Law of Attraction & OCD

[metaphy6]

Hi all, just need your opinion. I have OCD for quite a while but I'm not usually sad, but I'm feeling a bit down since the past few days. My OCD are obsessive thoughts that intrude my mind, a habit, a mental addiction, and it's very hard to ignore those obsessive thoughts, and those are negative thoughts that create anxiety. I don't really have a major compulsive behavior though, just mild ones sometimes. I'm in the process of trying to overcome my OCD but in the meantime it's still there.

Lately, I've been thinking, the law of attraction says that what you focus on or think about most of the time will become reality. Does this apply to OCD obsessive thoughts too? Will those negative obsessive thoughts become reality. Appreciate your comments greatly. Thanks

[The David]

From my knowledge, the LoA is a philosophy that you will get what you expect, not what you think about. I'm sure most of us have fantasized about things we could never get, and according to the LoA, we don't get them because of our beliefs, not because we aren't thinking about them enough. Negative beliefs will cast a shadow over positive thoughts, rendering them ineffective. This applies to 'LoA-ers' and 'non-LoA-ers' alike (and fence-straddlers like myself).

So yeah, the last thing you need is another source of stress, so just focus on the OCD right now.

[Alfonso Crawford]

I agree with metaphy on this one: the obsessive thoughts are your main problem. I've been hit with the same thing as you. Unfortunately, I can't offer you much except for a bad joke. Think of it this way: if OCD-thoughts could manifest themselves, wouldn't life be a little... insane? When I was younger I literally couldn't stop thinking about cartoons and whatever catastrophe that was on the news: combine those two things together, toss in the LoA as you're imagining it, and we'd all be neck-deep in fireball-throwing rabbits and misfired nukes. Stop and think what your unstoppable childhood mind-rants would've done to us all if they turned into reality!

I told it was gonna be bad, folks.

If you overcome your OCD, send a few tips my way: I can only work around it for now, and I've only got so much anime to distract myself. I wish you the best of the best of luck, David. Kick this pig and get on with your life!

[dave marshall]

Hi,

I have worked with people with ocd in the past and for those it was related to fear and habit. I just wanted to encourage you to say that you can resolve this issue, you have the natural resources within you.

all the best

Dave

[Parthon]

From my experience, Law of Attraction is a Law much in the same way as the Law of Gravity, or Law of Physics. You don't need to believe in them they just happen. Even if you don't believe in physics you will still get hit by that bus coming towards you. The Law of Attraction states that you attract into life that which you focus on, believe in and think about. It's not a question of belief, it's only a question of how much you notice the law working.

As for the question: Yeah, your obsessive thoughts will affect reality, but they already are. Becoming more aware of your thoughts is all you need to do, which leads to gaining control over them in the long run. Scattered thoughts and focus don't manifest anything strongly, and if what you are anxious over is rather mild then there it doesn't matter anyways. What David said was spot on though: focus on the OCD, and let the Law take care of itself.

Work on pruning your thoughts and the garden will blossom how ever it wants to. Just without weeds for a change.

[ScottJMurray]

In my spare time I research and treat disorders like OCD, which tend to fall into the same category as most psychosomatic illnesses. My own work is based upon the work of Dr. John E Sarno. His most famous OCD patient was Howard Stern, who actually piloted the idea that OCD is an equivalent disorder to Tension Myositis Syndrome. The website I run has basically all the information you need to make a full recovery. Not a lot of people know about this method of treatment, which has proven ridiculously effective for not only OCD but a large number of other previously "untreatable" medical phenomena.

If you'd like to talk one on one about this, you can drop me an e-mail. I can help.

[reneta]

i'm just going totally crazy. the LOA and OCD are deadly combination and i'm really feeling like dead. and i'm just going nuts. pls anyone can help with advice? i have no idea what to do.

[Orca]

Hi Reneta and Metaph,

I've worked with OCD and the impact ideas of LOA can cause for them. With a couple of my clients, the problem is that folks read about LOA and then got rather fearful and obsessive with their own thoughts. In other words, LOA started to become part of the OCD problem, since OCD is highly tied to anxiety and feeling unsafe in the world. It's like the ideas of LOA caused these folks to start policing their thoughts so much they could not really think of anything other than their own negative thoughts...because it was the only way to try to regain some sort of control in life. I do not find exploring LOA to be very helpful for folks with OCD because of this tendency to latch on to it to create more OCD-like habits. It's hard to explain but I hope that makes sense...

Don't worry, this can be healed. I've seen pretty serious OCD cases turn around. It really heped when people could first stop obsessing on the whole LOA thing. Not an easy thing to do, when folks have started clinging to it for control. But it was making the obsessive thought-policing impulse even worse for them...

I suggest it is much better to first focus on regaining a feeling of safety, of finding ways to reduce the terrible anxiety. There are several ways this can be done. People who do not know OCD may have trouble understanding OCD, as there might be the idea that you just put out an LOA intention to calm down, coupled with a lot of positive affirmations and visualizations, and voila! But it is not always so easy, yes? Indeed, I wish it were.

In some cases, with OCD folks caught up with LOA, I had to get real with these folks, to show them that obsessing on LOA was only making the OCD worse. LOA just sort of became another way to justify the OCD, if that makes any sense. It became a justification to police their own repetitive thoughts.

To me, the first steps in healing this kind of anxiety need to be done outside the whole LOA model. The mind cannot heal itself when it is so anxious. If you could have, you would have already, right? So, no matter how well-intentioned the ideas of LOA are, it is not where I would start with healing OCD. OCD healing requires drawing on a different bucket of resources than the mind. You have several other buckets of resources available...

Hope this helps. There is help available, and there's not one approach that magically fits everyone dealing with OCD. But it is do-able.

I wish you the best, and good luck on your journey!

Sincerely,

Orca

[Eduard E]

Originally Posted by metaphy6

Lately, I've been thinking, the law of attraction says that what you focus on or think about most of the time will become reality. Does this apply to OCD obsessive thoughts too? Will those negative obsessive thoughts become reality.

My personal subjective opinion is that the Law of Attraction is unsubstantiated (and that word is an euphemism for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥). So, in won't turn your obsessive thoughts into reality just as it won't turn any other type of thoughts into reality. More on this subject here: The Law of Attraction vs. Science|People Skills Decoded

However, there is something called a self fulfilling prophecy which might apply here. Here's an example: you think to yourself that people believe you are weird, which makes you nervous around them, which makes you act in odd, uncalibrated ways, which eventually makes people think that you are weird.

Keep in mind though that self fulfilling prophecies work in a very different way than the rearranging-of-matter-directly-through-thinking way the LoA suggests. And they do not happen all the time, with everything you're thinking.

[xfactor]

Originally Posted by metaphy6

Lately, I've been thinking, the law of attraction says that what you focus on or think about most of the time will become reality. Does this apply to OCD obsessive thoughts too? Will those negative obsessive thoughts become reality. Appreciate your comments greatly. Thanks

Don't worry about that. Even if LOA somehow works (and I seriously doubt it does), your thoughts doesn't count in the real life. You can only change your environment with actions. Very few people on the planet can actually control their minds, so if LOA would work the way you think then all kinds of strange stuff would happen to everyone all the time.

[selina]

Originally Posted by metaphy6

Lately, I've been thinking, the law of attraction says that what you focus on or think about most of the time will become reality. Does this apply to OCD obsessive thoughts too? Will those negative obsessive thoughts become reality. Appreciate your comments greatly. Thanks

I was wondering about the same thing, as I too have a problem with obsessive thoughts and am also interested in the law of attraction. First of all I want to say that I'm really pleased to discover this site, i've been pondering on this for a while and was feeling so frustrated yesterday, wondering how the LOA fits in with someone with OCD, and hey today I typed this into google and discovered that other's are also asking the same question! Wow! is that the law of attraction in action? ( I had the thought and seeked and found) Wow!

Anyway now to answer your question, I think that obsessive thoughts are more based on Fear and habbit and anxiety (like a poster above has already said) so on that basis, No I don't think the negative thoughts will become reality, but we also have to realize that they are just thoughts and don't mean anything...I like what Parthon said 'Just become aware of our thoughts-which leads to gaining control over them' I'm starting to recognise that they have no power unless you give them attention, and if i focuss on somthing else immediately 'they' lose their power, but for me this is still a daily struggle!

I'm still pondering over this myself, am so confused....what i'm struggling more with is... If the mind is so consumed with sorting out thoughts all the time how can we have the space to think what we really want, and how can we use the LOA to develop ourselves?
Maybe like someone said earlier just to focuss on the OCD for now, and maybe not worry about the LOA... I don't know!