OCD: Most Focus on the Compulsion

Not the Obsession.

Self reflection. Personal Growth. Growing from faith to faith… and strength to strength. Components of Self-Discovery all.

We just got done with a storied trip to the top of a mountain. Know what?

Not much grows there.

Where do things grow?

In the valley. And sometimes those lofty mountain tops blanket the valley in a heavy shadow.

Talking with my youngest son about personal improvement he agreed with me that most people don’t improve because they do not, or are incapable of, taking an honest look at themselves and understand that “they” are the problem.

When I’m feeling bad nowadays I have learned how to “reverse engineer” my recent past and take a short trip back to a recent time where I felt “better.”

Then sifting through the different things that transpired recently in order to spot where I went off the rails.

I’ve discussed my discovery of dealing with my personal OCD in past articles and have mentioned that it manifests itself in a common behavior associated with it of having to “touch” or “double check” components, doors, clamps, set ups, numbers, tags etc. etc. multiple times, usually three times, in order for me to feel “ok” and to move on. Currently it “helps” because of the nature of my work requiring precision and it’s required to double check stuff.

That is the “compulsion” component of OCD. It is the “visible” outward act that helps to alleviate the “hidden” inner “anxiety,” and it is that hidden anxiety that “floods” your mind causing the “obsessive” obsessiveness of the disorder.

Then when we realize what we are suffering from we conclude that we are… “broken,” “crazy” “in need of fixing.”

This then, I have found, only compounds our hidden, inner anxiety and helps to perpetuate the perpetual motion machine of our spiraling, negative thinking, coming from our inner thoughts producer, where ever a thought comes from is anybodies guess, we just know they get trapped in our mind somehow and can cause us pain.

So we want to fix it… but we don’t know how, don’t have health insurance, don’t have money for counseling… and so to alleviate the stress we resort to mental rituals and routines to help ourselves.

I thought the noticeable “compulsion” was the problem, Turns out I’m the problem, it’s me, I’m the one “obsessing” I’m the one who has a “hidden anxiety” so… what am I truly obsessing over?

Ready?

I still feel “unworthy” and “dirty” and “broken” because my mind will “obsess” about the wrong things. Then I tell myself, “that’s not me, I don’t want that!”

Then my old demons whisper, “Then why are you thinking about it?”

And then the attack ensues.

There is a quote used by modern day manly websites, attributed to a Navy Seal, but comes from an ancient Greek poet Archilochos, it goes…

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

For me that means I lose that mental battle every time… my training only goes so far.

It reminds me of the fights I got into as a kid. I always got the first good one in… but that’s all I had. I didn’t know any more than that because I never learned more than that. Probably a good thing though. They would end with the other kid just grabbing me and us wrestling around… because they didn’t know nuthin’ either.

Knowing. Understanding… something. Really knowing shines a light on an issue.

Gods word does that.

I thought my mind was broken. It’s not. Look at the Bible, Hebrews 3:1…

“Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.”

You see our minds are not “broken” even though they feel like it.

What do I mean by that?

Well, take another look at that verse.

If we are capable of “fixing” our thoughts on Jesus then our minds are capable of being “obsessed” or “fixed” onto one thing… it may be negative OR positive. But IT HAS THE CAPABILITY TO DO SO.

If you ever read any self help book they all promote using your mind to create a clear picture of the life you want, the more focused, the more obsessed, the more clearly you are able to set that picture the more likely you will be able to perform the steps to attain that picture.

The most recent mental battle I had was heavy… and interesting.

I’ve come to learn about “thought process interrupters.”

A thought process interrupter is anything that “breaks” the broken record thought process you currently suffer from. They can be a splash of cold water to the face, you can do jumping jacks, you can get up and go for a walk… but if your stuck… like at work… what do you do?

I have a confession… this last episode of mine… the only thing I could do was fight fire with fire… I started singing in my head, as I continued to work, the song… “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. (I know, weird. Kinda funny, but… yeah, weird.)

I’ve known about “thought process interrupters” for awhile but haven’t learned how to incorporate them on a consistent basis. This last episode though exposed the two facts of…

1. thought process interrupters work
2. it’s me, I don’t know where the thought comes from but I do know my old demons wait for an opportune time to exploit them to my detriment.

My personal training with the word of God has to ramp up a notch, just like with my boxing skills. If need be today I have a good four punch combo I learned working the heavy bag (the left hook is a little weak… sshhh, don’t tell anybody) and with my relationship with God I want to take Him more literally, at His word, in order for me to learn, to know, to trust Him more.

Learning things like…

Revelation 12:10

“Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ.”