Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

The hallmark of OCD is an action that promises release from a strain. This can manifest in a broad range of “compulsions” that offer a “release”—ranging from the compulsion to steal, to the compulsion to give, but usually involves something to clean or organize. A mental disorder is only a disorder when it affects your ability to function to a clinically significant level, which applies to very few people, but… since it affects the quality of life for pretty much all of us, it is important to understand the root of it.

The question of how well we see, could be answered by a measurement like 20/20. This means that what you see at 20 feet is the same as the average person… in determining what letter is on a paper. Anything more complicated than what is on the eye chart, E, F, P, T,O,Z etc, is definitely not going to be the same as the average person, and not like anyone else in the world. This is because we see mostly just what we know to look for, and what we know to look for is determined by what we stumbled into or were taught to see.

Why is this important?

If we all have basically the same eyes but se different things, it is because we have sensitized our mind to notice certain things. This is why something might be the most poignant thing in a room to you, meanwhile I might not even see it. The more sensitized we become at looking for something, the more likely we are to think we see it when it’s not actually there.

In seventh grade we watched a movie in biology class about the bacteria E. coli, and it freaked me out so bad. I had just enough knowledge to be very scared, and just enough to think of things I could do to prepare against it. When I was nineteen, I was a missionary in Tijuana, Mexico… Which the particular places I was, were a germ-freak’s worst nightmare. There we dead dogs rotting in the street, and a lot of other similarly “germ-infested” things. That experience made me choose between losing my sanity, or just letting the germ-freak mentality go. I figured that if I hadn’t died yet after every germ I was exposed to the first several months, that nothing like that was going to take me down… more than temporary diarrhea and cold sweats.  

It wasn’t till getting a degree in biochemistry, and then finishing medical school that I really had enough knowledge to know what actually I should protect myself against and how. I realized that you would get sick less from eating right and not stressing, than compulsively washing your hands. Seriously, the stress hormone cortisol shuts off your immune system, and not even a hazmat suite all day is going to protect you then. Yes, of course, wash your hands after using the restroom, and probably before you eat, but that’s more than enough.

Wouldn’t we notice at some point, maybe when our hands start to bleed that we don’t need to wash our hands yet another time? Wouldn’t we notice when the hundredth person says that we are OCD about our house being clean that maybe it’s true?

It’s because the hands and house are symbols of other things. I am not talking about dream analysis, I mean that they are mere scapegoats… but scapegoats for what?

Is there someone in your life that you just want to tell them something, but can’t find a way to be assertive enough without crossing any lines or having it at some point get thrown back in your face?

Yes, that person who just popped up in your mind, they are the source of your OCD… but why would overly asserting ourselves on something else help us in any way?

Making a habit of being a ‘push-over’ couldn’t possibly be a good thing, right? And we test medicines and whatnot on mice before humans, and so if that applies, then it would make sense to try some assertiveness out. And lastly, if the compulsion indirectly helps in any way, we likely feel we need all the indirect help we can get.

Is it really that simple? No, those are all very complex things. The last of the three I think in most cases is the biggest cause. We can usually handle our problems when at our best, but when surprises come, even the simplest, that can sometimes be enough to bring us to our knees.

I don’t wear a purse, but I’m sure it could be the same, because I know if I were a paramedic or EMT, that I would want my first aid bag to be very neat and clean. How much time would we save in those critical times, when time seems to be what we need?

Crisis situations demand that we be assertive, and if we have experience to show that assertiveness won’t work or won’t be worth it, even just the anticipation that a crisis will come, might be more than we can handle.

We have probably experienced just how much assertiveness of ours a person can take, and found it to be very low, but there is no limit to how much we can assert ourselves on inanimate objects… in fact, we are usually praised for it. This assertion on things instead of people also seems to have the added benefit of eliminating possible criticism by doing things to perfection.

Whether we handle it well or not, the tendencies to OCD are in all of us, and I don’t know we can get them all the way out, but we can all improve our quality of life, and we won’t know how much it will improve until we try.

One thing that helps, is learning to speak your mind and express how you feel. It’s a lifelong journey to figure out when, how much and what to say, but that doesn’t mean we have to wait until we perfectly can, we have to trust that the goodness in people will motivate others to give us a break. Thinking that our friends or even people in general expect perfection in order to appreciate us is not putting a lot of confidence in our friends or humanity.

Yes, not everyone may want to hear our opinion, but we won’t know who will and who won’t if we don’t try.

Think about whatever you may be OCD about, and now imagine that you are in a zombie apocalypse constantly being chased, would you still have time to do it?

The answer would probably be “no,” which means that chaotic or not, you could probably use some excitement in your life. I could probably take a guess at why there already isn’t as much excitement in your life as possible—it likely is because your dream is blocked by someone that you can’t seem to work with or work around. It would be worthwhile to write out your dreams and aspirations, and make sure they all only depend on you. It is great when someone joins us on something we are doing, but it shouldn’t depend on them. There are people in our lives, parents, co-workers, bosses, that it would be nice to have validation from, but it just shouldn’t be a direct or indirect goal.

Also, each action we do should have some sort of expectation from it, preferably the more meaningful and logical the better. If we have already washed our hands once, what do we logically or meaningfully hope happens if we wash them again? If we just want to be distracted from the person we can’t be assertive with, there are a lot of better distractions than washing your hands again.

It would also be good to learn to do something new, and writing about the experience, specifically the things about the journey that were enjoyed not the outcome. Write about what things along that journey we incidentally find by mistake fumbling our way through. It would help to have a friend join in the process, but isn’t absolutely necessary. Since what reinforces the tendency of OCD is being results oriented, look for things to complement in others and yourself that aren’t results oriented, and compliment them. Be so busy doing meaningful and logical things that you don’t have time for anything else.

We should plan our life full of meaningful and logical things, so that we can be compelled by love and not a promise of “release.” We should be excited for some many other things than cleaning or whatever it might be. Don’t make planning your new OCD, make sure you let the exciting things worth changing your plans for happen when they do. Look for logic and meaning and you will be compelled daily by awe… that is worth obsessing about.