Pointless Musings: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Most of you people don't know me, but I'm a pretty type A guy. I have always been so. As a result of that, I have also always been somewhat obsessive compulsive. This got a whole lot worse after a car accident that scrambled my brain for a while at the end of law school, although it's still pretty rare. My obsessive compulsions are usually pretty simple, things like checking to make sure doors are locked and windows are closed and parking brakes are on, etc. I get caught in these "feedback loops" where I check things out over and over and over and waste a lot of time. Usually I can break out of the loop after 2 or three iterations, but sometimes it's almost autistic..., I'll run back to my car 15 times to see that the parking brake is on, I'll go back up the stairs for half an hour to make sure that the door is closed. These things are worst when I'm stressed out or busy, which makes me more stressed out or busy because I spend a half hour making sure my shoes are lined up perfectly, or all the hangars in the closet face the same way, or no edges on paper stick out of a stack... Think the guy in Rain Man. It's usually an infrequent problem and never a common one.
Anyway, you do the repeated behaviors because you get this non-specific dread of bad things happening. "I can't remember if my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I should check to see if the door is locked. [check] [walk away] I need to make sure my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I can't remember if my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I should check to see if the door is locked." [check] [walk away] [repeat].
I was making my 6th trip up the stairs this morning to make sure my door was closed (I live in a house with a 2y/o, and I have been under a bit of career-related stress lately, hence the worsening problem), and I started thinking objectively about the sensation. The closest I can get to describing it is to say, imagine you had 2,347,981 breaths allocated to you in life, and you just breathed your 2,347,981st. You are now going to die. Not necessarily by suffocation, or oxygen-debt, or whatever, and your functioning will continue unabated until that instant where you die, which you can't exactly predict but you are definitely going to die in the near future, and there's something you need to make sure gets done before then. Regardless of what building is burning down around you, or what state of dress you are in, or how inconvenient it is, you are singularly focused on that one thing you have to do. That's an obsessive compulsion. Objectively, it's pretty cool. When you've spent 10 minutes checking your parking brake, it really sucks.
Anyway, you do the repeated behaviors because you get this non-specific dread of bad things happening. "I can't remember if my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I should check to see if the door is locked. [check] [walk away] I need to make sure my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I can't remember if my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I should check to see if the door is locked." [check] [walk away] [repeat].
I was making my 6th trip up the stairs this morning to make sure my door was closed (I live in a house with a 2y/o, and I have been under a bit of career-related stress lately, hence the worsening problem), and I started thinking objectively about the sensation. The closest I can get to describing it is to say, imagine you had 2,347,981 breaths allocated to you in life, and you just breathed your 2,347,981st. You are now going to die. Not necessarily by suffocation, or oxygen-debt, or whatever, and your functioning will continue unabated until that instant where you die, which you can't exactly predict but you are definitely going to die in the near future, and there's something you need to make sure gets done before then. Regardless of what building is burning down around you, or what state of dress you are in, or how inconvenient it is, you are singularly focused on that one thing you have to do. That's an obsessive compulsion. Objectively, it's pretty cool. When you've spent 10 minutes checking your parking brake, it really sucks.
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