Adrian's Reviews > Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior

** spoiler alert ** This is a must read for anyone intrested or suffering from any kind of obsessive compulsive behaviour (OCD) .

I loved the way this disease is presented somewhere along the lines:

Your front part of the brain is constantly producing messages.
In the center of your brain there are two little components that act as a transmission to the cortex : the Caudate Nucleus and the Putamen.
In a healthy brain they receive a message like "wash your hands" , they let it pass through , the cortex enables the behaviour of washing.
Now when another message similar to the first is produced the Caudate Nucleus acts as a filter/gateway. ("dont let this trash message pass since we have alrdy washed hands").
In a OCD brain there is an imbalance of chemicals hence the filter is not working properly , it lets all (repeated) messages go through and the sufferer repeats the same behaviour over and over while knowing something is wrong.
Add to this the Cygnus that controls your heart and you have a recipe for panic attacks.

As the author puts it , an OCD sufferer gets his brain locked in the same behaviour over and over again. Its like instead of an automatic transmision , the one he has is manual , he has to do manual effort -mindful effort to get out of brainlock.

The main focus of this book is how to unlock your brain from this compulsive behaviour , basically identifying the disease , attributing your behaviour to it and then refocusing your attention to something else.

While at the begining this constant battle is hard , in time it becomes automatic and your gears will begin to shift properly in your brain.

OCD is not curable , its an ongoing battle , your mind vs your brain.

The clinical cases presented in this book are humbling , people performing multi hour cleaning rituals , filling houses with trash , phobias etc ...people losing decades of their lives up until the point this disease started getting attention.

On the bright side , most of these people got alot better and live normal lives after following this routine , without ever relapsing.

Aweosme Book !