I have read in my OCD book that you should give a name to your OCD. I had unwittingly done this when I was a teenager, I called him Jack. Jack used to beat me up in my mind, quite savagely, when I made mistakes. It was bloody and viscious imagery. I've also called it "the Beast". After I watched Legends of the Fall I called it "the Madness", then after I had gotten therapy I began referring to it as "the Sickness" when it would come.
It's been a difficult relationship with the Beast. When I was in the hospital for my second stay I thought of a lot of vivid imagery whenever thinking of the anger (which I now know to have been fear) locked up inside of me. I saw the Beast when I dreamed. When I thought on it and tried to understand the Beast, a very very angry Beast, I saw him suddenly protecting a small, scared, little child. I thought, then, that I understood the Beast and I began to have compassion for him. He was misunderstood. He was only trying to protect me. My anger was trying to protect me from hurt that I had felt.
I figured through therapy, as I worked out my issues, the Beast would fade, or at least come to peace, for the child would be healed and no longer need protecting. But the Beast lied. He didn't go away. In fact, the more I tried to be rid of him, the stronger he got. Now it makes sense, the more one fights with OCD, the more one gives it power.
I began to see my OCD, even before I knew that's what it was, as a great dragon, with wings outstretched, breathing fire at me. I felt I had to fight this dragon to be rid of it, but again that only gave it power. Through understanding OCD I began to understand I had to let the dragon be, I had to let it attack me and survive it for it to go away. Alas, brain quirks die slowly, and the dragon still attacks, but I do feels power has been greatly diminished. I feel it's fire around me and have to remember it can only hurt me if I choose to believe in it.
As I continue to lessen the effects of my OCD it affords me more time for my Bible studies, something I used to dread because of the obsessions it would send me on, and I've begun to realize one term I heard used to describe OCD is true, "Imp of the Mind." My mother used to call me an imp, referring to one of it's definitions as being a mischevious child. But there is another definition for it, one more applicable to OCD, "a small devil." I think this is accurate. I wonder now if my having OCD and being a mischevious child are in any way related.
Whatever it is I am doing my OCD pulls the other way. If I am with my children I have horrible vision of them being harmed or my doing something accidentally to have harmed them. If I'm with my clients at work the same thing happens. If I'm studying the Bible I have impulses to leave the faith and work what is evil. If I have a knife I have images of being stabbed with it. If I am with my wife I have intrusive thoughts about being with someone else. Whatever it is I do my OCD does the opposite. In this respect I think a certain name becomes applicable for OCD, Satan. The name Satan means, after all, "Resistor". Whenever I hear good news or learn something positive there is in the back of my mind the OCD asking, "Is it really so?", or, "How can you be sure?" Interestingly, the OCD never asks these questions about terrible things that happen.
I have read and come to know that psychoanalysing OCD is a dangerous thing to do. It lends credence to the obsessions. Some questions shouldn't be answered, and OCD asks a lot of them. I can remember bad experiences in my childhood that I could see fueling the OCD, or maybe even causing it (getting the snowball rolling, as it were) and have made the mistake of thinking that if I could heal that memory the OCD would go away. But I was falling into the trap of the Resistor, by scratching the itch I made it worse. And it explains why I was so stubborn as a child, so rigid. No answer satisfies my OCD. When I feel offended no apology makes the obsessive thoughts go away. When I feel I have wronged others no apology I can give makes me feel forgiven. It is insatiable. The Beast may have been created to protect the child me, but it became my tormentor, far worse than what it was supposed to protect me from.
I now realize whatever started the snowball of OCD has nothing to do with the net result now. This is at the same time a relief and a bitter pill to swallow. As with the real Devil, who tempts us by pulling our attention away from God, so OCD tempts my attention away from my entire life. The only control we have in life, and it can be limited, is our control over our mind. Jesus said he conquered the world, not by dominating it, but by not letting it change his thinking, his attitude. I am learning so it is with OCD. I can't dominate it or control it, I have to resist it from controlling my mind. Some days this is easier than others, and it still hits me like a big wave sometimes. But there's nothing I can do about that. All I can do is continue to resist answering it, resist trying to solve it, resist it completely.
I regret now a lot of things I have done in my life, a lot of times I have hurt people obliviously, or worse, intentionally. My OCD doesn't want me to be forgiven, or to forgive others. Worse, it makes me doubt my own intentions. At times, when I bump into someone accidentally, I can feel it say "You did that on purpose," and I begin to worry that I did, even though I know I didn't. It has been a terrible lie to live with. My own mind has betrayed me. However difficult I have been to live with and deal with I can only say I understand what it must have been like because the same stubborness and struggle has been going on in my head. I remember when I was young I used to say "I talk so much because it's the only time my brain shuts up." That can still be true at times.
2 comments:
Interesting view from within. One comment reminded me of a scene from one if the Indiana Jones movies where he had to accept with blind faith and step out into this air. Of course movie magic provided a pathway carved from stone and painted to imply depth.
I can also relate to the story of an inner monster protecting me, as I had a dream as a child that I crawled into a tree to escape my monster, who inturn crawled into a tree to hide from an even bigger monster out side at night.
Another thing this makes me think of is a relaxation device that makes a high pitched sound the more tense a person is. Bio-feedback? Not sure if that is the name or not.
After reading all that you wrote it makes me wonder what small things a parent could do to help a young child learn early to deal with their ODC?
The whole subject is mind boggling.
It is like Indiana Jones. Although I think what feels like blind faith isn't really blind, it just feels that way. Something gave Indiana a reason to go against everything his senses where telling him, and I've had to do that with OCD, to take the chance and ignore overwhelming feelings as being nothing of importance. While taking that chance meant being so scared I was throwing up almost every morning, something compelled me to stick with it, if nothing else a sense that doing what I had been doing wasn't working.
I think I realize now that monster has to be lived with or it just gets handed on to someone else. I've always feared physical violence but I realize now how much of a bully I have been with my mouth, and I've come to realize not all bullies think they are bullies. It's taken me nearly 30 years to realize returning evil for evil really doesn't work. Not that I hadn't been told this, but I've been blinded by fear.
I don't know what could have been done. I know a lot of things that didn't help, both my doing and others, but removing them wouldn't have made the OCD go away. There are child therapists who deal with the subject, which I believe is basically the same as what you have to do as an adult but made simpler for children to understand. But I've come to realize the problem was bigger than any of us. Even now that I know all this, when it hits it's very hard for me to not fall back into patterns of blame and guilt, black and white. So if it's this hard to deal with now...
As Marcus Auralius said, accept everything that happens, no matter how unpleasant. Wishing OCD would go away doesn't make it happen, it only makes it worse.
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