Notes from "Stopping spam from going bad"

As part of my current therapy I was asked to watch the following YouTube video:

Stopping spam from going bad | Blake Stobie | TEDxRoyalHolloway

It's only 15 minutes and not too arduous. I watched it a few times inbetween my therapy sessions and made the following notes. None of it was really new to me but it did help re-enforce the methodology of how i should be treating intrusive thoughts. What us OCD sufferers always forget is that we assign meaning to every thought and we treat it as fact and then try to do something about it by either thinking or action. The trap is so easy to fall into. We need to learn that most thoughts are spam and are best ignored.

My notes:

• Intrusive thoughts are normal and we all get them but where they become problematic depends on what we make of the fact that we get them
• The key really is to think about intrusions as neutrons: they're neither positively nor negatively charged up until the point that we start to attach a meaning to them
• One needs to think of the idea of a homunculus - a little person who sits in our brain and can step back from our thoughts and valuate them. This is also known as metacognition.
• The simplest starting point is to help people to realize that often most of our thoughts are just spam - they're just rubbish and if they are just rubbish the implication that follows from that is that they don't necessarily require any kind of action. Anxious intrusive thoughts generally try to get us to do things and they have a great urgency attached to them and often the best thing we can do with them is just to ignore them completely
• There's two different ways that psychologists can help people to notice their thoughts more and to be a little bit more in tune and accepting of the fact that we get thoughts and we're bombarded by the spam all the time and we run into trouble once we start trying to fight it off and repress them or try not to have them at all.
• The second way that we try to help is to get people to react differently to the internal intrusive thoughts and to not engage in rumination and worry over the intrusions which often are about really terrifying things - most of which have never happened and will ever happen and so by definition they can't be solved.
• What he urges us to do is when you have an anxiety induced intrusive thought is to be oppositional to it, so if it tells you to freeze or to run away from something you should move towards it unless the thing that you're afraid of is something actually dangerous like a bear in which case you should probably freeze.

Seroxat: Patient Information Leaflet Revision: Changes from August 2014 - March 2015

Seroxat

Patient Information Leaflet (PIL)

Revisions

Disclaimer

• These are my own notes of changes I've noticed whilst eyeing up the leaflets. These are not definitive and I may have missed changes, misinterpreted a change or misspelled a word. Do not take what I've written as absolute. Please see your doctor or pharmacist if you have any concerns over the contents of your PIL.
• For the definitive list of revisions or to enquire about the revisions if you have any concerns, please see your doctor or pharmacist.
• Online information on revisions to Seroxat PIL can be found http://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/history/3185 but is very thin on what the changes are, hence why I do this blog post.

 Changes from PIL dated August 2014 

to PIL dated March 2015

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What's been added
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Section 2: What you need to know before you take seroxat

Under "Important side effects seen with seroxat":

“or neuroleptic malignant syndrome” added to sentence after “Other patients develop something called serotonin syndrome …”

“feeling very agitated or irritable, feeling hot, muscle stiffness” added to list belonging to sentence which says“... where they have some of all of the following symptoms”

Under "Other medicines and seroxat"

“Pravastatin, used to treat high cholesterol” added to list.

Section 4: Possible Side Effects

After “Allergic reactions to Seroxat” ... “(shortness of breath)” has been added after the symptom “difficulty breathing”

After “Allergic reactions to Seroxat” the following symptoms have been added ... “and feel weak or lightheaded resulting in collapse or loss of consciousness”

Section 4: Possible Side Effects

Under “Frequency Unknown” section, the following has been added “Some people have experienced aggression whilst taking seroxat”.

Under “Other possible side effects during treatment”, under “Uncommon side effects, likely to affects 1 in every 100 people”, the following has been added “If you are a diabetic patient you may notice a loss of control of your blood sugar levels whilst taking seroxat. Please speak to your doctor about adjusting the dosage of insulin or diabetes medications.”

Under “Other possible side effects during treatment”, under “Rare side effects, likely to affects 1 in every 1,000 people”, the following has been added “Menstrual period disorders (including heavy or irregular periods, bleeding between periods, and absence or delay of periods.”

Section 6: Contents of the pack and other information” 

Under “Marketing Authorisation Holder and Manufacturer” there are now two manufacturers. 

Previously it was just the manufacturer in Romania. Now the “Seroxat 20mg film-coated tablets” are made by manufacturer in Poland and the “Seroxat 10 and 30mg film-coated tablets” are made by the manufacturer in Romania.

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What's been altered
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Section 4: Possible Side Effects

After “Very rare side effects, likely to affect up to 1 in every 10,000 people:” the first bullet point has had the title altered from “Allergic reactions to Seroxat” to “Allergic reactions, which may be severe to seroxat”

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What's been removed
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NONE 

Notes from the first three chapters of the book "The mindfulness workbook for OCD"

Been slowly reading through this book over last month or so. I might ink a review when I finish it but suffice to say that so far it's been an interesting read over the first three chapters with some sections very familiar and skip-able if you have any basic understanding of OCD symptoms and Relaxation techniques. None of the book has made much difference to my issues thus far although I have introduced daily (trying to do it twice daily) relaxation/mediation periods of about 20 minutes.

I've made some notes along that way of the bits that actually meant something to me; i.e. words that hit a mark and just made perfect sense, or said things in a way I'd not really thought much about before.

What follows are not always copy/pasted quotes from the book as some have been shortened or edited to make more sense when they are read on their own, instead of being part of a paragraph.

Hopefully some of the following is useful to others and might push others to buy the book.

• To react to OCD is to jump into compulsions. To respond to OCD is to observe what your mind is doing and choose your next step.
  
  
• It’s the “What if”, not the “What is” that OCD lives in. In the “What is” there’s no material for the OCD to work with.
  
  
• Thoughts are thoughts, not threats.
  
  
• The primary difference between people with OCD and those without it is not simply the content of the thoughts, but their perspective on the thoughts.
  
  
• When you experience an OCD thought you are also being made aware of all the things to which you relate to that thought.
  
  
• The thought of being contaminated isn’t the same as being contaminated. Its a thought of it.
  
  
• Feelings are feelings, not facts.
  
  
• Feelings are basically thoughts about physical sensations.
  
  
• Feelings are ideas about physical experiences. Like thoughts, they are born empt and given meaning through behaviour.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice invites you to shrug your shoulders at the OCD and say “Well, that’s a feeling”.
  
  
• Sensations are sensations, not mandates to act.
  
  
• Physical sensations trigger feelings, which trigger thoughts, and they all converge in your mind.
  
  
• Mindfulness suggests you see thoughts not as distractions but experiences.
  
  

• When you become aware of thoughts that trigger you, you make assumptions about the meaning of those thoughts, and this drives you toward compulsions.
  
  
• OCD based on fear, not on evidence.
  
  
• You can’t predict the future.
  
  
• Feeling at risk doesn’t place you at risk.
  
  
• Mindfulness element is about acknowledging the feelings as just feelings you are having/. OCD insists those feelings must mean something.
  
  
• Perfection is an illusion.
  
  

• By stopping compulsive and avoidance behaviours, we stop negative reinforcement and learn over time that we can tolerate the presence of unwanted thoughts

• You cannot control what thoughts, feelings and physical sensations you have. Your job is to choose your behaviours.

• You have no say in what kinds of thoughts happen or you think of.
  
  
• If you try to control thoughts by judging or suppressing them, you are doing a compulsion.
  
  
• You get to decide what you do with your thoughts, not what thoughts you happen to have. The same is true of feelings.
  
  
• We all have complete control over our behaviour.
  
  
• Compulsions are behavioural choices.
  
  
• Change your behaviour and the thoughts and feelings follow.

What goes on in the OCD mind: 3. Why should I comply with OCD?

What’s the punishment for not compiling with OCD? Well, this is sometimes the £100,000 question as it’s not always a tangible pain that is feared. It’s undoubtedly something bad. Really bad. But not necessary a physical injury to yourself or someone else. Just knowing that not doing what the OCD thinks is bad enough. It’s like worrying about worrying. If you can just stop the worrying by performing a task then it’s a simple action you would think. I do a particular task dictated to by OCD and all that immediate fear goes away. I know it’s not the way to setting yourself free long term from OCD, to just give into it, but when your vision of the world around you has been transformed by OCD it’s easy to do what the OCD says because in a way it’s the normal thing to do. It doesn’t seem like I’m obeying anything or anyone. Just that I’m living a life that, although I know is shaped by OCD, I don’t see it as unnatural. It’s frustrating and annoying at times yes, but it still doesn’t feel unnatural. The reason for this is because the nature of the threats that OCD makes me feel … feels normal. I know OCD isn’t natural, but when it’s telling me there is something to worry about, it feels like a simple obvious fact. Of course it’s something to worry about, that person, that clothing, that place or that item. Why? Because I know it is, as that’s just the way the world I now know operates. It doesn’t feel like OCD is telling me this, because my perception has changed. I can see all the dots that join up to spell something to worry about, something that many other people can’t. I know how life works and I know what’s hidden where the majority of people can’t see or think of these fears. Yes, the most people can’t see that contamination or issues to worry about that I can. Am I bothered? More fool them!