Happy St. Patrick's Day- OCD Help From Ireland

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone! I was reading up on St. Patrick, who is the patron St. of Ireland. It is known that St. Patrick was born in Britain to wealthy parents near the end of the fourth century. At the age of sixteen, Patrick was taken prisoner by a group of Irish raiders who were attacking his family's estate. They transported him to Ireland where he spent six years in captivity. After more than six years as a prisoner, Patrick escaped. According to his writing, a voice-which he believed to be God's-spoke to him in a dream, telling him it was time to leave Ireland.To do so, Patrick walked nearly 200 miles from County Mayo, where it is believed he was held, to the Irish coast. After escaping to Britain, Patrick reported that he experienced a second revelation-an angel in a dream tells him to return to Ireland as a missionary. He is believed to have died on March 17, around 460 A.D.

While reading this, I came across OCD Ireland which is a national organization for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and the related disorders of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) and Trichotillomania. They have a very good website and I liked what was on there re “Mindfulness,” which I think is a great was to deal with OCD…
“Mindfulness a relaxation technique derived from meditation practice. It is about learning to observe your mind at work, without getting 'sucked into' your thoughts. It is about learning to allow thoughts to happen and to observe them. Normally, we do not pay much attention to what is going on in our mind. We just have thoughts and act on them. For example, when we smell a delicious aroma coming from a bakery, we might think "oh, I'd love a bun." It is only when we are deciding whether we will either purchase one or not that we become aware of our mental process. In mindfulness, we would be aware of the smell impinging on our senses, and aware of the thoughts arising from that ("oh, I'd love a bun", memories of tastes, images of our favorite bun) and we would then be aware of our decision-making process ("I don't have time to stop", "I shouldn't really have one", "I'll have lunch in half an hour anyway"). The idea in mindfulness is to become aware, dispassionately, of reality - of the environment and things going on around us which impact on us, of internal sensations and thoughts. In ordinary consciousness, attention is generally directed outwards, to some task or activity, or driven by habit. Our thoughts similarly are often operating in habitual patterns.” For more info go to…

http://www.ocdireland.org/who.shtml


I am also on Jacketflap http://www.jacketflap.com/profile.asp?member=Bess