Dear Vywamus,
I´m 48 and have been struggling since I was 3 with tons of anxiety and OCD. Despite 25 years of medication and psychotherapy, I still can´t provide for myself and it seems that I´ll never be able to do it, I mess up every job I get.
Fabio
My dear Fabio,
I write this response for you, and also for any other readers who struggle with persistent mind and emotional challenges. (If you are one such reader, I speak to you too. I invite you to take what I say to Fabio here and plug in the names of your own set of challenges.)
Fabio, this is indeed a difficult path you have been on in this lifetime, with so much trial and pain. Your efforts do not go unappreciated by us at this level, we understand how you are trying to make your life the best possible under these challenging conditions. From a practical viewpoint, we commend you for trying various medications and for making use of psychotherapy for greater understanding and for emotional support in dealing with your anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We hope you will keep on with these, even when relief may only be partial and temporary.
Still on a practical level, you haven’t mentioned whether you have consulted a neurologist or a neuropsychologist about other possible treatments that may be helpful for you. These could include neurofeedback (a form of biofeedback), hypnosis, or even possibly Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), which has been successful in some people who have a form of OCD that has not responded to other treatments. And you may learn of other options as well. It is certainly worth your time and effort to explore these treatment possibilities and any others you learn about. If they are not easily available to you, make use of any resources around you that can help make them available.
My advice to anyone who has a persistent problem like yours is to first do everything you can to address it on a practical everyday level, to use your own ingenuity and common sense in finding the resources you need. I always suggest that you make use of everything that medicine (Eastern or Western) or psychology or psychiatry has to offer. Do your best here. Make as much progress as you can on the problem at this level. And remember, your problems – in this case OCD and anxiety – are not all there is to you. Give at least part of every day to something apart from your problems, something that interests you or brings you pleasure. It could be music, or a sport, or time with friends, or walking in nature, or crafts, or any other pastime. There is much more to you than a set of problems you are working on in this life, and focusing on other things at least part of the time will help you maintain a balance.
So far, I’ve been making suggestions for practical actions you can take in your everyday life. That is one level of your path. And, it’s important to look beyond that level. What is the purpose of these challenges that have come into your life? What are you learning from them? Because of your problems with OCD and your anxiety, and how you are dealing with them, you have some unique experiences that no one else has. Some of these may be painful, but some may only be painful if you’re fighting them. As best you can, be present with all these experiences without judging them. It’s the best way to learn what you need to learn from them. Do not reject or accept these experiences, simply watch them, observe them, be with them. If you can do this for even 5 seconds at a time at first, that’s good.
With practice you’ll be able to be present for more and more of the time, even with the experiences that distress you. While you’re doing this practice, the urge to fight may come up, or the urge to escape. Be present with these urges too. Simply be with them. Be present with everything that is going on inside you. Doing that is one of the major learnings on your individual life path. And if you do this practice, it will lessen your pain and bring more peace into your life.
Now, beyond your own life path, there is a still broader perspective. With your own unique experiences, you are contributing in your own way to the evolution of humanity. As I have described in my book The Next Big Bang, humanity is at this time undergoing a tremendous step in evolution, and part of that is evolution of mind. Your brains are slowly changing, your thought and emotion patterns are changing, and many of you are volunteers who, before coming into this life, have agreed to try out various out of the ordinary brain and mind patterns that may lead to new forms of human thinking. You are one such volunteer. Your experiences in this life, dealing with the particular brain patterns you have, are valuable and essential. You are a living laboratory in which human mind is evolving into new levels far beyond what you have today.
I will quickly add, just because you are a volunteer, this does not mean you are locked in for the rest of your life to the same level of challenge you have now. Part of your purpose is to learn how to be present with the mental and emotional states that go along with your anxiety and OCD. Yet also, part of your purpose is to find ways to shape and modify these states so that whatever is positive in them comes forward and whatever is negative is minimized.
To use the example of training a wild horse, the first steps involve simply being able to stay in the saddle and not fall off. That’s where you are now. Staying with it. After that come the steps of guiding the horse into the ways you want him to go. So, as you progress to the next stage, you will be working at guiding and training these unusual OCD brain patterns into a more harmonious form that is not oppressive in your everyday life, and may even, in some way, come to enhance it.
What form should this guiding and training of your own “wild” patterns take? Right now, humanity is in a stage where you generally make use of physical aids and interventions such as medications or neurofeedback or DBS or DNA manipulation to modify wild mind forms like OCD and help the new broader and more harmonious mind forms to emerge. Start with whichever of these aids are available. And add meditation of any kind, but especially meditation that includes physical movement (breathing, walking, dance, martial arts, and so on), to help you integrate the new patterns. These are the beginning steps toward the new forms of mind. In the future, as human mental abilities evolve, you will not need such physical aids and interventions any more. You will have the ability to change any pattern in your brain at will and create any form of mental activity you desire.
So take heart, my friend. There are ways you can take the hand life has dealt you and make this a life of great learning and spiritual advance, while also making a significant contribution to the evolution of humanity. And you are not alone. There are many other souls who are engaged in mind experiments such as yours, for their own learning and for the good of humanity. See in particular my ASK VYWAMUS letters to D (August 2015) and Anonymous (6-6-13), who are two of these. They too are exploring unusual patterns of mind, emotion, and perception, not quite the same as yours, but parallel.
In closing, I and the other guides who work with me want to thank you for your hard work on your own life path and for your contribution to humanity. Be assured that we are always with you, giving you our guidance, and our love and support. Please call on us when you feel the need.
Warmly,
Vywamus