Vipassana Meditation for OCD

The “automatic” nature of our thoughts (“thoughts happening to us” as opposed to “we creating our thoughts“) is most apparent to an OCD person. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) thoughts are rampant in nature, and we can easily see that we have no control over them. There is biology (“chemical imbalance” if you will) that causes these thoughts, and no “free will” can command them to stop.

It may seem odd when we first hear it, but the above knowledge is great preparation for Vipassana meditation. Vipassana is all about observing things “as they are”, not judging or trying to change anything. The goal of the meditation technique is to uncover the “witness” in us that observes the changing nature of our thoughts, sensations, feelings and emotions in an impersonal way. Our helplessness against our OCD thoughts has already given us a peek into the existence of this separate non-dual “witness” that observes the good and bad facets of our “personality” without getting affected.

An OCD person can use this as a headstart in Vipassana:

First we make a strong determination (addithana in pali) that we will meditate twice – 1 hour each session – every day. We affirm to ourselves – that no matter how anxious, worrisome, depressed or fearful we might be feeling, we will give those two hours everyday to Vipassana meditation. Resolving to do this is not necessarily hard for us OCD folks – as we tend to be meticulous about the things that we do. However, when the time comes to meditate, we might find that in the beginning, the motivation is lacking, more so when we are under the onslaught of an especially fierce OCD episode.  However, as we gain experience of the meditation practice, it will soon become clear to us that we can actually tell our “OCD bully” that it is okay to spend some time doing Vipassana as the meditation technique does not prevent us from indulging in our obsessive thoughts.

Most of the Vipassana techniques we discuss on this site are grounded in the “out of the box” Goenka method. However, the steps we propose below are tailored for people who have OCD.

For the first 15-20 minutes of the one hour sitting, we simply observe our breathing – the breath in and the breath out (this practice is called anapana in Pali). It is very important that we do not regulate our breathing when we are doing this. The breathing must be natural, almost as if we are watching it from the standpoint of  a disinterested 3rd party. Being that we have OCD, there are good chances that we will lose our concentration frequently and wander off into our OCD world of worry, fear etc. As soon as we realize that this has happened, we bring our awareness back to the breath. We do not berate ourselves for this.  We just bring our awareness back to the breath. The purpose of this part of the meditation session is to bring a semblance of calm upon ourselves. However, there is no need to fret even if this has not happened.

Next, we move on to Vipassana, which we will do for the remainder of the 1-hour meditation session.

In this part, we move our attention from head to toe, examining every body part for sensations. How do we know if something is a “sensation”?  The easiest way to explain this is that a sensation is anything which if it did not exist, we would conclude that the given body area was numb. So any itching, pulsating, warm, cold, prickly, throbbing etc feelings qualifies as a “sensation” in the Vipassana context.

The usefulness of “sensations” soon becomes quite clear to the Vipassana meditator.

Many meditation techniques advocate watching the thoughts. That is not easy, if not impossible, for most people. In Vipassana, we don’t have to watch the thoughts, we only observe the corresponding sensations.  Sensations can be caused by other types of sensory inputs not related to thought (touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing) but in the context of Vipassana for OCD, we will only focus on sensations caused by “thoughts”. It is important to note that we are not trying to get rid of the thoughts that OCD brings on, but to only non-judgmentally observe and accept the corresponding sensations. For example, a fearful thought might cause us to breathe faster (we can observe this sensation around the nostrils). A particularly worrisome thought might translate into a queasy sensation in the gut area. An angry thought might generate a hot feeling in the face and arm area.

We observe all of these sensations without trying to interrupt the OCD thoughts that are causing it. The goal here is to make peace with these sensations, not resist them.

Many times during a meditation session, when an overwhelming OCD “doubting” thought comes up, there will be the urge to end the meditation, and give our full focus instead to the thought to try to resolve the question that it has brought up. Even this situation produces sensations in the body. We simply observe those sensations and continue on with the meditation.

The idea is to let the “thought fires” burn. We only observe sensations that they cause in our body. We become like a person sitting around a bonfire, just observing the fire and doing nothing.

What is the purpose of all of this?

(1) Negative OCD thoughts by themselves are never a problem; it is the unpleasant sensations that they cause that OCD people find themselves unwilling to live with. With the above practice, we learn to remain neutral to and accepting of those sensations.

(2) Success is not determined by whether or not OCD thoughts still come up. It is determined by the extent to which we can function productively in our daily lives while OCD thoughts are still present.