At Some Point in Time Your OCD was a Solution to a Problem

It is a reaction. It is your younger mind’s best shot at solving a traumatic problem.

For me the narrative is as follows: I was 18 years-old. A hole had been drilled through the top of my tibia to pull my knee down from my hip and straighten out my mangled leg using a 40 pound pulley. Besides being in agonizing pain from multiple fractures, I had to suffer the humiliation of not being able to get out of traction and the hospital bed to go to a bathroom. I was not in control. My cleanliness and safety depended 100% on other people at the end of red button to bring me a bed pan.

I believe that my mind said, “This is awful. I am not in control. I cannot even perform basic bodily functions without calling for help. This is humiliating. There’s no privacy. I am never going to let this happen again.”

Later I began to notice symptoms diagnosable as OCD: repeatedly checking door locks, adamantly believing I left the stove on, overzealously cleaning, highly intense organization and labeling of files, paying all bills as soon as they were received and well in advance (830/850 credit score — yippee!) etc. in general, being a control freak (in your humble opinion) and having an obsession with fierce independence yet not even trusting my own ability to maintain order. Somewhat and regularly discombobulating. Frantic. Frenetic.

From all of my academic studies over the past 35 years I feel confident in stating that the past does not exist, no longer exists. There may be photos, memories, videos, audio recordings, sketches, but that week 35 years ago when I was physically incapacitated has not existed for a long time. In fact, today I attended a boxing class, then walked to the sauna, then went for a swim, then rode my Vespa home: not possible for someone immobile in a hospital bed.

And yet, the defense mechanisms that my mind created to try to stave off another incapacitating situation incapacitated me in sundry ways for many years. Or at least pissed off many friends who had to wait in the street while I checked my stove and front door lock again and again. (On the other hand, my landlord in Paris didn’t seem terribly dismayed when I paid my rent two years in advance.)

When patients come into my office complaining about similar compulsive behaviors or obsessional thoughts, I ask them to assume a meditative posture and then we gently walk their minds backwards until they find when these “solutions” first appeared.

Then we discuss what was going in the patient’s life at that time and find anything that a young mind might find traumatic — parents’ divorce, a betrayal, an abandonment, a fall, the death of a loved one, a supposed failure, a humiliation, a car accident, a loss — and discuss all of the feelings around the event.

Then we temporarily secure a narrative (all narratives are dynamic, constantly in flux — you and your mind recount stories about the same incident differently over time) about the origin of the obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Then I ask a series of absurd, rhetorical questions unequivocally proving that the event and subsequent trauma are long gone and the younger mind’s “solutions” are now trying to solve a problem that no longer exists.

Finally we create a phrase or mantra that the patient employs whenever the thoughts or behaviors rear their loving heads.

Because at some point in time, these thoughts and behaviors were your young mind’s solution to a problem.

To learn more, you can check out my online courses here.