Brain Lock: Free Yourself From Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Beverly Beyette

creativity.) At first, there was some concern that these sessions might prove counterproductive, since in some well-intentioned victim-support groups, participants get into a sort of sick competition about who has suffered the most. Also, several patients expressed to me their fear that, through the power of suggestion, they might develop new symptoms to pile onto their existing ones. Neither of these fears has proved true in the nearly ten years the group has been meeting.
    One of the many success stories in the OCD group is Domingo, a onetime plumber who is now a self-taught art dealer. Domingo, who was diagnosed with OCD in his native Mexico, was “all the way at the bottom” of the OCD heap when he came to UCLA for treatment. Over a fifteen-year period, his symptoms have included showering five or more hours a day, the fear of showering, checking and eating rituals, and—what is the most bizarre—an obsession that he had razor blades attached to his fingernails. This last obsession led to his reluctance to wear certain clothes, including a favorite vintage motorcycle jacket, for fear that he would rip them to shreds with his imagined nail-blades. “I can’t touch babies,” he says. “They’re too delicate. My dog, I play with him but I cannot touch his face, his eyes, for fear I’ll cut him.” At times when Domingo and his wife made love, he drew back from touching her, especially her chest. As he said at the time, “I think I’m going to cut her. I keep thinking I’ve got blades on me, and my hand begins to shake, my muscles get realtight, and I have to pull back. My eyes see there are no blades, but my mind won’t believe. And I have to ask her, ‘Are you okay? Did I hurt you?’”
    Through therapy, he has learned a basic truth: “You have to be stronger than OCD, physically and mentally. If you’re not, it will eat you alive. It will put you in bed, and you will rot like a vegetable.” Most days, when seized by a compulsion to wash or check, he is able to say to himself, “This is not real. You have to stop. You have things to do.”
    Domingo makes himself choose: “Am I going to listen to this OCD or go and do my laundry? I tell myself, ‘It’s going to hurt really bad, but I have to go on.’ I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and just go through it—just push as hard as I can.”
    Because he is capable of seeing quite clearly the difference between normal behavior and OCD behavior, he is able to bring himself around by zeroing in on reality. He reminds himself that a beautiful woman has chosen to be his wife and that she sees something special in him. “Look at all you’ve done,” he tells himself. “This is the reality you have to grab onto. You have to stop this thought right now. You must. If you don’t stop this, it will take over—and then what?” Domingo knows that if he gives in to the compulsion or the thought, it will keep going around and around in his brain, sapping his energy and wasting his time. He calls this “brain loop.”
    He also knows that even if his OCD is never cured, he now has the upper hand. “Before, I couldn’t count the compulsions. One would go, and another would take its place. Now I know how many I’m fighting. Before, they were coming from right and left. I was overwhelmed. Now I know where it’s going to get me. I’m ready. I don’t listen to my OCD because I know it’s fake. I let it go quickly.”
    TELL IT TO YOUR TAPE RECORDER
    Another regular in the OCD group is Christopher, a devout young Roman Catholic who for more than five years has been battling OCD-induced blasphemous thoughts. Christopher’s disease reached a crisis point during a pilgrimage to a European shrine well knownas a site where numerous apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been reported. Though he had gone seeking spiritual enrichment, to his horror, he found himself in the little church one day thinking, “The Virgin Mary is a bitch.” Profoundly sad and ashamed, he