I want to take a moment to talk about the nature of fear – so please take a moment to remember that film series ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’…because this is one of my personal favourite motivating metaphors in life, as odd as that may sound.
So Freddy Krueger is a terrible monster with blades for fingers, who visits you in your sleep and kills you in vividly gruesome ways. Not just that but he even laughs and jokes about it, as he does it. And some of the audience think it’s pretty funny, too.
Freddy is a classic example of the irrational fears that can strike us all. And just as the children learn in those films…the only way to kill that fear is to stand up to it. It gets off on hurting us, and many people around you won’t understand why it’s so horrible for you. Some may even tease you for it and think it’s all a big joke. It’s all down to you to stand up for yourself.
The key is always to remember that these thoughts we have are just that: thoughts. They can’t do anything to us. We are the ones who give them all their power. It is up to us to say, ‘You’re nothing. You’re not real. You don’t scare me.’ Only then will they give up and leave us alone. In the movies, this is called becoming a ‘dream warrior’.
OCD is a terrifying experience. Many of us have awful violent thoughts, gruesome enough to rival the movies. Many are so afraid of these thoughts, afraid they might carry out these visions, that they can’t leave the house or be around people. Many are dropping out of life because the fear is devouring them.
Don’t let this fear win. It’s a horrible monster made of your own fantasy, undead and not quite human, and it wants to destroy you. But it’s NOT REAL. It’s time we all start to learn this and believe it. It’s time we took back our lives and started fighting back. It may have power but, like the ‘dream warriors’, we have power too. We can make that fear afraid.
Next time, I’ll discuss some of the ideas surrounding the roots of OCD, so please remember to subscribe to the feed.
Vrinda Pendred, Editor & Founder of Conditional Publications
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George Pendred says:
Fears are like vampires. . . You shine a light on them and they crumble to dust. x x x
George Pendred says:
. . . even better if you can stab it in the chest with a wooden stake.
George Pendred says:
Some say that hope and fear are different facets of the same problem. They both happen when you feel utterly powerless to affect something. For example – most of us dont ‘hope’ we are going to eat tomorrow, because we know that we will.
So, bearing this in mind, in potentially fearful situations, some people would say that it is up to us to make the choice between hope and fear.
However, my view is that both of these stances (hope and fear) have the potential to be equally exhausting. Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely need our hope and our fear, but in the case of IRRATIONAL fear associated with ocd, I think there is a third choice we should aim for. . . acceptance.
(am I leaving too many comments?)
admin says:
Not at all – loving your insights here! And I suppose ‘acceptance’ is what I was talking about in the original post – acceptance of what it is, and that knowledge making it lose its power.