Have you ever tried to not scratch an itch? I was never able to do it — both literally and figuratively. I was never been able to resist. I kept testing myself. I’d be walking the dog, feeling a little itch on the back of my neck. “I know it’s not a spider crawling on my neck. I know I can resist… it will subside….” But it wouldn’t. It would just grow & grow until I couldn’t take it and I had to scratch! I was the same way with any craving.
I once came across a recipe for chocolate fondue. I couldn’t interest anybody in the house in chocolate fondue. I tried to forget about it. Besides, I shouldn’t eat chocolate; it is a well established fact that my body has a very uncomfortable reaction to it. But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I was powerless to resist. So, I made chocolate fondue & ate a huge bowl of it, with anything edible I could find to dip in it. I felt pretty bloated & horrible, but I had to do it. If I had held off longer, I would have just made more chocolate fondue & covered a chocolate cake in it & cut it open & filled it with a mixture of chocolate ice cream and chocolate whipped cream, with chocolate chunks on top. I would have carved spoons out of chocolate to eat it. You get the idea.
You may have noticed that I have been writing in the past tense. That’s because I was able to finally resist my most powerful itch: obsessive-compulsive disorder. For decades, I resigned myself to the fact that I was powerless to resist doing a ritual stemming from OCD. I may have been able to put it off a few minutes, sometimes even for hours, but I knew I would have to give in at some point — the itch would never end. I would have to go back and re-read those words, or touch that object or recite that mental list….
It was only in the wake of personal tragedy, one that had been tied up with my OCD, that I was finally able to resist those itches. The change came about after studying methods of manifestation, from the Secret to the Master Key System. Manifesting changes to your reality is said to be more effective the more you can free yourself from doubt and completely, even subconsciously, believe that the change you seek is real. This moment occurred for me when I was reading the introduction to Wayne Dyer’s Wishes Fulfilled: Mastering the Art of Manifesting. It was then that I thought to myself, “I can be what I will to be, and I will to be free of OCD.” But simply saying it isn’t enough, you have to believe it wholeheartedly, and for me that only came after months of study and meditation.
So now I can resist the previously unresistable. But can I apply this ot the rest of my life? Can I resist gorging myself on chocolate? At this point, the stakes seem lower; I haven’t yet convinced myself of the absolute necessity of consistently eating healthy food or consistently engaging in only healthy behavior in general. But, I know that the power lies within me, and I can resist the itch when I am ready. After all, I can now resist OCD — the biggest itch of all for me. And yes, I do still feel the OCD itch sometimes, but I know that my powerlessness was an illusion.
