It's incredibly hard to talk about having a mental illness without coming across all self-pity/woe-is-me, not least because there are always people far worse off. For each one of us who exists in self-imposed exile for a while because we can't face the world, there's someone else who has boiled their eyeballs with a blowtorch or tried to saw off their own head with a bread knife in a fit of suicidal rage. Be that as it may, it's my blog so I can talk about whatever I want.
I'm Monk. I am Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. I'm not a master detective or a creepy elderly uncle whom everyone says is still attractive but really isn't anymore, but I do have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. As diagnosed by a doctor and a clinical psychologist, as opposed to WebMD or Wikipedia.
OCD is a funny thing. On the surface it's a comical personality quirk that has you checking switches and locks forty-odd times a day. The deeper you go, though, the stranger it gets. People tend to think OCD is related to neatness, a fear of germs, a phobia about getting burgled, and so on. But washing your hands after doing something to make them dirty (I know what you're like) isn't obsessive, it's just sensible. People don't realise the spectacularly bendy logic that goes on in the head of someone whose brain has been put in upside down. They're not checking they locked the back door for the 19th time because they're worried they didn't the other 18 times and someone will come in and steal all their cutlery to sell in a terribly uninteresting car boot sale - they're worried that their not checking the door is locked the "correct" number of times will affect how good or bad their day is. It's magic.
Magical thinking runs through the OCD-afflicted's brain like a river of sewage. Ever see someone avoid sets of drains or cracks in the pavement? Sometimes in great, embarrassing strides? If you've walked anywhere with me you have. Don't step on three drains in a row, don't step on the invisible lines that shoot off from the corners of certain squares of concrete - anything that suggests a pattern or a cluster must be avoided. Why? Because all sorts could happen. It's an unpredictable world out there and there must be some way to control it. Apparently a person's trivial day-to-day actions dictate whether or not someone they know is killed. By lightning. Or whether a dragon will materialise from the air and burn down their house, doing no favours for the surrounding area's property values.
It's frustrating for someone who tries to apply logic to everything to have part of their brain be so illogical that it's shameful to explain the details of a problem, especially when that part is so powerful that it influences the way they act. It doesn't keep to itself like a polite person in a lift, it permeates every level of them until it dictates everything they do, like an impolite person farting in a lift. This is where things have the potential to get sinister, which is not a word people associate with OCD. The disorder is something of a joker in the pack of mental defect playing cards.
Obsessively flicking switches and feeling a bit sick about having left the heating on are things anyone can cope with, but left to its own devices the disorder can mean that you're doing the same thing with thoughts themselves. Your brain gets caught up in itself like someone with braces struggling to chew bubblegum. A person left with the disorder unchecked can get so lost in their own head that they become an empty outline of themselves floating about in a daze because they're too self-absorbed to realise what's going on. They won't sleep and they'll forget to eat, or at least neither of those things will seem as important as keeping an eye on their thoughts in case the bad ones creep in.
Bad thoughts are a big deal. Have you tried to not think about something? Try not thinking about umbrellas right now. Go ahead.
What was the first thing you thought of? Don't be a smart arse, it was an umbrella. It might have just been one, it might have been several, but they were there, as soon as you tried not to think about them. This isn't me expertly messing with your head like a much less talented Derren Brown - this is the exact reaction anyone with a functioning brain will have. Now try it again, but with something truly horrible. Like waking up to find Eammon Holmes looming over you in your bed.
You'll have forgotten about it soon enough, probably seconds after you finish reading this (if you've made it this far, that is - if so, well done!), but someone with OCD will fixate on an unpleasant thought because it got a reaction from some other area of their mind. The bigger the reaction, the more of an emergency it feels like. Instead of letting it drift away like leaves on a river pleasantly floating downstream, they will try an actively eliminate it, to deliberatley not think about it or think an opposite thing. I don't know what the opposite of Eammon Holmes is, but, as you've just seen, it's impossible to force yourself to unthink a thing. In the same way someone with OCD reassures themselves that a plug is off by turning the switch back on, then off again, they will repeatedly try to expunge an unwanted thought. Over and over and over, just making it come back stronger. And so the snake swallows its own tail.
There are ways to train yourself in dealing with OCD. The big cheese among them is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), developed by Dr. Aaron Beck. The specific element of CBT used in teaching someone to live with OCD is exposure therapy - exposing yourself (lol) to something your disorder finds unpleasant, whether it's leaving switches on when you leave the house or imagining someone being sick on your pizza, without indulging in the associated coping mechanism (going back and checking the plugs, trying not to think of pizza sick) and forcing yourself to deal with it until your brain gets bored and forgets about it - which does actually work, despite being incredibly hard. It sounds counterintuitive, like teaching someone broken glass is sharp by making them eat it, but in the right circumstances it's very effective. Granted, in some situations it's not sensible - if you feel a germy phobia about touching a crusty seat in a public toilet it's probably not best to get on your knees on the piss-damp tiles and lick it, but if you find yourself feeling nervous about the number 13 then the more you deliberately do things 13 times, without doing anything afterwards to remedy it, the less you'll care.
The downer on all of this is that there's no cure. Like most brain problems it's a chronic, recurring illness. Whenever a certain obsessive/compulsive cycle is defeated, something else will replace it eventually. Everything the affected person does will always be influenced, if not totally dictated, by the back-and-forth, to me-to you, Chuckle Brothers relationship they have with the broken bit of their gray matter. A lot of the time it's just white noise buzzing away in the back of your mind, but sometimes it might mean you're a bit quiet because you're too busy ruminating, it might mean you get stuck in a loop and can't leave the house when you need to. It can be extremely easy to handle, or it can quietly and insidiously take over. The best thing to do is embrace it - to acknowledge it and make a joke of it until the brain gets bored of it. I mean, you're bored of reading about it now, aren't you? Exactly. That's how exposure therapy works.
I'm Monk. I am Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. I'm not a master detective or a creepy elderly uncle whom everyone says is still attractive but really isn't anymore, but I do have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. As diagnosed by a doctor and a clinical psychologist, as opposed to WebMD or Wikipedia.
OCD is a funny thing. On the surface it's a comical personality quirk that has you checking switches and locks forty-odd times a day. The deeper you go, though, the stranger it gets. People tend to think OCD is related to neatness, a fear of germs, a phobia about getting burgled, and so on. But washing your hands after doing something to make them dirty (I know what you're like) isn't obsessive, it's just sensible. People don't realise the spectacularly bendy logic that goes on in the head of someone whose brain has been put in upside down. They're not checking they locked the back door for the 19th time because they're worried they didn't the other 18 times and someone will come in and steal all their cutlery to sell in a terribly uninteresting car boot sale - they're worried that their not checking the door is locked the "correct" number of times will affect how good or bad their day is. It's magic.
Magical thinking runs through the OCD-afflicted's brain like a river of sewage. Ever see someone avoid sets of drains or cracks in the pavement? Sometimes in great, embarrassing strides? If you've walked anywhere with me you have. Don't step on three drains in a row, don't step on the invisible lines that shoot off from the corners of certain squares of concrete - anything that suggests a pattern or a cluster must be avoided. Why? Because all sorts could happen. It's an unpredictable world out there and there must be some way to control it. Apparently a person's trivial day-to-day actions dictate whether or not someone they know is killed. By lightning. Or whether a dragon will materialise from the air and burn down their house, doing no favours for the surrounding area's property values.
It's frustrating for someone who tries to apply logic to everything to have part of their brain be so illogical that it's shameful to explain the details of a problem, especially when that part is so powerful that it influences the way they act. It doesn't keep to itself like a polite person in a lift, it permeates every level of them until it dictates everything they do, like an impolite person farting in a lift. This is where things have the potential to get sinister, which is not a word people associate with OCD. The disorder is something of a joker in the pack of mental defect playing cards.
Obsessively flicking switches and feeling a bit sick about having left the heating on are things anyone can cope with, but left to its own devices the disorder can mean that you're doing the same thing with thoughts themselves. Your brain gets caught up in itself like someone with braces struggling to chew bubblegum. A person left with the disorder unchecked can get so lost in their own head that they become an empty outline of themselves floating about in a daze because they're too self-absorbed to realise what's going on. They won't sleep and they'll forget to eat, or at least neither of those things will seem as important as keeping an eye on their thoughts in case the bad ones creep in.
Bad thoughts are a big deal. Have you tried to not think about something? Try not thinking about umbrellas right now. Go ahead.
What was the first thing you thought of? Don't be a smart arse, it was an umbrella. It might have just been one, it might have been several, but they were there, as soon as you tried not to think about them. This isn't me expertly messing with your head like a much less talented Derren Brown - this is the exact reaction anyone with a functioning brain will have. Now try it again, but with something truly horrible. Like waking up to find Eammon Holmes looming over you in your bed.
You'll have forgotten about it soon enough, probably seconds after you finish reading this (if you've made it this far, that is - if so, well done!), but someone with OCD will fixate on an unpleasant thought because it got a reaction from some other area of their mind. The bigger the reaction, the more of an emergency it feels like. Instead of letting it drift away like leaves on a river pleasantly floating downstream, they will try an actively eliminate it, to deliberatley not think about it or think an opposite thing. I don't know what the opposite of Eammon Holmes is, but, as you've just seen, it's impossible to force yourself to unthink a thing. In the same way someone with OCD reassures themselves that a plug is off by turning the switch back on, then off again, they will repeatedly try to expunge an unwanted thought. Over and over and over, just making it come back stronger. And so the snake swallows its own tail.
There are ways to train yourself in dealing with OCD. The big cheese among them is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), developed by Dr. Aaron Beck. The specific element of CBT used in teaching someone to live with OCD is exposure therapy - exposing yourself (lol) to something your disorder finds unpleasant, whether it's leaving switches on when you leave the house or imagining someone being sick on your pizza, without indulging in the associated coping mechanism (going back and checking the plugs, trying not to think of pizza sick) and forcing yourself to deal with it until your brain gets bored and forgets about it - which does actually work, despite being incredibly hard. It sounds counterintuitive, like teaching someone broken glass is sharp by making them eat it, but in the right circumstances it's very effective. Granted, in some situations it's not sensible - if you feel a germy phobia about touching a crusty seat in a public toilet it's probably not best to get on your knees on the piss-damp tiles and lick it, but if you find yourself feeling nervous about the number 13 then the more you deliberately do things 13 times, without doing anything afterwards to remedy it, the less you'll care.
The downer on all of this is that there's no cure. Like most brain problems it's a chronic, recurring illness. Whenever a certain obsessive/compulsive cycle is defeated, something else will replace it eventually. Everything the affected person does will always be influenced, if not totally dictated, by the back-and-forth, to me-to you, Chuckle Brothers relationship they have with the broken bit of their gray matter. A lot of the time it's just white noise buzzing away in the back of your mind, but sometimes it might mean you're a bit quiet because you're too busy ruminating, it might mean you get stuck in a loop and can't leave the house when you need to. It can be extremely easy to handle, or it can quietly and insidiously take over. The best thing to do is embrace it - to acknowledge it and make a joke of it until the brain gets bored of it. I mean, you're bored of reading about it now, aren't you? Exactly. That's how exposure therapy works.