OCD is a wiley thing...
On doing the "just right" thing, moral scrupulosity, and coming to terms with fear.
OCD pops up in all sorts of places and often lives in our minds for decades before we recognize it for what it is.
I remember needing words to be “just right.” Hearing “it’s going to be fine” wouldn’t calm the itch in my brain - I needed to hear “everything will be okay.” I would ask my partner to rephrase things so I could hear the words in just the right way. My partner would look at me with confusion and generally refuse, because no one likes to be controlled. (Btw, this is the right response.)
A few years later I met with a young woman who begged her mom to say something that wasn’t true. Her mom said no, and the young woman had a complete meltdown. The daughter didn’t need the words because of the meaning - she needed to hear them said in exactly the way she was requesting, and her whole body was panicking and desperate to hear exactly the right words, said in exactly the right way.
My fingers are spinning again, doing this in the air version of cats cradle when I’m alone. I used to think it was an autistic stim, but I’ve learned it’s part of my “Just Right” OCD. Just Right OCD is a subtype of OCD. My fingers must complete the rotation, and pause at exactly the completion point, and the movements must be symmetrical. I catch myself doing it and have to pretty much sit on my hands to stop it, the tension growing and my arms almost twisting underneath me as I breathe and tell myself to stop.
During sessions I see the curtain is not quite even with the window frame and I’m desperate to interrupt the speaker so I can adjust it.
Prayers, too. The childhood ending to every prayer was the same in the religion I was raised in, and it cycles through my mind on a loop. I’m afraid to stop midway through, fearing punishment from above, and also not completing something.
The prayer piece, btw, is a subtype of OCD called moral scrupulosity.
Moral scrupulosity is a big part of my life. The endless criticisms of people on social media amplified it. I learned that there were countless mistakes I could be making, and on social media, critiques often take a moralistic tone.
For example, Starbucks. It’s the only place that’s open this early, but guilt washes over me because of (insert reasons here: labor practices, how are the cows treated who produce the milk, the amount of packaging).
The man at the adjacent table is older and studying basic geometry. He looks slightly unkempt. Is he going back to college? Will he be able to get a job with his education? Is he lonely? How are his finances now?
Worry about his well being is perhaps something people would consider a level of sensitivity to other people’s feelings, but I don’t know him, I don’t need to intervene in his life to fix any imagined situation.
But this level of concern exists for almost every person I’ve ever met, particularly if they have any level of vulnerability, and in many cases - especially in my younger years - propelled me to completely unreasonable efforts to fix things.
This constant sensitivity to other people’s needs, combined with moral scrupulosity, created a guiding principle that ruled my life. Anything other than my bare survival was available to anyone else who needed what I had.
It wasn’t wrong, exactly…but it created problems, and confusion. And I didn’t understand giving at that level was a compulsive behavior that prevented me from stabilizing my own life.
Food for cats in Greece, a cow for a woman in Kenya, and those are just tiny examples- for the people and animals I encountered in my daily life, it was everything from my coat to my rent money.
This constant internal shifting, moving, negotiating, always a level of unrest and trying to fix everything and make everything “just right” and moral and ethical and… oh. It is so exhausting.
Every purchase of a box of cereal is a series of mental calculations about the morality of it.
The way you handle OCD: you stop. You catch yourself, and you stop.
You stop praying in the middle, you sit on your hands with the movement incomplete. You let the distress build and build and then slowly quiet and fade.
And then OCD picks a new obsession and compulsion...
Am I telling the truth because I said I slept five hours, when it was five hours and eleven minutes?
If I don't pick up this piece of litter, will a bird try to eat it or will other people be more likely to throw litter on the ground?
And what OCD is, underneath it all, is a gigantic fear structure.
The world is unsafe, and scary, and - often with OCD - has been from a very early age.
Your brain began to believe that you could be safe if only you did the right thing. And in my case, I could also keep other people safe if I did the right thing. The perfect thing.
Read books instead of watched TV. Cleaned instead of rested. Was perfectly kind, compassionate, honest and self-sacrificing at all times.
And combined with a tendency to see other people’s pain, to feel it, that fear structure and associated compulsions dictate a person’s life.
For other people, OCD exploits other vulnerabilities. It might be rules around food, cleaning. It might be intrusive thoughts about things they would never, ever want to do and compulsive behaviors to ensure those thoughts never become reality.
OCD exists in a person’s body as a way of trying to make an unsafe and unmanageable world safe and manageable, but that’s not possible.
I can’t keep myself or anyone else safe. The perfect thoughts, words and actions are no guarantee. There’s no way to ensure safety.
Accepting vulnerability and stopping the compulsive attempts to ensure safety are at the core of stopping OCD from running my life.
In a clinic setting, it’s delivered in a structured manner as exposure therapy.
In day to day life, it’s a knot in my stomach and drinking coffee from Starbucks in a paper cup. Which is way more complicated than it may look like from the outside. If you're looking for support in understanding yourself and building a life that works for you, fill out our contact page and we'll match you with a provider. We do not provide OCD focused therapy, but we are happy to refer you to people who do or to talk about how coaching can compliment therapy.
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