OCD Forum - Does Having OCD Make You Think Clearer Or Make You More Aware?

Do you feel that after you got OCD you notice subtle things that other people would not? Have you ever noticed that you are more aware of stuff that you were not before? Of course you have.
Whatever type of OCD you have at the moment will determine what things you are looking for or are familiar with.
Here's the phenomenon.
I used to drive a grand am.
Now whenever I go out on the road I notice all these grand ams.
I realized that before I started driving a grand am, I rarely would 'notice' a grand am when I was on the road.
Our brain looks for things to reference to other things we've seen.
It's part of your brain's way of trying to make sense of the world around you.
It's the same with OCD, our brain will start to notice things that we are familiar with.
Haven't you noticed how annoying it is to notice all these things, like counting things like chairs for example when you walk into a room or noticing if someone is wearing a 'bad' or 'unclean' color or if someone takes two sodas instead of three.
You get the gist of what I mean.
So what can we do to get rid of this annoyance of noticing things that other people wouldn't.
Here's the key.
When you notice something, don't give a lot of thought to it.
Don't devote a lot of thought to it intentionally.
Know that you will think about it because that is what our brain does, it thinks about what we don't want it to.
But what you can do is know that you're going to think of it, but also you're going to think about what you want to as well.
Even though our brain thinks about what it wants too, we still have the ability to think about things we want to as well.
it sounds weird, but our brains are complicated.
So knowing this, say you are thinking about the chairs, well say, "ok so I noticed the chairs, big whoop.
I'm not going to give them anymore of my main focus, instead I'm going to focus on the game that's on tv and I know that I will have the chairs in the back of my mind, but I will also think of the game.
" Give this some time and practice and do this whenever you notice something you'd rather not notice and over time this will help you to quickly dismiss any thought from your head that you want to, period.
Take action: Today, practice this.
Practice it at least six times a day until you get better at it, this technique is something I have personally used and it works wonders and I recommend it!