Tarek Kareem Harris – S3E2 Muslim Doctor Explains OCD, Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

			It's mental health with me Dr. tk Harris. Welcome.
		

			Let's talk about obsessions, compulsions, and worse worse,
		

			extremely troublesome. But with modern treatments, which are very straightforward, they can be made
to reduce, and we can make peace with them. So in this video, we'll understand where they come from.
Notice I say make peace with them, because it's not about making them go away, although that might
happen. But more often, people find a way to live with them so that they don't bother me.
		

			If you remember from the last video, the brain always has thoughts going on. And a lot of the
thoughts, especially the unexpected ones arise from the nuts. Let's go back to the original picture
of the nuts to remind ourselves of its functions.
		

			As you can see, it's got a number of inclinations, but it thinks emotionally, irrationally. And it's
concerned with fairly basic things like protection, danger, safety, security, bonding. Now, those
things are hardwired within us Alhamdulillah we have to live with them because they are there to
serve a good purpose. But occasionally, they can get out of control.
		

			When that happens, we become preoccupied with something. For example, religious, we can divide the
West West into these three areas were shipping, washing, and wordiness. You might not think that
you've done your Salah perfectly, so you keep repeating it, you might not think that you have done
will do properly. So you keep washing or making sure that there is no debt. You might not be sure
that you feel worthy that you're a good or a bad person. So you might carry on doing do are or
simply have very unpleasant thoughts recurring in your mind about whether you are blessed, or
sinful.
		

			Remember that these things come from a good place. And it should be some reassurance to you that
actually what that means is you're a very conscientious person. Most people with obsessions and
compulsions. They come with a great sense of idealism, and a great sense of perfectionism that
perfectionism is a problem. It's one of what we call a cognitive error. Cognitive errors are the
kinds of things where we fall into a certain trap. And we start believing our thoughts. And when we
start believing our thoughts, we think they're facts, and we confuse the two. And then we start to
reason, emotions or emotional thoughts. When that happens, we're starting to lose because you cannot
		

			reason with enough. It's very powerful. It's very quick. And it came with a good reason.
		

			If you go back to the last video, we talked about the weather or an unwanted guest, think about a
storm heading towards you. It can be good or bad. Think about a guest coming to your door. They come
with good reason. They might, they might come with a warning to say Look out, there are burglars in
the neighborhood. And they might and they might be very difficult to get rid of. You can't reason
with them. They might keep saying there's a burglar, there's a burglar, there's a burglar and you
will not be able to get rid of them. Because they are convinced you become convinced. Or you try to
do something to escape them, you deny that they're there? Or you try to reason with them by saying
		

			oh, well, there isn't a burglar, but they are stronger than you and they'll keep saying it. So what
do you do? First of all, you extend a hand of acceptance, accept that these things are going to be
there.
		

			The next thing you do is understand how we approach these sorts of thoughts and behaviors. And as a
Muslim, and the way in which we do that is by approaching it in terms of the Muslim mind. It's three
components, the nuts, the heart and the intellect. The knifes is the emotional side, the way to deal
with it is to accept it and to find a way to come it. We'll talk about how to do that. It involves
basically a deep meditative acceptance and dealing with your physical body.
		

			The second is the intellect and the intellect is very good at questioning things, but it's not very
good at winning arguments with enough So instead what we do with the intellect is we test the
assumptions of the knifes if it's saying that something bad will happen, we gently test we can
strike a deal with enough so that we don't find ourselves always losing out arguments. And thirdly,
the heart the true self. And there are several methods which we will describe as to how we use the
deen and our wisdom and our rules of conduct to make these things diminish. But for now, go back to
a couple of videos. Go back to series one where we talked about the knifes and how it behaves and
		

			Power and seek the video on how to be a mindful geezer. That is a way in which you can calm the
nerves. Another way to calm the nerves is to entertain it. Go and find the video where I've just
uploaded a whole bunch of people laughing. That will also help you to calm your nerves. We'll talk
more about these things in the next video. Keep with me and have faith have faith in yourself and
have faith in Allah because these things can be conquered and you can live with them. One more
thing. Medicine also works and I'll describe those a bit more as well.
		

			stay faithful and hang on and I will keep helping you in sha Allah wa Salaam