Hello after long... the grass is always greener on the other side ???

[Sidd]

The more I read about the OCD the more interesting it becomes... Many types and different symptoms and kinds. I never ever held my infant child in my hands until he was more than an year old due to my fear that I might hold him tight or else hurt him--- had a pet bird Amazon parrot and never held her in hands until she was grown up due to same sensitivity... !!! On the internet this example is given out as a classical example of an OCD ... Also is my irrational fear of flight associated to the OCD factor? I once had a panic attack and wanted to start yelling but I controlled myself not to forget nail biting and even biting off the finger skin at nail edges.. and how about making a weird facial expression (very funny though) upon missing an easy shot.. I always had a fear of failing in my exams but I always passed with flying colours I have an MBA in Finance and also another MA in Foreign Affairs ... Did both the degrees excellently but was deep down never ever satisfied with my preparation but god a gold medal in MBA and flying colors in foreign affairs... Whenever I do something great at work I question myself was it really me? I cant do that im not that good. Always careful about spelling mistakes and need to be grammatically perfect in comprehension both in verbal and writen expression like my punctuation has to be perfect including the correct use of commas colons etc etc Also i have the following in me:

Despite the irrational behaviour, OCD is sometimes associated with above-average intelligence.^[4][5] Its sufferers commonly share personality traits such as high attention to detail, avoidance of risk, careful planning, exaggerated sense of responsibility and a tendency to take time in making decisions.^[6]

Last but not the least, and this is the latest i suffer from: its like i need to be constantly doing something and preferably a mental activity anything on the intellectual front or else I feel extreme boredom... people love sundays with their families but for me sundays are boring cuz there isnt anything productive to do... After studying in detail i might not even have OCD but severely an OCPD i.e. not only an OC Disorder but an OC Personality Disorder cuz people with OCPD, like me, consider such irrational things as rational and desirable.

OK my research is complete... I am sure now that my case is that of an OCPD... Time to consult a psychiatrist ???

The primary symptoms of OCPD can include preoccupation with remembering and paying attention to minute details and facts, following rules and regulations, compulsion to make lists and schedules, as well as rigidity/inflexibility of beliefs and/or exhibition of perfectionism that interferes with task-completion. Symptoms may cause extreme distress and interfere with a person's occupational and social functioning.^[5][6] According to the National Institute for Mental Health, most patients spend their early life avoiding symptoms and developing techniques to avoid dealing with these strenuous issues. (my perfectionism always interfered with task completion at work Significantly higher rates of OCPD have been found in subjects with OCD, with estimates ranging from 23 to 32 percent. For example perfectionism, hoarding, and preoccupation in details (3 characteristics of OCPD) were found in patients of OCD and not in patients without OCD, showing a particular relationship with OCD.^[7]...

A pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:

1. is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost
2. shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion (e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met)
3. is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships (not accounted for by obvious economic necessity)
4. is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values (not accounted for by cultural or religious identification)
5. is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value
6. is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things
7. adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes
8. shows rigidity and stubbornness

This is so bloody me- damn it!

[Terry Davidson]

Sidd:

To answer you earlier question regarding the length of backswing.

If a player has a choice I recommend using the longer backswing all the time as it gives the player many more choices on the use of higher power shots and also makes the use of power shots a lot SMOOTHER. This is not a hard and fast rule however and even players who use the longer backswing (with the notable exception of Selby) will adjust to a shorter backswing when in and around the black and using very low power shots.

A player who uses a longer backswing all the time must learn to adjust his acceleration for each shot and if you look at the top pros most of them do use a longer backswing (except DOTT and a couple of others) so there is a good argument that it is the correct way to go. However, if as an adult you are trying to learn this and are switching from normally using a shorter backswing for most shots then you will obviously throw out your own natural rhythm and timing until you get used to it.

That said, Terry Griffiths teaches varying the length of the backswing for each shot to make it proportional to the amount of power required and he says this for 2 reasons, the first being the rate of acceleration will always be the same or nearly the same and secondly it makes for a more compact cue action. The negative factor with the shorter backswing is sometimes the backswing is not long enough for the power required and the player tend to accelerate the cue too quickly and this leads to gripping the cue early, some shoulder movement and deceleration through the cueball.

For these reasons I think the normally longer backswing is the way to go BUT ONLY IF THE PLAYER CAN KEEP THAT LONGER BACKSWING ABSOLUTELY STRAIGHT. The secret to keeping it straight is to slow the longer backswing right down until the cue is just creeping back and then with a nice rear pause the player can start his acceleration slowly (which is correct) and build it up to the required speed because he has a lot of room to play with.

With your OCD however, you might prefer the more controlled shorter backswing which might make you a little jerky at times and bring in not only shoulder movement (premature elbow drop) to get the power required but also because the cue must accelerate rapidly there is a tendency to grip the cue tighter at the START of the delivery and thus taking the cue off-line. This may also lead to deceleration through the cueball.

Without a doubt the normally longer backswing is definitely the way to go for most players IF THEY CAN CONTROL IT. Remember, the key target for a good snooker technique is SMOOTHNESS and you can achieve that target a lot easier with a normally longer backswing (I'm going to intentionally try and lengthen my own backswing starting today with the key being to keep it VERY SLOW and well controlled and see how it effects my game. I'm pretty sure it will alter my own timing and rhythm and I will need lots of time to adapt to that.)

Terry

[vmax4steve]

Anyway, I will do a little research on this but this is very interesting to find out... thanks mate. So finally what would you suggest ot a person like me as you know very well now in terms of snooker...!!! how must a borderline OCD go about it

You don't mention if you knew your late siblings and were aware of their passing or not. Despite whether you knew them or not your parents would have made you aware of their lives and of their own loss and the pain that gave to them and this would have passed into your subconscious and could have triggered this OCD in you.
Then again it could have been their overprotection of you that gave you a feeling of not being in control of your own life that triggered it.

As for your snooker, it could very well be that this need to ritualise everything in your life in order to give you this feeling of control could be what makes you always needing to have something to think about when playing, hence always looking for more coaching tips for you to try out.
When you do relax however your subconscious does indeed take over and you play naturally well, but this goes against your need to feel in control through a conscious ritual so you overide the subconscious by always looking for a negative that you believe is present in your natural game and therefore give yourself permission to once again try something else making this an endless cycle.

[mooneyy]

If I may ask vmax4steve, what do you do for a living?

I found these posts on OCD very interesting as it came to my mind that I too used to count steps and do many of the other above mentioned things...

Seems Sidd and I can open a club. Can we count you in too?

[Sidd]

Sidd:

To answer you earlier question regarding the length of backswing.

If a player has a choice I recommend using the longer backswing all the time as it gives the player many more choices on the use of higher power shots and also makes the use of power shots a lot SMOOTHER. This is not a hard and fast rule however and even players who use the longer backswing (with the notable exception of Selby) will adjust to a shorter backswing when in and around the black and using very low power shots.

A player who uses a longer backswing all the time must learn to adjust his acceleration for each shot and if you look at the top pros most of them do use a longer backswing (except DOTT and a couple of others) so there is a good argument that it is the correct way to go. However, if as an adult you are trying to learn this and are switching from normally using a shorter backswing for most shots then you will obviously throw out your own natural rhythm and timing until you get used to it.

That said, Terry Griffiths teaches varying the length of the backswing for each shot to make it proportional to the amount of power required and he says this for 2 reasons, the first being the rate of acceleration will always be the same or nearly the same and secondly it makes for a more compact cue action. The negative factor with the shorter backswing is sometimes the backswing is not long enough for the power required and the player tend to accelerate the cue too quickly and this leads to gripping the cue early, some shoulder movement and deceleration through the cueball.

For these reasons I think the normally longer backswing is the way to go BUT ONLY IF THE PLAYER CAN KEEP THAT LONGER BACKSWING ABSOLUTELY STRAIGHT. The secret to keeping it straight is to slow the longer backswing right down until the cue is just creeping back and then with a nice rear pause the player can start his acceleration slowly (which is correct) and build it up to the required speed because he has a lot of room to play with.

With your OCD however, you might prefer the more controlled shorter backswing which might make you a little jerky at times and bring in not only shoulder movement (premature elbow drop) to get the power required but also because the cue must accelerate rapidly there is a tendency to grip the cue tighter at the START of the delivery and thus taking the cue off-line. This may also lead to deceleration through the cueball.

Without a doubt the normally longer backswing is definitely the way to go for most players IF THEY CAN CONTROL IT. Remember, the key target for a good snooker technique is SMOOTHNESS and you can achieve that target a lot easier with a normally longer backswing (I'm going to intentionally try and lengthen my own backswing starting today with the key being to keep it VERY SLOW and well controlled and see how it effects my game. I'm pretty sure it will alter my own timing and rhythm and I will need lots of time to adapt to that.)

Terry

Thanks for the in-depth response Coach. Point well taken. I learnt the longer backswing with much patience and pain and I remember I did my 67 with the longer backswing so I think i should remain connected with it. Yes you are right all it needs is body stillness and slow indeed very slow backswing... I dont know but the other day while in the balls I tried the shorter backswings and felt it gave me timing so thought it might be better... Ahhh must have been me being an orthodox OCD there

I will finalise this in my next solo i.e. will place ten straight reds with black and pink and repeat the exercise with both long and short backswings and determine once and for all which suits me better; but deep down im personally inclined to go for the longer ones... Lets see!

[Sidd]

If I may ask vmax4steve, what do you do for a living?

I found these posts on OCD very interesting as it came to my mind that I too used to count steps and do many of the other above mentioned things...

Seems Sidd and I can open a club. Can we count you in too?

Nice post Mooneyy... I think while replying to my original post above, Vmax mentioned being a borderline OCD himself so yes we can count him in hahahhaa but my OCD is rather OCPD (difference being OCD knows its a OCD habit or thing but OCPD considers it right and desirable) and now I am on the road to insanity i.e. after knowing of this everything that I have been doing lately I begin to think is it natural or is it me being OCD hahahha what the heck !!! Now just imagine a technique freak like me knowing of being OCPD and then going to play snooker daily LOL

[Sidd]

You don't mention if you knew your late siblings and were aware of their passing or not. Despite whether you knew them or not your parents would have made you aware of their lives and of their own loss and the pain that gave to them and this would have passed into your subconscious and could have triggered this OCD in you.
Then again it could have been their overprotection of you that gave you a feeling of not being in control of your own life that triggered it.

As for your snooker, it could very well be that this need to ritualise everything in your life in order to give you this feeling of control could be what makes you always needing to have something to think about when playing, hence always looking for more coaching tips for you to try out.
When you do relax however your subconscious does indeed take over and you play naturally well, but this goes against your need to feel in control through a conscious ritual so you overide the subconscious by always looking for a negative that you believe is present in your natural game and therefore give yourself permission to once again try something else making this an endless cycle.

Well all three of them passed away within 1-2 years of their birth. Two were elder but I had a little sister as well younger than me now the only memory I have of her is a 2 second flash of her in my mom's lap and me playing with her cheeks... This means that she is in my memory but how she passed away burial funeral people coming to our house I remember of know nothing of that... Can it be possible that my brain sort of shut down all those memories and hence my OCPD started ???? Must ask my mum about my sister's passing away as that may have a clue.

You are absolutely correct. I have made my snooker for me a battle that can never be won. Since I am passionate about it as well I need to have that supermacy in this game to satisfy my brain upto my standard. i will tell you many of the breaks I miss is also due to the fact that after two blacks I imagine a 147 chance hahahahahaa i know this is funny but i cant control it and hence would try for difficult blacks rather than an easy pink. once a friend told me that you are so obsessive abou tthe black that your black potting is great but always miss easy pinks on attempts cuz you never take them usually and once faced with it your confidence is rather low... In all of my high breaks so far I have always taken maximum blacks... even my 67 was based on 6 blacks 2 blues and a pink. This i know is unrealistic for a player of my level to imagine but then its not in my control...

So the key you say is to relax cuz yes I still remember playing briliantly with a brand new tip and a different grip (thumb curled around forefinger) in fact when I could not reproduce that the next night I wondered why and that is the point where you taught me EOB and that gave me results and then when EOB did not work for three nights I wondered man there is more to it so I tried shorter backswings and thought timing is imroved (the reason for this thread) hahahah you are very right all my threads are interlinked and I keep on going ... but please do let me know how to overcome this as I am personally tired of this but cant get rid of it... i know the key is to relax and let the subconsci do it but how to attain that.... hahahha another tip needed eh

[vmax4steve]

hahahah you are very right all my threads are interlinked and I keep on going ... but please do let me know how to overcome this as I am personally tired of this but cant get rid of it... i know the key is to relax and let the subconsci do it but how to attain that.... hahahha another tip needed eh

The key Sidd is now that you realise that the reason you do what you do is about a need to be in control because of what you went through as a child, you can start to recognise that being in control is really not what life is about.
Life as an adult is about choices that we can make and not about choices that are made for us anymore such as when we were children. Your daily rituals and rigid adherence to routine will not keep you and your loved ones safe from harm, that is something that your childish mind invented because of extreme feelings of loss. As an adult you know now that life to a great extent is about your own choices, but there are things such as your own and your loved ones health, the extremes of the natural world and the horrors inflicted by those people who are ruled by fear that is completely out of your hands and this has to be accepted.


And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, speak to us of children
and he said:
Your children are not your children.
they are the sons and daughters of lifes longing for itself.
They come through you but are not from you,
And though they are with you they belong not to you.

You may give then your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (p) 1923

Inside

I am my own geology, strata on strata of the imagination,
Tufa dreams, the limestone mind honeycombed
By the running away of too much thought.
Examine me, tap with your words' hammer,
Awaken memories of fire.
It is so long since I cooled.
Inside me stalactite and stalagmite ideas have formed
And become rigid.
To the crowd I am all outside.
To the potholing few there is a way in
Along the passages that become narrower and narrower,
That leads to the chamber too low to stand up in,
Where the breathe condenses to the cold
And locationless cloud we call truth.
It is where I think.

R.S. Thomas

[vmax4steve]

If I may ask vmax4steve, what do you do for a living?

I found these posts on OCD very interesting as it came to my mind that I too used to count steps and do many of the other above mentioned things...

Seems Sidd and I can open a club. Can we count you in too?

My job is irrelavent, it's not what identifies me, it's menial and it simply pays the bills.
It took me quite a while to get out mooneyy so please don't invite me to go back in. :nightmare:

[Sidd]

Thanks Vmax. I had read these verses (Khalil Gibran) years ago but never thought these would relate to me in that sense Thanks for all the help again.

I went in yesterday for snooker and thought to myself to forget about everything and just relax and play blaming all things/rituals in a way to be the creation of my OCPD. I played like a mess I was a mess and a laughing stock ... everything sort of dismantled... but i know this might take some time to settle down ... i also changed my tip last night before playing.. it should not be a big factor but who knows... just a couple of 50 odd and a 67 and being in quarter finals of three tournaments at the club level does not make me a high class player anyway so i shall try to learn to take it easy... !

Went for a long half ball and would hit three quarters...that bad... total bad play. the only good thing was the start really when i put on the new tip and played the first frame I got a 37 and was happy that things would be good. But that turned out to be my first and last good play yesterday.

i need to cool things off firstly.