Is this problem just OCD? (obessive, compulsive disorder) If it is OCD, the treatment is as Jeffrey M Schwartz describes, relable, reattribute, refocus, revalue, or some similar named steps. That is call it OCD, it is all OCD made worse by the chemical imbalance of intake, go obsess about recovery or something else, it is still just OCD and it does not matter. The solution is redirection of the OCD toward something useful and not damaging. Displace the behavior with a useful behavior.
The urges can safely be ignored and get on with life, The urges do not matter. That is easy to say, but when we are hungry, have the urge to eat, and food is ever present, then what is the expected outcome? The bloody urges, combined with hunger always win.
The solution is see this all from the third party preservative. It is not the I view, or I the receiver, but I the detached observer, that gets all the information and make objective decisions. Detached observer, the mindfulness observer, that observes the issues in a detached environment, that needs the information. Dispassionate. What the body wants is not part of the decision making process. That is the act of taking the decision to eat or not away from the body, and giving that decision to the rational mind of a third person. Is this what a belief in a god actually do; take the choice out of our hands and give that decision to a prescribed book or other control?
Mindfulness is a clear minded outward perspective, a third person awareness, on inner awareness. Detached. Seen from a distance, taking a step back from our emotions. As soon as we are aware, the attachment begins to loosen and can fall away. So that third person view is necessary. All this takes the decision making away from the lower brain, the emotional part, and gives the decision making to the higher brain function. All well and good, but how does one live in this high brain and shut down the lower brain function? Metered meals. So then it is all about staying on a diet anyway.
To stay in that no-self mode, in mindful third party mode, is the difficult part. Schwartz says everyone is capable of going into this mode, but offers no evidence of that. Sustaining that third party no self is not so easy. With food issues, that detached no self mode must be maintained 24/7, with no reprieve. Yet we also need to work and do life things.
So all this suggest to me that we are all taking about the same thing, using different words to describe, using different concepts to understand the same thing, when the solution lies in objective thinking, not in the self layer. Yet it is the self that must do what is right, what it values and what it needs to do. So we are back to the dueling brain that causes all the issues, and the only solution, just do what is right to do, and damn or shut down those body urges. This is what a gay must go through trying to live straight.
So Schwartz now recognizes the need, for his program to work as it was intended, one must be in this third person objective. Neither of his early books make any reference, for he, a third party to OCD is in that mode automatically. So the missing part is to learn to live continually in third person thinking, just as with work. My history suggest that I am capable of third person mode, but not continually. Sustained maintenance of "3rd person mode" is something that I find difficult.
This is amusing to me in one sense: years ago, during our nasty divorce & custody battle, one tactic Ex tried was stealing one of my old-fashioned handwritten journals (as I said, it was a LONG time ago!), & Xeroxing it to give to his attorney to use as "ammunition". For some reason, one thing she chose to zero in on was the fact that I often referred to myself in the 3rd person which she wanted to flag as a symptom of "dissociation" or mental illness.
ReplyDeleteThankfully the judge refused to allow this "evidence" to be admitted!