excerpt from Free from OCD by Timothy A. Sisemore Ph.D.

Jamaal doesn’t really appreciate his new nickname, Mr. Perfect. Though he has really tried not to, he still has to keep every paper straight in his organizer and catches himself straightening up his friends’ papers. He used to feel good about himself and thought he was pretty popular and cool. But now that his stuck thoughts and rituals have gotten worse, he doesn’t go out with friends much because he just doesn’t want to hear the teasing. He has to go to school but wouldn’t if he didn’t have to. Though his friends say they’re just teasing, Jamaal doesn’t find it very funny. Having OCD is a pain.

for you to know

As if it isn’t bad enough to wrestle with stuck thoughts and rituals, for many teens these symptoms can have a big impact on many areas of their lives—particularly in friendships and self-confidence. In some ways these “side effects” can be worse than the stuck thoughts and rituals themselves.

for you to do

Get a piece of paper and answer the following questions:

excerpt from The OCD Workbook by Bruce M. Hyman, Ph.D., and Cherlene Pedrick RN

We’d like to introduce you to people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) so you can see how these symptoms affect people in their daily lives. Except for Cherry, these people are composites of many people with OCD. You may observe similarities between yourself and one or more of the people described, but this is only coincidental.

• Cherry’s Story: "What If? " — An Unwanted Companion
• Mary’s Story
• Melody’s Story
• Robert’s Story
• Ben’s Story
• Jack’s Story
• Mark’s Story
• Liz’s Story
• Angelita’s Story
• Ron’s Story

excerpt from The Whole-Food Guide to Overcoming Irritable Bowel Syndrome by Laura J. Knoff NC

The Eating4Health model is a regenerative food system to help you organize and plan meals and menus. Created by Edward Bauman, Ph.D., and used extensively by holistic nutrition consultants, the model shows a plateful of possibilities for healthy food and beverage choices (Bauman 2008). It emphasizes seasonal, organic, unrefined, and local foods (what I call SOUL foods). If you have digestive problems or Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), emphasize leafy and crunchy vegetables; good-quality whole-food proteins with their naturally accompanying fats; booster foods that speed up metabolism, such as spices and seaweed; and natural beverages. You may need to limit or eliminate some unrefined starches and fruits to avoid IBS symptoms. This model serves as a guide to choosing a wide variety of whole foods.

excerpt from The Healthy Gut Workbook by Victor S. Sierpina, MD

These SuperFoods and their sidekicks will make your eating choices even more varied, enjoyable, and healthy. Include these in your diet plan for snacks and as part of your meals, and you’ll feel better in the short term and in the long run.

excerpt from Present Perfect by Pavel Somov, Ph.D.

Acceptance isn’t passivity or surrender. It’s an active engagement in reality, in real time, on its terms. As such, acceptance is realism and requires existential courage rather than an escapist flight into what theoretically could be. Accepting reality as it is now means just that: accepting the reality as it is right now. If you don’t like the way reality is right now, change the future. You see, acceptance isn’t approval, it’s just an acknowledgment of what is (more about this below). If you don’t acknowledge what is, what will you be improving?

excerpt from The Mindfulness Workbook by Thomas Roberts LCSW, LMFT

With this practice you’ll practice greeting each thought, emotion, and sensation. You’ll watch it, name each with a single word, and then let it go. Some people have told me they find it useful to visualize writing each name on a balloon and then releasing it, or to visualize writing the name on a leaf and letting it float away down a stream. These are just a few ideas. Feel free to come up with your own. Whatever imagery you use, this practice is an effective means of clearing away some of the clutter from the insistent chatter of big deal mind, allowing you to experience more spaciousness.

excerpt from The Lotus Effect by Pavel Somov, Ph.D.

The sacred lotus offers an inspiring rags-to-riches, slime-to-sunshine metaphor of growth and enlightenment. We might consider the lotus to be the ultimate Cinderella story: it cleans all day and never gets dirty. The self-cleaning lotus exemplifies an empowering narrative of integrity. It manages to remain itself, pure and unaffected, and to grow to its fullest amidst the impurity of its circumstance. Unsurprisingly, the lotus flower (padma in Sanskrit) has a position of great cultural and spiritual significance in Asia. In Buddhism, the lotus represents purification and disentanglement from the trappings of conditioned existence (samsara), liberation from suffering, and the achievement of enlightenment. The cross-legged “lotus pose” (padm’asana) in yoga is a universally recognizable symbol of wisdom and serenity. As a visual symbol, the lotus flower is inescapable: it is a core element of Asian iconography. As a sound, the lotus invocation is forever resonated in the om mani padma hum mantra (“jewel in the lotus”).

excerpt from Urban Mindfulness by Jonathan S Kaplan, Ph D.

Many of us drink alcohol. The city’s plentiful diversity of bars, wineshops, happy hours, and events ensures that we can always find a drink when we want one. Usually, our reasons for drinking alcoholic beverages are fairly benign, based on enjoyment of the taste or a desire to unwind (as opposed to a pathological urge to numb emotional pain). The pleasant effects of drinking come pretty soon after we start. By mindfully attuning to the experience, we can continue to enjoy a series of pleasurable moments without drinking too much. When we get disconnected from our bodily feelings, we become vulnerable to drinking excessively. We fail to notice our diminished ability to taste our drinks and don’t observe the decline in our physical, mental, and social faculties. Many religious traditions eschew drinking, especially by spiritual leaders, because they consider it to interfere with awareness, purpose, and divine will. While it might be going too far for some people to consider not drinking at all, most can recall times when drinking led to some poor decision making or a nasty hangover.

Introducing mindfulness to the times when we drink can be an interesting and enriching experience. Consider some of the following activities:

excerpt from Urban Mindfulness by Jonathan S Kaplan, Ph D.

Online dating is a very efficient and convenient way to meet people. You can describe whom you’d like to date, cruise profiles, and screen potential dates by e-mail, online chat, text, and phone before actually meeting in person. You can also consider and develop criteria for your ideal partner. If you want to meet only people who live in your zip code, you can screen out everyone else. If it’s vitally important to be with someone who, like you, loves pugs, you can find that type of person too. And you can do all of this without even leaving your home!

A consequence of this process is spending an awful lot of “alone time” writing (and updating) your profile, selecting the best photo of yourself, and poring through everyone else’s profile. During this time, you’re vulnerable to two very unmindful phenomena: stewing in others’ opinions about you and concocting fantasies about others. In both situations, exercising your judgmental mind can make you easily fall prey to disastrous dating experiences.

Developing your dating profile requires you to articulate who you think you are. Typically, this conjures both positive and negative views of yourself. You might easily identify all of your good qualities, like being honest or having a healthy head of hair. Or you might feel bad about who you are, particularly relative to someone else or an idealized version of yourself. For example, “I’m too fat,” “I’m not successful,” and “I’m not as funny as my friend” are all variations on the “I’m not good enough” theme. Regardless of whether your self-assessment is negative, positive, or some combination, the bottom line is that you spend considerable time and energy being distracted by opinions of yourself.