Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions). It's also possible to have only obsessions or only compulsions and still have OCD.

OCD is a common disorder among individuals, may or may not realize that your obsessions aren't reasonable, and you may try to ignore them or stop them. But that only increases your distress and anxiety. Ultimately, you feel driven to perform compulsive acts in an effort to ease your stressful feelings.

Examples are obsession:

• Fear of being contaminated by shaking hands or by touching objects others have touched
• Doubts that you've locked the door or turned off the stove
• Intense stress when objects aren't orderly or facing a certain way
• Images of hurting yourself or someone else
• Thoughts about shouting obscenities or acting inappropriately
• Avoidance of situations that can trigger obsessions, such as shaking hands
• Distress about unpleasant sexual images repeating in your mind

Examples of Compulsion:

• Hand-washing until your skin becomes raw
• Checking doors repeatedly to make sure they're locked
• Checking the stove repeatedly to make sure it's off
• Counting in certain patterns
• Silently repeating a prayer, word or phrase
• Arranging your canned goods to face the same way

This leads to more ritualistic behavior — and a vicious cycle that's characteristic of OCD.

Checking emails, SMS, social media updates are also kind of OCD symptoms.

There's a difference between being a perfectionist and having OCD. OCD thoughts aren't simply excessive worries about real problems in your life. Perhaps you keep the floors in your house so clean that you could eat off them. Or you like your knickknacks arranged just so. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have OCD.

If your obsessions and compulsions are affecting your quality of life, see your doctor or mental health provider. People with OCD may be ashamed and embarrassed about the condition, but treatment can help.

A type of therapy called exposure and response prevention (ERP) is the most effective treatment. This therapy involves gradually exposing you to a feared object or obsession, such as dirt, and having you learn healthy ways to cope with your anxiety. Exposure therapy takes effort and practice, but you may enjoy a better quality of life once you learn to manage your obsessions and compulsions.

Therapy may take place in individual, family or group sessions.

See earlier article on Emotions

Emotions

Emotions seem to rule our daily lives. We make decisions based on whether we are happy, angry, sad, bored, or frustrated. We choose activities and hobbies based on the emotions they incite.

As per Hockenbury & Hockenbury, "An emotion is a complex psychological state that involves three distinct components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response.".  This is a resultant action of human nervous system using some of the chemicals.

Emotions can be highly subjective, may not be pure in form.  your own unique experience of these emotions is probably much more multi-dimensional. Consider anger. Is all anger the same? Your own experience might range from mild annoyance to blinding rage.

Responses

As defined earlier, emotion exhibits physiological and behavioral responses.

Physiological 

Many of the physical reactions you experience during an emotion such as sweating palms, racing heartbeat, or rapid breathing are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, a branch of the autonomic nervous system.

Brain scans have shown that the amygdala, part of the limbic system, plays an important role in emotion and fear in particular. The amygdala itself is a tiny, almond-shaped structure that has been linked to motivational states such as hunger and thirst as well as memory and emotion.

Behavioral

Actual expression of emotion is behavioral.  Our ability to accurately understand these expressions is tied to what psychologists call emotional intelligence and these expressions play a major part in our overall body language.  A smile indicate your degree of happiness.

An emotion is normally quite short-lived, but intense. Emotions are also likely to have a definite and identifiable cause.  A mood on the other hand is usually much milder than an emotion, but longer-lasting. In many cases, it can be difficult to identify the specific cause of a mood.

Some Emotions

Uneasy

Nervous, tense, anxious, flustered, insecure, angry, cross, confused, bored, flat, apathetic, weak

Angry

frustrated, cross, irritated, annoyed, furious, livid, enraged, hurt, inadequate, trapped, tired, scared

Frightened

uneasy, weak, insecure, inadequate, tense, anxious, nervous, anxious, scared, petrified, threatened, trapped, horrified

Happy

pleased, glad, wonderful, elated, excited, content, surprised, proud, relieved, satisfied, confident

Negative

distress, suspicious, scornful, disdain, bitter, stupid, shame, worthless

Positive

determined, forgiving, hopeful, motivated, inspired, daring, energetic, loving, eager, excited, receptive, happy

Unhappy

 hurt, upset, lonely, guilty, miserable, bereft, despairing, devastated, lost, down

Upset

angry, frustrated, sad, tearful, hurt, miserable, weepy

Confused

hurt, upset, lonely, inadequate, cross, miserable, shocked, mixed-up, nervous, scared, discontent, stupid, foolish

You would have experienced at least three of the listed emotions.  

Anxiety Disorder

What is Anxiety Disorder?

Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress characterized by thoughts of apprehension and autonomic
symptoms such as sweating, palpitation, tremor and butterflies in the stomach.

This is useful for a person in day to day life in most of the cases, for example…..

It helps...

• A student to study harder for an exam, 
• An employee to deal with a tensed situation in the office, 
• A person to keep focused on an important speech….. 
• But when this Anxiety becomes excessive and disabling, thus affecting day to day functions........, 
• it becomes an Anxiety disorder.

Five major types of Anxiety Disorders:

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
• Panic Disorder
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Specific Phobic Disorders (Including Social Phobia)

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized Anxiety Disorder, is characterized by 

• Chronic free floating anxiety, 
• Increased worry and tension, even when there is very little or even nothing to provoke it. 
• General worries are accompanied by fatigue, headache, muscle tension, muscle aches, difficulty in 
• swallowing, trembling, irritability, sweating, etc

Stress and You

Stress is one of the most common complaints one hears from patients. More and more evidence suggests a relationship between the risk of cardiovascular disease and environmental and psychosocial factors. These factors include job stress, relationship problems, social isolation as well as personality traits.

Developing an optimistic attitude and resilience is the way to beat stress. Of 999 people, men and women ages 65 to 85, researchers in the Netherlands found that optimistic participants had lower rates of heart disease and were 77% less likely to die of cardiovascular diseases.

How stress impacts you?

It is not known how exactly stress increases the risk of heart disease. Whether stress by itself is an independent risk factor or whether stress affects other risk factors and behaviours is yet to be ascertained.

Smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and family history are known risk factors for coronary heart disease. But stress plays a role too.

Studies have shown that long-term stress triggers an unhealthy lifestyle. Chronic stress can result in unhealthy habits such as smoking, being sedentary, overusing alcohol and eating poorly or overeating. These, in turn, increase chances of developing hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol. So, over time, elevated levels of stress can cause you to acquire risk factors that lead to heart disease. Chronic stress exposes your body to unhealthy, persistently elevated levels of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which can be detrimental for the heart. Acute stress can cause a sudden increase in the blood pressure, plaque rupture or formation of blood clots, leading to a heart attack.

Warning signs from your body

When you are exposed to long periods of stress, your body gives warning signals that something is wrong. Don't ignore these physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioural warning signs. They tell you that you need to slow down. If you continue to be stressed and don't give your body a break, you are likely to develop health problems. Remember, unlike other risk factors for heart disease, it is not possible to measure stress in a precise way.

The good news is that stress doesn't arise from a particular incident or circumstance, but from our perception of and reaction to it. Understand that it's not just stress but your response to it that determines how your health will be affected. Some people react to stress with feelings of anger, guilt, fear, hostility and anxiety that could make things worse. Others may face life's challenges with greater ease. Be in control of a situation so you know what triggers your stress, and work to abate the feelings so the stress is not prolonged.

Take out time to unwind in whatever way that works for you-go for a walk, listen to music, catch up with friends, meditate. Managing stress makes sense for your overall health.

Status of India

In the Indian pool of heart patients, almost every second patient has high blood pressure, every fourth has diabetes and every fifth had plaque deposits in hisher arteries.

Ongoing pan-india study is being done by the American collage of Cardiology's new India chapter indicate, of the 85295 patients studied over 26 months, 60836 had some form of heart disease.  

Average age of heart patient is 52, which is lower by 10 years in the west.  Of the patients surveyed 21.5%  had diabetes, and 20% have some form of heart block.  Most alarming is the 42% of them have hypertension.

In the backdrop of World Heart Day on Monday, the ACC data underlines that the average age of a heart patient in India is 52 years. In the backdrop of World Heart Day on Monday , the ACC data underlines that the average age of a heart patient in India is 52 years. “If one looks at ACC's American registry , the average age is much higher in the seventies. Clearly, Indians get hit with heart disease much earlier,'' said Dr Ganesh Kumar, cardiologist at Hiranandani Hospital in Powai and vice-chairperson of the study .

Are you doing your part to relax?  If not, please start.