Have you ever tried to achieve a big goal?

You're making great progress, and then you find that you're getting stuck, you can't lose those last five pounds? 

Well, that's what I'd like to talk about today. What happens when you get stuck in your efforts to achieve a goal?

I'm going to tell you a story that has absolutely nothing to do with OCD, show you how it has everything to do with OCD, and then give you some suggestions for what you can do when you feel stuck in your efforts to get something big accomplished. 

Welcome to the OCD PowerParenting podcast. If you are a parent, trying to get your child to the other side of OCD, where your child is in the driver's seat of his or her life, you are in the right place. I'm Dr. Vicki Rackner, your host. 

Let's dive into today's session. Let me tell you about my son, he has a big goal, he would like to deadlift 600 pounds. Now, for those of you who don't know about powerlifting, what this means is that he bends down and picks up a bar that has 600 pounds on it, and then gets to an upright position. He's been working on this for years. And at competitions. He's already lifted about four times his body weight. So this is big.

I've had the pleasure of going to his competitions and talking with these other amazing athletes. And I always wondered, "How do these people do these superhuman things?" And the athletes all pretty much say the same thing. "I've got a coach, I've got a protocol, and I follow the protocol. I do the hard work."

My son's been doing that too. I've been hearing about this performance issue for a while sort of like he was getting stuck. So he started asking logical questions. Is he working with the right coach? Does it matter that he's working with a coach virtually now? Then he started exploring different things like how do you sleep and nutrition play into his ability to lift? He was open to this idea that maybe his strength had to do with the amount of energy that he had, then imagine, at least theoretically, how OCD could enter the picture. If somebody is spending three hours a day involved in their obsessions and compulsions, that leaves less energy left over for lifting. Let's say that somebody has moral OCD. And they're worried about cheating. They go through their repetitions at the gym, and think that they cheated. So they're going to repeat them, this overtraining could then impair their performance. 

So what is going on here? How can my son get out of his slump and get on the road towards deadlifting 600 pounds? Well, I believe that the problem here is his mental game. 

Yogi Berra said, baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical. The mental game is the collection of thoughts that you believe to be true that you repeat to yourself.

I remember watching a Seattle Seahawks game, Russell Wilson came on the field and in the very first play, he threw an interception, I have to wonder, what did Pete Carroll say to him as he was on his way back to the bench? What did Russell Wilson say to himself? 

Now my son told me his mental game. He said, I'm getting weaker."  Your thoughts can get translated into the results that you get. And I just wanted to dissect that so it doesn't feel like such a woowoo idea. 

So when my son thought this thought, I'm getting weaker, that thought created feelings, and the feelings that he described in this phone call, we're resignation and anger and frustration and irritation. He was doing everything that he could think to do, and yet he was still stuck.

Lifting these heavy weights, you might well imagine that the ability to push through is a lot higher if you're feeling confident and competent, rather than if you're feeling helpless and hopeless.   So these things feelings get translated into the actions that you take. And that then contributes to your result. So, substituting this thought, "I'm getting weaker" with another thought is going to help him achieve his goals.  Now, what could that other thought be? It could be as simple as, “I'm a hard worker, and I got this, I'm gonna deadlift 600 pounds.” And every time that his brain, his human brain wants to go to the thought, I'm weaker, he can practice going to this other thought.  

Now, you can well imagine somebody saying, “But wait a minute, I want to be honest with myself, and it’s true, I'm getting weaker.”  As you look at thoughts, you want to make sure that you believe the thought, and the thought is actually helping you get to where you want to go. An athlete could say, “I'm awesome.” Another athlete could say, “I suck.” Now, which one is more likely to get the higher level of performance.   

So we know that our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings drive our actions, and our actions lead to our results. When my son is in a slump, his thought was basically the last thing to be interrogated. But what I'm saying is that quite often, the thought should be the first thing to be interrogated. Because unless and until he has a better thought, all of these circumstances that he's trying to change, getting the right sleep, getting the right nutrition, they're just not going to pack the same punch.   

What does this have to do with OCD? Well, it has everything to do with OCD. In my son's story, he faced some circumstances, the amount that he was able to deadlift was going down, rather than going up. So he created some thoughts to explain how and why this is happening. All right, somebody with OCD has a brain wiring glitch that causes the brain to offer deeply disturbing thoughts and images. That's the situation. Those are the circumstances. While that would be annoying, it's not life altering. The thing that causes the real problem with OCD is the thoughts about the OCD thoughts.  If the thought is, “ Yep, this is real. I'm unsafe, other people aren't safe. I better listen and do what this OCD monster tells me.“ That is a much different story than somebody whose thought is, “This is just a nonsense thought coming from my brain wiring glitch. I'm just gonna ignore it and get on with my life. “  

Your mental game matters. So the mental game is your thoughts about the circumstances that you find yourself in the circumstances are always objective. They're measurable, everyone could agree. However, the thought often has a value judgment, sometimes a moral judgment. And oftentimes, these critical thoughts can get in the way of where you want to go.   

Do these thoughts make a difference? Well, Roger Bannister was the first person to break the four minute mile. What was different about Roger Bannister was that he had this thought,”Yes, it can be done, and I can do it.” The rest of the world held the thought , “This is impossible.” So the accomplishment started with a thought.  I hope that you remain open to the possibility that our thoughts might put limitations on what we can and cannot do. While my son's dead lifting is impressive. There have been reports of parents who lift cars off of kids trapped below them. So who knows what we're really capable of. Probably a lot more than we think. And every time I see an OCD warrior, stepping up and managing their mind I admire their strength. 

Here is a fun exercise that you can try if you are feeling stuck.   So imagine projecting yourself into the corner of the Room and observing yourself —observing what you're doing what you're thinking. I remember the person who shared this with me said, “Pretend you're watching your own life as a sitcom.” So this person out there can actually see what you're thinking, can see the connection between the thought and the feeling and the actions, and then the results that that is creating.   

So if you are feeling frustrated, what thought is creating that frustration? I know that when I lose weight, losing those last five pounds seem to be the hardest. And it can be really frustrating. Why is it frustrating? It's because I have the thought that there shouldn't be plateaus, that if I'm doing my work the scales should do its work too. The reality though, is that these plateaus are part of the process. Backsliding is part of the process. Falling off the wagon is part of the process. And if I can just replace the thought, “Well, it should be like this”, with another thought like, “This is the way it goes, I'm doing what I need to do.” That's going to lead to a very different set of feelings.   

If you find yourself stuck, think about your mental game. What are the thoughts that you hold? And is it time to consider a different thought? You have an amazing mind, a prefrontal cortex, the ability to take a look at the thoughts that your brain is offering up and deciding, “Am I going to accept that thought? Or am I going to reject that as nonsense?”   Choose the thoughts that are going to help you get to where you want to go. 

That's what I've got for you today. Well, I want to thank you so much for investing your time listening to this podcast. I hope that you found value in the content. Please feel welcome to share this podcast, with your family members, with your child who's learning how to manage OCD, and their champions who are helping them get to the other side of OCD, their friends, teachers, and other members of your family to whom your children turned. Thanks again. We'll see you in the next episode. Bye bye for now. 

Bye