Let’s think together about the how the mind is set up in a person with OCD. OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Let’s describe these words in a more people-centered, less clinical way. When someone is hopelessly over-focused on something, thinking in circles, unable to quiet the mind, we might say they are obsessed. Don’t confuse obsessing and thinking. Thinking is more dynamic and goes in all directions, starbursts, straight lines, layers. Obsessing covers the same territory over and over again in the same way. So why do we do it? Excellent question.
- It’s a way to thin out overwhelming feeling. People who are dealing with too much feeling can sometimes try to think their way out of it.
- It’s a way to feel safe. Because of it’s sameness, the obsessed person knows what will happen next.
- We live in a social world that values thinking and doing otherwise known as productivity.
So obsessions promise to soothe, to protect and to feel worthy during the process. No wonder we might do it. Think about the child who might use this mechanism. He’s on his own using what he has (his mind) to help himself out of a perhaps scary, upsetting, overwhelming experience. Although I admire his pluck and his attempts to soothe himself and raise his self esteem, I experience this little guy as lonely. I’m in touch with the empty space and who is not present and I bet there’s a story there.
On to compulsive. Doing with a have-to attached. People are propelled forward by the task at hand. This makes for excellent workers and every successful person has a bit of this. However, if a person is in a can’t stop place, who is in charge?
Which brings us to the taskmaster. This part of the personality wields almost too much power: it demands work and productivity beyond human abilities and limits. People who are driven this way are prone to outbursts. The human, feeling, limited side (one does occasionally need to sleep or eat or watch a movie) has very little voice in what happens next until the needs are extreme. Then loudness happens. “Why can’t you just” happens. “No one understands” happens. Because it becomes clear that others are not all organized this way and can make room for fun and play and sex and silliness and creativity. And envy is real and it has a potty mouth.
What this person doesn’t yet know, is that feelings are processed in the body and mind in relationship. We need another mind. Not all the time. We can solve things on our own too. But the paradigm of the other who does understand both the need to work and the need to rest is essential to even out the power struggle inside between the feeling body and the doing and thinking mind.
