Like scratching poison ivy only makes it itch more, the more you indulge some thoughts and worries, the worse they get. You know what I’m talking about, right? Such pesky thoughts can mess up an otherwise good day, cause someone to lose a job, or at the extreme, can ruin a life and manifest as a full-blown obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

In his book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, one of Dan Seigel’s patients refers to this as “Overactive Checker Deployment.”  Seigel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA school of Medicine, co-director of the UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute, explains that we have brain circuits that have evolved over millions of years to keep us safe. These brain regions include the flight-flight-freeze system of the brain stem, the fear-producing amygdala of the limbic area, and the worrying and planning prefrontal cortex which work together to activate survival reflexes to push our cortical regions to constantly scan for danger. Hence, the “checker.”

Siegel explains that the checker actually protects us and is our friend and uses the acronym SAM to explain its functioning. First, it scans for danger. If it detects any, either physically or merely in our own thoughts, it sends an alert of fear, and, then, motivates a person to take some action. If the checker gets over enthusiastic, always imagining the worst case scenario and constantly preparing for danger – even if just imagined – it can result in chronic worry and anxiety or even full blown OCD.

Focusing inward and becoming more aware, has proven very successful in decreasing the impact of anxious thoughts and even treating OCD. No wonder the monks are always kinda grinning! Mindfulness practices teach a person to physically calm themselves and begin the process of self-regulation in the brain which, with repetition and neuroplasticity, physically alters the brain circuits.

Jeffrey Schwartz pioneered this practice in the 1990’s by combining his interest in Buddhist philosophy with his neuroanatomy research and verified its effectiveness with brain scans. His four-step therapy is outlined in his book Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior and has become an established treatment for OCD. The four steps are: relabel; reattribute; refocus and revalue.