maybe for so invasive a thought you actually need to discard it or not-argue-with-it
^For OCD, this is true. I was reading an example of a guy inBrain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior (by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD with Beverly Beyette) who repeatedly had the intrusive thoughts for years and years that his fingertips had razorblades in them. So he compulsively avoided touching anyone, even his wife. That kind of thought doesn’t need to be debated, especially when you’ve been having it for years on end. Once he identified it as a manifestation of his OCD, he was able to relabel the thought as intrusive and stopped engaging with it. His symptoms then improved.
it may very well be that OCD is radically different, and this doesn’t work at all for it
^I think this is a case of the Typical Mind Fallacy: “The typical mind fallacy is the mistake of modeling the minds inside other people’s brains as exactly the same as your own mind. Humans lack insight into their own minds and what is common among everyone or unusually specific to a few. It can be often hard to see the flaws in the lens, especially when we only have one lens to look through with which to see those flaws.”
I think extrapolating from my post to think about general anxiety is potentially interesting, but that’s not why I made the post. The post’s target demographic is not for people with general anxiety, it’s for specifically helping people with OCD.
I have no issues with your post at all in the context of “this is the way I’m handling ocd”. It’s just that people are bound to generalize out of it, and this connect to a general ethos I’ve often seen in lesswrong, for instance metacognitive therapy is one example of this more general pattern.
I also think your own phrasing in your post seems not very restricted to ocd specifically, and I wanted to reflect some pushback against the takeaway some people may have about using it outside of ocd context.
Thanks a lot for your post, the description of what it feels like inside to have it is very interesting and I learned a lot about how it works
^For OCD, this is true. I was reading an example of a guy in Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior (by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD with Beverly Beyette) who repeatedly had the intrusive thoughts for years and years that his fingertips had razorblades in them. So he compulsively avoided touching anyone, even his wife. That kind of thought doesn’t need to be debated, especially when you’ve been having it for years on end. Once he identified it as a manifestation of his OCD, he was able to relabel the thought as intrusive and stopped engaging with it. His symptoms then improved.
^I think this is a case of the Typical Mind Fallacy: “The typical mind fallacy is the mistake of modeling the minds inside other people’s brains as exactly the same as your own mind. Humans lack insight into their own minds and what is common among everyone or unusually specific to a few. It can be often hard to see the flaws in the lens, especially when we only have one lens to look through with which to see those flaws.”
I think extrapolating from my post to think about general anxiety is potentially interesting, but that’s not why I made the post. The post’s target demographic is not for people with general anxiety, it’s for specifically helping people with OCD.
Right.
I have no issues with your post at all in the context of “this is the way I’m handling ocd”. It’s just that people are bound to generalize out of it, and this connect to a general ethos I’ve often seen in lesswrong, for instance metacognitive therapy is one example of this more general pattern.
I also think your own phrasing in your post seems not very restricted to ocd specifically, and I wanted to reflect some pushback against the takeaway some people may have about using it outside of ocd context.
Thanks a lot for your post, the description of what it feels like inside to have it is very interesting and I learned a lot about how it works