local. 

The island's leaders suggested sending him back to Quebec, but Dr. Beaumont didn't think that St. Martin would survive the transportation, and he saw a scientific opportunity. So he took St. Martin in as a house servant, and in the evening, as a medical guinea pig. A contract that St. Martin signed, even though he couldn't read, said that he would agree to physiological and medical experiments, exhibiting and showing information about his stomach. 

So Beaumont watched as St. Martin digested different kinds of foods. There are reports of him putting food on a fishing wire and inserting it down into the stomach. Then he measured and conducted experiments on the man's gastric acid. 

Well, it turns out that the stomach produces one to two liters of gastric acid each day. There would have been no way to make this kind of discovery had it not been for these unique circumstances. Well, clearly this kind of experiment would not be allowed today. 

However, it turns out that it revealed invaluable information about the stomach's propensity to create gastric acid and how doctors treat ulcers.

How OCD Offers Similar Insights Into the Human Brain

Well, in a way, OCD offers a glimpse into the way human brains function. It offers insights that connects the dots between the thoughts that you have and the results that you get in life. 

As you well know, a person with OCD suddenly finds that a special class of thought, an obsession, pops into their conscious mind. These obsessions are unwanted, unwelcome, and persistent thoughts that usually include a message of danger. We all have crazy thoughts and we just reject them because, well, frankly, they're crazy. 

We run into people with crazy thoughts. Imagine walking downtown and an unkept man is running up and down the streets yelling, the world is ending. Chances are good that you wouldn't think much of it because, well, consider the source. 

You might have a different thought if a similar message were delivered by a respected scientist who's an expert in global warming. Someone with OCD knows on some level that the obsessions are crazy. Of course, the stove isn't on. 

I didn't do any cooking since yesterday. However, OCD offers a hook. What if it were true? How do you know that it's not untrue? Well, maybe the cat jumped on the stovetop and turned on the oven with his tail. 

Maybe I turned it on accidentally when I was cleaning the kitchen. Maybe the kids left it on. So they treat the thought, the stove is on as if it were a valid concern. 

Now when these obsessions are treated as valid thoughts, it creates very high levels of anxiety. And people with OCD say that this anxiety is excruciating. They'll do anything they can to make the anxiety go away. 

And performing compulsions is the fastest path to relief. We also know that emotions drive motion. People without OCD also do things like over-drinking, overspending, or binge-watching on Netflix to numb feelings. 

So the obsessions trigger the anxiety. Compulsions are performed to bring down the anxiety. And then the brain witnesses all of the efforts to avoid the anxiety. 

This person then comes to believe that the very presence of anxiety is dangerous. So now the person with OCD invests efforts to avoid triggers for the anxiety. The result, people with OCD lose hours each day to avoid or numb their unwanted feelings.

They give into cycles of obsessions and compulsions. The result, they lose hours each day and they feel like they're prisoners to OCD. 

So what have we learned about how the human brain works?

Well, what if we just saw exactly the way the brain works? So our senses bring us information about the outside world. 

So we observe our circumstances. Then we have thoughts about our circumstances. And a thought is nothing more than a sentence in your brain.

Then our thoughts create our feelings. A lot of suffering comes from the belief that our circumstances cause our feelings. And this is not true. 

Let's say the circumstances are that it's raining. If you're a bride and it's raining on your wedding day and you had not planned an indoor backup plan, you think this is terrible. You might feel terrified. 

If you're a farmer in the midst of a drought, you may be filled with joy and relief as it rains. Here's what we know. You cannot change your circumstances. 

However, you always have the freedom to choose different thoughts. And why are these thoughts important? Well, these thoughts create feelings and then emotion drives motion. Our feelings inspire action. 

It shapes both the things that we do and the things that we don't do. So let's say the circumstances are that you're up for a promotion and you just learned that a colleague got the position. Maybe your thought is, that's not fair.

I work harder and deliver way more value than my colleague does. I always meet deadlines. I should have gotten the job. 

When you think these thoughts, you might feel angry. When you feel angry, you might decide that you're not going to give it your all anymore. You'll just show up and put in your time.

But that's all. Maybe you even think about finding another job. These actions create the experience of being an unlikely candidate for the next promotion that comes up. 

 

What if you had different thoughts after you found out that your colleague got the promotion?

Maybe your thought was, I thought I was the best candidate. However, clearly, my boss has a different idea. He thought that my colleague was better suited. 

I wonder why. That thought creates curiosity. Maybe this curiosity leads to making an appointment with your boss and asking questions like, well, I'm curious, what were the criteria you use to decide whom to promote? How could I be in a position to be selected the next time a promotion like this arises? Now, screw up your courage. 

I once did this. I was an undergraduate physics major at Berkeley, one of the top-rated physics programs in the country. When I applied to graduate school, I was turned down. 

So I made an appointment and asked the chair of admissions, well, why didn't I get in? And he just said to me, well, you're not smart enough. Ouch. However, that honesty led me in the direction of the best-fit career opportunities for me. 

Download Your Thought

So here is my freedom formula, a self-coaching tool that has helped me and my coaching clients get the things that they want in life. At the beginning of the day, sit down with a paper and pencil and download the thoughts from your brain to your paper. This does not need to be edited or grammatically correct. 

It's just all of these thoughts that are floating around in your consciousness. Set the timer for 10 or 15 minutes and just keep writing, even if that thing is, I don't have anything more to say. Now, when the timer goes off, take a look at what you've written. 

Then take a pencil and decide if each sentence is a circumstance, a thought, an action, or a result. Now your brain will need practice distinguishing between a circumstance or a thought. A circumstance is something that a video camera would capture. 

We would all watch the same video and agree on what happened. For example, you might write down, my friend was snarky with me. That made me feel abandoned and alone when I wanted to feel connected and supported. 

You might think the circumstances are my friend was snarky with me. That's actually an interpretation of the words that came out of your friend's mouth. What did she actually say? Maybe she said, I'm sorry, but I don't have time for this right now. 

Your thought might be, I'm not important to her. Are there other ways of explaining her response? Maybe she had to take her mother to the doctor or meet a work deadline. Her response may have nothing to do with you or your importance in her life. 

Maybe she was in the midst of her own drama. Maybe she took your call because she wanted your support and then you surprised her by asking for her help. You can ask yourself, what results do I want to create with this friend? Maybe it's to feel connected. 

Okay, what thoughts would you need to have to create that feeling of connection? So as you dig down and connect the dots between your circumstances, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions and results, choose a specific situation. It makes it easier to get insights about how you're creating the results you're getting right now in life and then identify the results that you want to be getting.

So OCD has taught me the power of a single thought.

Change happens one small thought at a time and the process of changing one thought can transform your life experience. So let me give you an example. I volunteer for an organization that provides coaching services to burned-out physicians. 

A woman I'll call Dr. Laura wanted some coaching to help her decide whether to leave her stressful job as the head of her department. I asked her what the source of stress was and she told me that the problems she and her staff faced were just too big to solve. Dr. Laura wanted to be an effective leader and she thought she was useless.

So I asked her what it meant to be an effective leader. She said, well, an effective leader fixes problems. I wanted to make sure I understood. 

I asked, because you can't solve your staff's problems in these unprecedented times of the pandemic, you think that you're an ineffective leader. She agreed. I asked her if she ever treated patients whom she could not cure.

She said, of course. I asked, well, when that happens, do you think of yourself as a bad doctor? She said, of course not. Sometimes I think I'm at my best under those circumstances.

I clarified, so you don't need to fix things to be a good doctor. You just need to be there. And she agreed. 

I asked, is it possible to be an effective leader even when you can't fix things? I felt a shift in Dr. Laura's energy. She said, of course, I never thought of it that way. So she decided to host a program she called Lunches with Dr. Laura. 

So she would invite one of her staff members to bring in lunch into her office and they would sit down and Dr. Laura would just find out what it was like being that person. This program was wildly successful. People came to her asking, how do I sign up with my lunch with Dr. Laura? So consider this, simply by changing one thought, what it means to be a good leader. 

Dr. Laura transformed her life. Thinking on purpose or choosing your thoughts with intention is the number one brain management skill that will most radically transform your life. For me, the gift of OCD is this insight about how human brains work. 

And even though there's no gunshot wound for people with OCD, you get a chance to understand why people do the things that they do. It all makes sense. So try this daily down thought load. 

 

Get curious about your thoughts. Give yourself time to get the hang of this. 

You'll get better with time. So just to be clear, this is not an intervention to manage obsessive thoughts, because somebody with OCD doesn't want to be ruminating about whether or not this thought is true. Use ERP for obsessions. 

But you know what? We have thoughts all day, every day. And obsessions are just one specific class of thoughts. You might have thoughts about having OCD yourself.

You might have thoughts about your child with OCD. And these daily downloads will help you figure out how to create the result that you want. Well, thanks for stopping by. 

And if nobody told you yet today, I honor you and your courage. Helping my son manage OCD is one of the hardest things I've ever done in life. 

You've got this.