OCD: What Happens When We Don't Stick to the Facts

You're driving in a tunnel. The only two outbound lanes of traffic are both congested, but you're moving along at a good clip, say 40 mph. You see brake lights a few cars ahead of you. What do you do?

A) Nothing.
B) Watch the car in front of you to see when he applies his brakes.
C) Slam on your breaks, bringing your car to an immediate stop.

Now you're taking a walk. Your leg starts to hurt. What do you do?

A) Nothing--continue your walk.
B) Turn around and head home--you probably strained it.
C) Go home immediately and drive to the emergency room--it's probably knee cancer.

In the first question, what if you had slammed on the brakes? You would have crashed, causing a massive pile-up who knows how long, closing the tunnel for the rest of the afternoon until the accident could be cleaned up.

That's the what part of the question...here's the why: The reason for slamming on the brakes in the first situation would have been a misinterpretation of the facts. It's mistakenly following the logic of "brakelights mean stop." Black and white. (Or Red.) But really, seeing brakelights a few cars ahead more likely means that that car is slowing down. If that car is far enough ahead, you may not even need to take your foot off the gas!

I've said in another post that my brain doesn't often operate using linear thinking. The one inopportune time it does, though, is when I'm thinking like this, below:

The first line is a fact. The rest are interpretations of that fact, improper conclusions which are drawn from the prior conclusions, or unclear memories that I can't even confirm happened.

Fact: On Tuesday I walked my dog.
2. I put flea treatment on him a few days before Tuesday.
3. A little girl petted my dog.
4. I think I remember her petting him where the flea treatment was.
5. That little girl is going to put her fingers in her mouth.
6. She is going to get sick.
7. Her sickness will cause her to die.
8. I will be sued.
9. I will not be able to forgive myself.

Can you see where my logic fails? It happens in the space between nearly every so-called conclusion I make. By the end I've "concluded" myself into a scary situation, spiking my anxiety. If my OCD is bad enough at the time, I'll fixate on it and send myself into a deep depression.

When you find yourself thinking like this, don't jump to false conclusions. Think about the facts, and only the facts, if you want to live well with OCD.

Don't slam on your brakes.

OCD and Embracing the Grey Areas

I realized something this week about my OCD that I've never noticed before. I'm uncomfortable with grey areas.

It's true in so many ways: I fear that I've done something wrong, and strive to always do right. I'm obsessed with knowing; not knowing is bad, and knowing is good. I want to know that something either will never happen, because the only other option is that it absolutely will. (I'm over-simplifying in every example, but at the core of nearly every issue is tension between extremes.)

If, after assessing each issue in question I fall on the less-desirable side of the grey, I have to do whatever it takes to traverse the expanse. When I can't, I'm wracked by anxiety. If I've done something wrong, I have to apologize and try to make it right. Sometimes I even try to reverse what I've done. If I don't know something, I feel guilty out of some obligation to know. And we all know what happens when a person with OCD has trouble with the uncertainty that a worst fear may come true.

To further complicate things, I'm impatient. I can't wait to decide that something falls on one side of the grey area or the other.

This impatience comes out in the real world, too (vs. the world of fear inside). Say I'm waiting for a boss to make a decision. Is he going to decide that we're going to take this job, or not? If we are then I have to start working right away because the deadline is approaching. If not then I can do other work. I'm either all in, or I'm moving on.

There's a responsibility issue all wrapped up in this, too. Something is either all my fault, or I'm 100% in the clear. Say I'm driving to work. I see a man coming out of the woods. What if he just got done burying a body? If I don't say something then when the murder is uncovered, the death will be all my fault.

I thought about it wonderment and asked why this hasn't come to me sooner; it would be the perfect exposure to practice in my GOAL group, but I'm not even sure I know how to approach it.

People aren't all good or all bad. There is such thing as only half getting it. The very antidote to fear is living in the grey area. Any ideas for helping me see that?

~~~~~~~

If you have any ideas for exposures to tackle the discomfort of grey areas, post them here! If you don't know what an exposure is or are new to OCD and ERP, a good place to start is wikipedia, with the search term "exposure and response prevention."