Brain Lock, Twentieth Anniversary Edition: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior Paperback – Illustrated, December 6, 2016

Really helped me with my anxiety and realizing how in my head I was. Gave me a different perspective and made me realize how many people have gotten through their own struggles.

Although overly simplistic and poorly written, this book has been incredibly helpful for me as a person who has suffered with OCD since childhood. I had never identified my OCD as such until college, although vaguely I always knew something was going awry in my mind (I guess I just thought everyone had these same struggles).A counselor recommended this book, so I skimmed through it and began trying the '4 steps' (summary later in the review). At first it was counterintuitive and seemed like I was leaving important thoughts behind. In time I began to realize those 'important thoughts' were my obsessions, and that constantly refocusing mitigated their power to depress or paralyze me.I joined a meditation group and have realized that the steps in this book are similar to what I learned there. Both are a conscious process of 1) Observing thoughts as they come to mind 2) Allowing those thoughts to be in the mind without judgement 3) Allowing oneself to refocus on the present. Mr. Schwartz showed that this process causes actual changes in brain chemistry over time, decreasing the frequency and intensity of intruding thoughts.This book has had the greatest effect on me of any book I have ever read. It may not work for all kinds of OCD, but it sure worked for me. Here's a summary of the steps:Step 1: RELABELRecognize that the intrusive obsessive thought is a COMPULSIVE one. Recognize it by saying "There's that compulsive thought again." The goal is to control your responses to the thoughts, not to control the thoughts themselves.Step 2: REATTRIBUTERealize that the intensity and intrusiveness of the thought is caused by its compulsive nature. You did not cause the thought to occur. It just is there. There is nothing you can do to make it go away immediately. Trying to make them go away will only pile stress on stress.Step 3: REFOCUSJust because the obsessive thought or compulsion intrudes, it does not mean you have to act on it. Work around the compulsive thought by focusing your attention on something else, at least for a few minutes: DO ANOTHER BEHAVIOR. You must train yourself in a new method of responding to the thoughts, redirecting your attention to something other than the compulsive thought. The goal is to stop responding to the compulsive thoughts while acknowledging that, for the short term, these uncomfortable feelings will continue to bother you. You learn that even though the compulsive thought is there, it doesn't have to control what you do. By REFOCUSING, you reclaim your decision-making power. The thoughts in your brain are no longer running the show. Refocusing isn't easy. It will take significant effort and even tolerance of some pain. But only by learning to resist the compulsions can you, in time, decrease the pain. The idea is to delay your response to an obsessive thought or to your urge to perform a compulsive behavior by letting some time elapse-preferably at least fifteen minutes-before you even consider acting on the urge or thought. In the beginning or when the urges are very intense, you may need to set a shorter waiting time, say five minutes, as your goal. Note: Sometimes the urge will be too strong, and you will perform the compulsion. This is not an invitation to beat yourself up.Step 4: REVALUEDo not take the compulsive thought at face value. It is not significant in itself. You do not have to act on the compulsive thought. After adequate training in the first three steps, you are able in time to place a much lower value on the compulsive thoughts and urges. Although in the short run, you can't change your feelings you can change your behavior. By changing your behavior, you find that your feelings also change in time.

Recommended to read by someone who has OCD. It is a self help book and does a good job of explaining this disease.

After years of psychotherapy and countless medication changes I found it a losing battle that seemed to have no end. My psychiatrist had moved out of town and I was assigned a new psychiatrist. At our first meeting she suggested I sounded like I had OCD. Being that everyone claims to have OCD I was initially thinking "oh great another meaningless diagnosis". She then referred me to a specialist that treats OCD. The specialist recommended this book to me along with the OCD Workbook.As soon as I opened this book up I saw that 99% of my problem was in-fact OCD. I have what is called "Pure-O". It means that all of the compulsions and obsessions go on in my head. I dont need to constantly touch things or do rituals other than ones I do in my head like saying repeated mantras.This simple fact freed me from many of my outlandish obsessions almost immediately! The more subtle ones, however do persist. Realizing that OCD is a physiological and not just a psychological disorder is also empowering.This book gives 4 simple to understand and perform new rituals that in time actually rewire the brain to some extent. I may never be totally free from OCD, but I will be able to better manage its ravaging nature, and to me makes this one of the best books I have ever read.

Brain Lock is a book for those that would like an overhead view of their disorder. It helped me feel a detachment from the disease, not so much by encouraging me to dissociate myself from it, but rather by describing it as part of my brain whose opinions I should feel free to ignore. With OCD, you know it isn't normal to think how you do, but you feel like there will be consequences if you ignore your compulsions or distract yourself from your obsessions. And so, we either perform our nonsensical tasks, or we spend countless hours and valuable brain cycles going through the many reasons NOT to perform said tasks.One of the major revelations of Brain Lock is that BOTH of these responses play into the hands of the disorder. Either way, you are wasting your time and becoming unbelievably stressed out and not getting any closer to being rid of the problem. Only by looking at the thoughts as foreign and allowing yourself to move on to other business can you break yourself out of the cyclical thinking ("brain lock") that plagues us. I hope that you will find, as I have, that as the years progress, the brain lock subsides, and the real you emerges. It is not a cure, and there can be relapses. Despite this, it reminds me of exercising for years and getting injured. You are put out of your routine for a while, but once you are able to get back in the gym, you are not back where you were years ago. Your strength returns, and your progress resumes.2010 Edit: Still doing well, but I wanted to join in with those recommending cognitive behavioral therapy (and ERP, and the rest of its friends). While this book was quite effective for me, it might be because I had/have a "pure obsession" type of OCD, where the compulsions are all performed mentally. These can include scrupulosity, health concerns, and counting. Exposure therapy is the gold standard for OCD (and phobias, and any disorder where there is an irrational anxiety/fear/disgust response that the brain fails to extinguish). This book has clearly worked for those with overt compulsions (checking, hoarding, cleaning), but I no longer consider it the first choice for such problems. This book does, indeed, recommend its own type of avoidance strategies. That said, the four steps encouraged me to refuse to engage in my mental rituals, accepting the concomitant distress as irrational and dismissible. In other words, this can be very effective exposure and acceptance therapy for pure obsession types of OCD.