“It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.” ~Pema Chodron
I love acceptance. Acts of surrender create forward momentum.
If we all pause for a moment and observe what we are fighting, right here and right now—maybe depression, anxiety, weight gain, low self-image, or financial stress—we’ll have an opportunity to accept then.
But that’s just the start.
Recently I accepted something I never thought I would. Reframing the way I thought about it changed my life.
I have moderate to severe OCD. Having OCD is basically like believing everything that goes through your mind. Scary, right?
Obsessive-compulsive people have intrusive and extremely terrifying thoughts—for example, that he or she may have been contaminated by something, which might lead him or her to spend hours washing. I have a base underlying all of my obsessions: that I will hurt people. It was and can be my greatest fear.
For example, I used to worry that I left the oven or iron on and that, in doing so, I may have burned the house down, which would ruin my husband’s life and also kill our cat. So I’d return home multiple times per day to check these appliances and also send my husband home to check. I also had massive rituals around shutting appliances off.
OCD is a time-sucker. Obsessive compulsives create rituals to lower the anxiety. I’d check to make sure I didn’t leave the iron on, do everything evenly on both sides of my body so I felt “balanced,” retrace events that happened in my life to make absolutely certain I hadn’t harmed anyone accidentally, and search the internet excessively for answers.
These rituals literally took up hours my day.
I discovered that I had OCD one afternoon when I was trying to figure out how you know something for certain.
Try googling that.
The first thing that popped up for my search query was about obsessive-compulsive disorder. I felt immediate relief.
I leveraged my OCD to my advantage and feverishly searched for the best treatment for this disorder. I discovered Exposure Response Prevention. It’s apparently the only game in town for this type of disorder, and luckily for me, Philadelphia houses one of the best treatment facilities in the world for OCD.
Now, my OCD is fully in remission, with no medications.
This means I don’t suffer severe anxiety at all anymore. I don’t ritualize. I don’t waste hours of my day checking on things. And most importantly, I rarely pay any attention to the thoughts that float through my beautifully complex brain.
Once I completed the ERP, my OCD immediately went into remission. I was a diligent student, due mostly to how limited my life had become because of my anxiety.
Because I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I had no friends (didn’t want to hurt their feelings), my relationship with my husband suffered (didn’t want to hurt him), I spent hours on rituals to ensure that I hadn’t hurt anyone, and I had lost about ten pounds in two and a half weeks when I hit my wall.
After the treatment, my anxiety had lifted. I felt like a member of society for the first time in my life.
But after about six months of freedom, something funny happened: I decided I didn’t like having OCD anymore. I wanted that label off my back. But really, I didn’t like the upkeep of remission.
Anxiety sucks, and the treatment proposes that you habituate to the anxiety by just sitting with it. No deep breathing. No chemicals to relax the mind. Just straight-up anxiety.
Anxiety naturally wears off. It’s not possible for the human body to remain in an anxious state forever. And the human body is so amazing that we don’t need to do anything to make it go away.
But, in order to get through the anxiety, you must experience it. I didn’t want to do that. I liked having my little rituals to deal with life.
So I un-accepted my limitation. Just like that. The mind is a beautiful mechanism, really. I still find it so incredible that changing one’s mind can have such wild repercussions.
I decided to listen to my brain once again—to take the bait. I began fearing that I was a horrible employee, so I checked my email around the clock. I began believing that I was a bad wife and daughter, so the rituals around that came back with a vengeance. I began returning home to check on the iron. Basically, most of the symptoms and rituals were in full play.
I had to go back for treatment. In that second round, I made a resolution to myself that I will always accept that I have it. And that it will most likely never go away.
I still cringed at the thought of having OCD. Let’s face it, nobody wants to answer a series of questions by a shrink and then actually fit the profile of some well-known mental illness. But a mentor helped me see things differently.
She suggested I look at my OCD as “cute” or “quirky.” “Cute?!” I yelped.
You might have thought the woman suggested I run through Rittenhouse Square stark naked. I was appalled! But in that instant, something shifted.
Her suggestion to look at a flaw as a quirky was revolutionary. A good perspective. A new perspective.
I began to refer to my OCD as one of my cute and quirky little additions to my personality. A nifty little surprise to the totality of my being. Something changed.
Acceptance doesn’t have to mean surrendering to something bad. In fact, accepting the bad part of anything can only take you so far.
What if you began to look for the silver lining and accept that part? Let’s say you struggle with depression. Studies show that people with depression may, and probably will, experience depression many times during their lives. So, just getting out of the woods once is good, but it may come back again.
I think a lot of the time people get through something and say, “I will never go through that again.”
And then, when a smidge of depression creeps in, the person may try to run from it. Begin to fear it. And try to “shake it off.” This is a really negative way to deal with something. Instead, what if you just said, “Oh, here we go. I see you. You are back. I can handle this.”
Instead of running, welcome it back with open arms.
It sort of deflates the whole thing. It’s like a “whomp, whomp….”
When the depression, anxiety, or whatever shows up again, can you see it as an old friend who needs a little TLC?
Can you acknowledge that because of this struggle, you are able to experience many emotions that many other people cannot? Can you find the hidden benefits in your cross to bear?
I have this belief that people who have struggled with extreme lows can experience a deeper sense of joy than most people because they have known the depths of despair.
Aron Ralston amputated his own arm in a hiking accident. He said he viewed the experience as a part of his life’s purpose, part of his soul moving forward. Suddenly, accepting my OCD seems trivial. (But still cute.)
We can become so victimized by negative circumstances that we fail to see the gift that is right in front of us. As a writer, dreamer, and visionary, having this extra quirk can really add fuel to my fire. I am eager and ready for anyone who is done half-accepting or un-accepting something to join me in this new type of acceptance.
What limitation are you ready to flip on its head and accept—as a spice that just makes your soup taste that much richer?
About Alison Hummel
Alison Hummel is the founder of thedreamadventure.com and lives in Philadelphia, PA with her husband, Jon, their son Cash and their cat, Kittie. She is dedicated to pursuing her own dreams and encouraging others to pursue theirs.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 
Well done!
I say YES to this!!
Alison I believe you can get rid of that OCD by doing past life regression. It sounds like you have a fear of hurting other people because you did that, in a past life. Going back to that incident and seeing/re-experiencing it seems to cause major or total remission. (Thousands of people have done this for various problems.) I highly recommend you read Dr. Brian Weiss’s books on this subject. Best to you, Harry
I really enjoyed this post. Trying to wrap the mind around an unwelcome Something that comes back every once in a while has plagued me since my cancer diagnosis. Rephrase that: I’ve Let plague me. Now after reading this post, I can gather the gumption together to face when my health will go through rough patches with grace rather than dread. I guess I have to learn I have to go through valleys of Ugh to get to My Peak of Ahh again
Thanks for reminding me.
Thank you for the article. I liked to read it. I’d like to add something with regard to the part where you said: “Let’s say you struggle with depression. Studies show that people with depression may, and probably will,
experience depression many times during their lives. So, just getting
out of the woods once is good, but it may come back again.”It seems there are reasons to believe that depression need not be as recurrent as is often assumed. You can read more about this here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/201106/now-antidepressant-induced-chronic-depression-has-name-tardive-dysphoria
Quote from the article:
In the early 1990s, El-Mallakh notes, only about 10% to 15% of patients with major depressive illness had treatment-resistant depression (and
thus were chronically ill.) In 2006, researchers reported that nearly
40% of patients were now treatment-resistant. In a period when use of
SSRI antidepressants exploded, refractory depression went on the march.
This
condition, El-Mallakh writes, often develops in people who had a good
initial response to an antidepressant, and then continue taking the
drug. However, up to 80% of patients maintained on an antidepressant
suffer a recurrence of symptoms, and
once that “initial treatment response is lost,” continued efforts to
treat the relapsed patient with antidepressants frequently results in
“poor response and the rise of treatment-resistant depression.”
Ultimately, this process—the continual prescribing of antidepressants to
someone who has become treatment resistant—may “make the chronic
depression permanent.”
Hi Alison,
I got a little lost in the narrative in terms of where you’re at now. You accept your cute limitation; are you still using the “upkeep of remission” methods now? What are your acceptance “rituals” now? Do you still have the severe OCD symptoms since you began your path of acceptance?
My story: I used to get situational panic attacks driving over bridges. After years of keeping this a secret (and trying one therapy after another), I finally discovered that keeping the secret was taking a far greater toll on me and my relationships than the anxiety itself. One day I decided to ‘come out of the closet’. It was a huge step in self-acceptance. The anxiety lost some of its power. Not ever having to get anxious about this has removed that “fear of being afraid” that was previously the thick
coating on top of my anxieties. Sometimes now I debate whether I should challenge myself and try a bridge-drive. The thing is, I feel like I have the option now: do it or don’t do it, both are OK.
You’re right, people now just accept this as part of who I am. The fact is, they don’t really care, it’s no biggie! What’s more, people are more than happy to accommodate this aspect of me, give me a ride sometimes, hop into my driver’s seat for a while, etc.
Self acceptance really does go a long way toward healing ourselves.
Kate
Change the way you look at something, take it out of yourself and you will, really will change your life. My husband has a degenerative brain disorder which manifests as extreme anger, lack of impulse control and the like. I write about a change in the way I see that here: http://starcrossedsalvage.blogspot.com/2011/04/post-time-and-ghost-time.html
Thanks for reading!
Hi Alison,
It sounds like an interesting ride 😮 Good for you for finding a way to accept it. I’m not good at acceptance! I do adore the “quirky” idea though! Makes me wonder if I have any quirks.
Nice to meet you Alison! Mona at somelikeitraw.com sent me over. I blogged (in a MUCH different way) about problems today!
Lori
thanks saralee! happy to connect with you here 😀
I have been working with acceptance my whole life. It has taken me many years and many bouts with depression, but several years ago I realized that the main thing that caused my depression was a pattern that I have of thinking things should be different than how they are. I learned to notice when I started to feel bummed out about something and say “Oh, there I go again, running my pattern; thinking things should be different.” Somehow it takes the charge off and I can accept things the way they are with relatively little effort, and work them out.
hey lori! pleased to meet you as well…must check out your blog post! hehe
xo
alison
so true! thanks for commenting…….!
yes! my OCD is in remission and not something that i spend any time lost on. i accept my active brain multiple times a day…and let go of trying to control often, as well.
example: perhaps my brain might suggest i double check the iron…but i don’t. so the thoughts still come up, but i have a choice to ignore them.
love your open-ness around your bridge anxiety. it just is what it is!
peace 😀
Alison
that is a great article…and i definitely have an opinion as to how individuals approach their own mental health: become educated, advocate for your own treatment, stay diligent, get second opinions, remain open-minded to eastern healing practices, spiritual healing, diet changes etc! i am not for or against prescription medications for several reasons: 1. what if i need them one day? 2. they seem to help certain people. 3. being neutral allows me to flow freely about the topic.
i don’t take medication because i don’t need to and because i believe that with my own diligence, meditation practice, working out, relationships, god, nature, good eating, all that stuff–i don’t need anything extra. and i really feel good about that.
anywho…thanks for the article!
alison 😀
i love your descriptive “ugh and ahhh.” yes that’s exactly right! you can get there…it’s right here right now actually. i am sending a prayer/positive vibes/love out to you.
alison
will do! it’s so funny you bring up past life regression bc i was at an abraham-hicks seminar where a gentleman asked a question about this and i have listened to the CD from the lecture about 7 or 8 times this past week or so. it’s in my car. great dialogue. i will look into that book!
alison
thank YOU!
alison
i like this approach heartlight….many blessings to you 😀
This is incredibly important info for those of us who couldn’t put a finger on this disorder. My ex-husband clearly suffers from this and unfortunately it was one of the reasons we ended up not being together. Thank you for sharing this!
I love this post, Alison. I resonated with so many of the struggles. And yes, the limitation I recently flipped on its head was a deep and debilitating sorrow around growing up in a home with an abusive mother, who at 85, is still a wretchedly unhappy and abusive human being. This time, instead of getting off the plane after a visit, feeling like the weight of the world was resting on my shoulders, I looked at my husband, smiled and said, “I just want you to know that I’m a f——in’ miracle. That I survived that family and came out a warm and loving human being is nothing short of a miracle.”
I so believe in the power of the mind and heart in accepting our life circumstances as part of our soul journey. Thank you for a beautiful and thought-provoking post.
this gave me chills…yes you are a miracle. i am trying to put words to what i am feeling…but i think if just imagine me giving you a hug it would be much more descriptive.
alison 🙂
glad i could shed light on this. you are so welcome!
xo
alison
Hi Alison.
I never know where my next inspiration is going to come from but I thank you as it came from your post today. Many thanks!
I’m so pleased to hear that you are living in more wellness and have tamed the mighty OCD. Wow! I really like your attitude about accepting the quirkiness or cuteness of a particular condition/feature within our self. I have gone through a surgery that leaves me void of some feminine parts (bilateral mastectomy) and sometimes it’s difficult to accept and embrace as a woman.
I think you just sprinkled some sugar on top of it. Cute and quirky! I thank you soooo much.
Susie
Awesome great post!
Very nice post.
[…] TinyBuddha […]
[…] the Tiny Buddha website. I talk about my own desperate desire to control the uncontrollable and my eventual release of my grip-of-death on life. […]
“Can you acknowledge that because of this struggle, you are able to experience many emotions that many other people cannot? Can you find the hidden benefits in your cross to bear? I have this belief that people who have struggled with extreme lows can experience a deeper sense of joy than most people because they have known the depths of despair.”
PREACH, sister. i struggled with my own form of OCD (manifested in anorexia nervosa/overexercising) for some time…i got better and then i got cocky and then i replapsed and got better and missed my disorder and relapsed…
in conclusion, i’m better now. i’m better (forreal) because i am accepting of what i have — a tendency to over-analyze food and exercise. i will always have this tendency. i will always experience some mental skewage/sewage surrounding food/exercise, but i accept that.
and because i have accepted it, i can move on…or, more appropriately, sit down.
congratulations on your own journey of acceptance. and since the “acceptance journey” never really ends (each day presents struggles and obstacles to confront and accept), i would be delighted to join you on your journey! 🙂
thank you for reminding me that my illness does not have to be a negative label; not only has it provided me with an awesome group of friends i met at rehab, but it has opened my eyes and heart to new ways of seeing and deeper ways of feeling.
This piece is fantastic, and it’s so great that you are in such a positive place now. To come through all of that with a sense of purpose and even joy is an amazing accomplishment. You are so strong and wise, and I loved reading your story! This sentence really resonated with me:”I have this belief that people who have struggled with extreme lows can experience a deeper sense of joy than most people because they have known the depths of despair.”
I absolutely agree with this, and in one of Pema Chodron’s talks she also mentions something about how anyone who hasn’t had challenges in life just breezes through and is never challenged to explore themselves, and that’s fine, but not very interesting. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with never facing a challenge, but I also know that it’s the only way to grow and learn. I would much rather have struggled, failed, made mistakes and had hardships than have just walked through life having things just appear in front of me with no bumps in the road. I am grateful for my flaws, for the periods of despair and for everything I’ve been through… just like physical scars, they have shown me who I am and what I am made of. Thank you for sharing your story here. I am inspired by it and by you!
thanks so much alannah rose! i love your reference to pema chodron’s further thoughts on the topic. makes sense to me. have a lovely day!!!
xo
alison
we are definitely on the same page! your story is so amazing. so happy we are on this journey together, even though we don’t know one another.
blessings!
alison
thanks!
thank you 😀
many blessings to you on your path to healing. you know, “sprinkling sugar” is exactly how i feel sometimes. it’s something we can choose to do, moment to moment. it’s like you took the concept of “rubbing salt in the wound” to the totally other side. gotta say…i like it!
in light and love
alison
I totally agree with the wisdom of this post. Thank you for sharing your insight with us.
Alison, what a beautiful, moving and inspirational post. Thank you for your openness, your wisdom and your bravery. This was just beautiful.
What a beautiful post, Alison! Just so honest, raw, and brave. You are a true inspiration!
perfect Allison. Real, honest and raw. xo
Thank you Hillary!!!
Xo Alison
[…] excerpts from that inspiring article on tiny buddha Accepting Your Battles: How Struggles Bring Gifts Jul 03, 2011 07:15 pm | Alison […]
another interesting & intriguing & revealing tiny buddha article that brought up
the term “Exposure Response Prevention” ~ this piqued my curiosity.
i researched it and i think i used a form of this cognitive therapy
{its inception probably introduced by my marriage/divorce counselor}
with my fears {financial, relationship, creative, social}to start desensitizing myself in 2007. and to this day, i look these phantoms in the face, i don’t avoid them orrun from them orbecome anxious by them.. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.~Virginia Woolf .if you are interested, please READ my article i wrote in response to this post ~> http://wp.me/pSiBm-Cg
there is an excellent quote by Rainer Maria Rilke that has become one of the (many) mantras of my life:
“maybe all the dragons in our lives are really princesses, waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. maybe everything terrifying, in its essence, is something helpless just waiting for us to love it.”
loved this post!
there is an excellent quote by Rainer Maria Rilke that has become one of the (many) mantras of my life:
“maybe all the dragons in our lives are really princesses, waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. maybe everything terrifying, in its essence, is something helpless just waiting for us to love it.”
loved this post!
[…] of Tiny Buddha. This is a contribution by Alison Hummel. Alison Hummel is the founder of justagirldreaming.com and […]
Alison… I have seen your videos and watched with disdain about how your go about your life, telling people that “success” is getting what you want, realizing your dreams. Wow. Have you missed THE. WHOLE. POINT. I find the absolutely ridiculous “law of attraction” at fault for too many reasons to count. Basically, to sum it up, it is self-centered, self-indulgent, and narcissistic. What about others?!? What about helping others, instead if trying to make a business out of it? No real person worth following, with ANY even small nugget of truth could ever charge money for wisdom. You can’t put a price tag on it. In my humble opinion, you are looking at the tapestry of life in one smallish square labeled “Alison’s success”, missing the beauty of the entire design, an learning that wrapping another person up, FREE of charge, IN that tapestry, is the greatest gift of all. Broaden. It’s not all about you. Travel to poor countries. See that the world is not revolving around your desires for material success. And when you come to THAT place if total and complete compassion and wisdom, your puny desires for fame and fortune are embarrassing… That you’re “business” shall be no business at all…. But free. You cannot put a price tag of pure joy, pure wisdom, enlightenment. Maybe one day you’ll realize that you were not given the amazing gift of life to chase money and fame, but rather, to use your gifts to help others… And there certainly wont be a Paypal attached.
P.S. It’s pretty obvious why you took blog down. NO ONE WAS READING IT! And you were supposed to be helping others get out there, get their blogs read, but that just didn’t happen for you. If you werent so focused on YOURSELF, things may have worked out for you. I think you’ll find people see right through your disbanding of your blog… It’s sad, hypocritical. “Follow your dreams!” ” Be stubborn!” “Don’t give up!” and there… are you… Throwing the towel into your “business”. You said that you give a 100% to what you do, then take it down and say you never gave a 100%. That, my dear Alison, makes you a hypocrite and a phony. Hope things work out for you because unfortunately you MISSED THE WHOLE point, and will continue to fail UNTIL you finally learn that lesson that you most desperately need to learn. Your financial success means nothing, evil big pharma has plenty of “success.” I just hope you find out SOON that the world does not revolve around your desire to be a famous actress, like most of the women in LA at any given second. What you are doing is not groundbreaking. Not new. Just pathetic dreams of fame and fortune that leave you coming off self-centered, greedy, and phony. Alison, take this as a SIGN FROM THE UNIVERSE… People see right through you!!!!
lawdi
This is total b.s. There isn’t a pot of gold at the end of the struggle. As someone who went through major weight loss and survived cancer, there’s no “gift.” I’m ten times more bitter and pissed off than I was before and with PTSD, no thanks I don’t really want to become someone who works with other patients. This is just more crap for page clicks for your business.
Alison, can you tell me where you went in Philadelphia? I enjoyed your post and live in Philadelphia as well. I was thinking of going to the OCD treatment center at University of Penn but if you know a better place I’m open to suggestions. I’m glad you found peace with your OCD! It’s extremely disruptive to my life sometimes but when I am able to look at the bright side I think “Wow I sure do learn a lot about whatever topic I happen to be obsessing about at the moment!” I could write doctoral dissertations on anything from health topics to identity crises — the plus side to incessant googling! Currently working on the acceptance phase and regaining my center. This time when I come back to the center I think I’ll have a greater appreciation than I ever have before — another positive to this situation. Wishing you peace, calm and acceptance!
”Anxiety naturally wears off. It’s not possible for the human body to remain in an anxious state forever. And the human body is so amazing that we don’t need to do anything to make it go away.” This comment helped me so much. I started feeling less anxious from my harm ocd (fear of hurting others) and I thought that must mean I don’t care about hurting my family and that made me feel so bad but my anxiousness didn’t get high I just felt very ill in my stomach and mentally although it was not as bad. So I rumnated for 2 days thinking if I was a bad person and if I’d start to think that harming my family was normal (which scared me) but after reading that I feel better and i’ve started to ignore them and accept them by giving them no attention! Thank you x