excerpt from Loving Someone with OCD

The cumulative effects of OCD on marriage can result in a relationship burdened by stress and conflict. If left alone, the challenges of OCD moments combined with OCD’s threats to the couple’s emotional and physical intimacy, related financial stressors, interference in social relationships and activities, and fears for the future can shake the very core of your relationship.

Failure to communicate with each other openly about these stressors serves as a form of avoidance that, whether purposeful or inadvertent, creates the opportunity for the root of the problems to grow while creating even greater opportunity for devastating and painful effects on the relationship.

excerpt from The OCD Workbook:

Expect lapses and beware of relapse—especially upon making progress! What’s the difference between the two? Only a world of difference! Lapses are accompanied by a relatively minor uptick in OCD symptoms, are usually short or limited in duration, and almost always occur during a period of short-term life stress or transition. Getting married, divorced, changing jobs, the birth of a child, a move to a new location/community, illness in the family—both happy events and unwanted events—can be associated with a short-term lapse in your recovery from OCD. They are completely normal and should be expected as part of the normal waxing and waning of OCD symptoms throughout your life. Your previous recovery should be fully intact when the outside situational stressors subside.

Relapse, on the other hand, is a much rarer, severe regression back to pretreatment levels of symptoms. It is usually associated with some significant life stressor or disruption in social support, plus additional factors such as alcohol or drug abuse, and in almost all cases, having gone off of your prescribed anti-OCD medication. The sooner you face the issues of lapse and relapse and learn some tools to both prevent them and manage them when they occur, the better.

The following suggestions can help you:

excerpt from 10 Simple Solutions to Chronic Pain

Depression afflicts 50 percent of chronic pain patients (Fishbain et al. 986), and some have estimated the figure to be much higher (Romano and Turner 1985). Most experts agree that symptoms of depression occur following the onset of pain and are more likely to be present in people who are psychologically susceptible (Sullivan et al. 2001).

In addition, people with chronic pain seem to experience more problems with anxiety than the general population (Craig 1994). Fears of reinjury and pain, worries about future losses (especially of functional abilities and finances), and a sense of threat of psychological harm from the stress and strain of chronic pain are common (Rosensteil and Keefe 1983). Anxiety, when present, contributes to higher levels of distress and disability associated with chronic pain (Waddell et al. 1993).

Anger is also a frequent problem for many people with chronic pain (Fernandez and Turk 1995). Patients in our clinic often report feeling more irritable and angry after the onset of their pain. Anger, in turn, interferes with activities and increases pain intensity and symptoms of depression (Tearnan and Lewandowski 1992; Kerns, Rosenberg, and Jacob 1994), fueling a vicious cycle. Anger may also significantly interfere with motivation and acceptance of treatment goals in people with chronic pain (Gatchel 2005).

Depression, anxiety, and anger have another debilitating effect: They often make people believe they’ve changed into someone they don’t like—a person who is always angry and discontented, someone indecisive and lacking confidence, a shell of their former self. And in fact, it is difficult to feel or think like your former self when you’re depressed, anxious, or angry. However, you haven’t lost the things you cherish about yourself— your values and core beliefs. They still reside within you.

Before working on specific techniques to improve your mood, you need to understand the nature of depression, anxiety, and anger. This will help you recognize when you’re having problems. Also, bear in mind that negative emotions rarely exist in isolation. When people are angry, they’re often depressed and anxious. The suggestions and interventions in this chapter are effective in modifying all three negative emotions.

excerpt from The Chronic Pain Care Workbook

People react differently to pain. How you cope with your pain is largely based on how functional you are physically and psychologically. The more you are able to do the things you want, the easier it is to cope with pain. The more you are able to view your self as healthy, the more sound your ideas and thoughts about living with pain. Conversely, the more you see yourself as sick, injured, or damaged, mentally or physically, the harder it is to cope with life. In short, the higher your psychological and physical function, the better you do. Your thoughts and ideas about having pain can play a major role in determining how well or how poorly you cope with pain.

Ellis and Harper introduced an important way of looking at how thoughts and beliefs influence behavior in their work helping people with problems other than chronic pain. However, many pain management centers around the world have adapted this model to evaluate how people’s thoughts and beliefs shape the chronic pain experience.

excerpt from Trigger Point Therapy for Low Back Pain

We’ve often tried to account for the almost total lack of attention myofascial trigger points receive in the medical field—despite the fact that every day we perform therapy that relieves chronic pain in the great majority of people coming to us.

We’ve had many patients who were scheduled for surgery but after being treated with trigger point elimination techniques, chose not to go through with surgery because their pain was gone. We’ve also treated people who had already undergone surgery. Some of them qualified for the diagnosis of failed back surgery syndrome. Although pain relief is more difficult in such cases, we are usually able to help. Additionally, general anesthetic and surgical procedures sometimes activate latent trigger points, so we often treat painful conditions caused or exacerbated by surgery.

excerpt from When Anger Hurts

1. First, and most importantly, STOP.

2. Watch what you say to yourself.

3. Act the opposite.

excerpt from Letting Go of Anger

“When I’m really mad at others, I sometimes take it out on myself.” “I get just as mad at myself as I do at other people.” “I just hate my guts.” Anger turned inward means taking the feeling of anger, and behaving in a way that turns that anger on ourselves. The results are that we hurt ourselves, sometimes knowingly but often without thinking much about it. Although anger is a feeling, it can lead us to angry behaviors such as blaming, ignoring, shaming, criticizing, attacking, condemning, abandoning, and physically harming its target. What happens when we target ourselves for these kinds of punishments? We often hear people say they are frustrated, angry, even furious with themselves. Some people get as angry with themselves as they do with others in their lives. But many say they are angry only with themselves. There are also those who refuse to admit any anger whatever, but treat themselves like yesterday’s trash. They are angry and disgusted that they are here in this world, feeling inadequate and paralyzed, they try to justify the fact that they exist, and often feel like failures.

It is when we turn our anger inward often, with too much energy, calling ourselves names and feeling angry with ourselves for whatever we do, that our anger becomes a problem—for us and usually for those who love us, as well.

excerpt from The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook for Kids

Think back to your own childhood for a moment. What are the five most stressful moments that come to mind? If you are like many adults, family fights are at the top of your list.

All couples argue at some time. All kids lose their tempers, too. It is rare to find siblings who don’t occasionally quarrel or call each other names. But arguing and fighting should be an exception, not a rule. If your family life is tainted by constant bickering, sarcasm, yelling, or other forms of arguing, you should put peacemaking at the top of your stress-reduction to-do list.

Everyone, even children as young as five, can learn peacemaking or conflict-resolution skills. Conflict-resolution programs have been used in schools for more than a decade, and there is one thing we know about them: they work. There are many ways to teach these same skills at home. Here is one activity that can help family members find peaceful ways to resolve their differences.

excerpt from Parenting Your Out-of-Control Child

Research suggests that one important factor in differentiating parents who become physically abusive from those who don’t is the parents’ belief that their child is misbehaving on purpose; that is, the child knows the right way to behave but is misbehaving to spite the parents or make them angry. It has been my experience that many parents of out-of control children share this belief. At times, they see their child behave appropriately. Consequently, during those times when he misbehaves, they assume that he has purposefully decided to do so. This belief is further strengthened when parents experience their child’s verbal challenges of authority, such as when the child says, “You can’t make me” or “I hate you.” However, this belief is incorrect as well as counterproductive; it only serves to exacerbate the parents’ anger.

Instead, recognize that out-of-control children are usually impulsive and tend to follow the path of least resistance to get what they want. They are likely to repeat what has worked for them in the past to obtain the consequence that they want, even if the manner of doing so was inappropriate. As many noted behaviorists have pointed out over the years, it is the consequence after the behavior that determines whether that behavior will be performed again. If a behavior results in a consequence that your child considers desirable, he is more likely to perform this behavior in the future. If not, the likelihood of performing the same behavior is diminished.

excerpt from The Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Workbook for Personality Disorders

Develop Alternative Responses to Unhelpful Thoughts

If you already recognize the unhelpful thinking style that you use, find it below and learn how you can challenge it. However, if you haven’t already identified the style you frequently use, be patient. For the moment, just review the list and become familiar with the unhelpful thinking styles and their alternative responses.