OCD, depression, freedom, vertigo, existentialism

I mentioned before I have undiagnosed OCD which presents quite a mental challenge.

We begin with doubts. For most people they are abstract doubts to do with identity. Am I made to be a doctor, does this job suit me, do I really love my partner, am I good person etc. Depression really helps to fuel self doubts and when we want to hurt ourselves self-doubt is an excellent tool. I really am worthless, no-body likes me, what is the use in my life.

But this is all pretty abstract. At the end of the day the sun still rises and I will find some food somewhere. What more really do I need.

But no! the brain is not done with us yet. Depression probably stems from lack of freedom. Someone we love does not love us back, the job we wanted goes to someone else, we see someone with the life we want and we can't seem to get it our self. In some way we seem powerless to step up and become that person or be that person we either want or feel we should be. One quick step is to shut down and let it go. This is a good step, time to reflect, but it closes our energy down.

So we are frustrated by life. Dukkha they call it in Buddhism. Discontent with the way things are. Desires that are not met; indeed desires are unforgiving masters. This is not our failure, but a deep feature of "unenlightened" life where "unenlightened" simply means those who have not fixed this problem yet... which is pretty much everyone.

There is something else lurking around the corner. Frustrated by lack of freedom we begin to lose perspective on our freedom and action. A friend who does not have OCD told me once that as a kid in a block of flats with the window open he suddenly felt like jumping out of the window, and there was nothing to stop him. His brother said he had experienced the same. But they grew out of it. The problem with OCD is that things which are probably abstract to others like jumping out of a window suddenly become real possibilities. Like standing on a cliff edge and realising that one false step and we fall to our deaths, a sudden panic of freedom fills us, and a fascination: I really could just fall it is that simple. Ironically this becomes an abstract battle, because if we stop panicking and look clearly we can see we don't really want to fall. If we wanted to fall we would not be panicking. But it doesn't help OCD. The panic shuts our brain down, the doubts topple everything and we no longer know what we want. After the panic has gone we then spend the following years checking all the time obsessively to see if we really did want to fall, and we deeply embed this idea that maybe we wanted to fall. Constant checking and self doubt seeps right through us like a revoltion over turning everything.

I am reminded of Sartre and the existentialists obsessing over freedom and the fear that realising that right now we could do absolutely anything completey fills them. Perhaps they had OCD! I think also in a moment of quite reflection we realise that we don't have that much freedom. Hitler killed 12 million people, and the world seems to have shrugged it off and carried on anyway. What we really can do is complex, many think with enough hard work they'll become world famous singers. As Simon Cowell is always trying to remind people, probably not unless you are lucky enough to have considerable talent to start with. Not that hard work isn't needed, but if someone with no talent does 10,000 hours of training they won't be in the same place as someone with starting talent doing the same. I say this only to relax the OCD sufferer with fears over their freedom. Pushing someone in front of a train, or shouting out during a classical music concert are some of my fears. They are the last things I want to do (I think ;-) there's the doubt), but because I could do these things, I feel the fear.

The LA OCD centre says that brain scans of people experiencing OCD show that the spinning doubt and struggle which feels so real, is actually in a different part of the brain to the action centres. When someone goes to do something that part of the brain fires up first, and the frontal-cortex and "high" stuff fires next. If we are going to stop ourselves from doing something then it works this way around. In OCD we go to stop ourselves when we don't even have the initial impulse. But that's not how it looks. We feel like we are struggling with a real urge. (The solution eventually, when we regain the strength to beat OCD, is to stop struggling and just the feared urge come forward. Then we see that there is nothing there. But while doubt and fear is there, and constant checking, we can't do this clearly.) It's the amygdala firing off our fear response that sends the brain into a panic, shuts down high control centres and goes into defence mode. In defence mode we are reacting to a perceived fear, that we don't realise is actually invented by us. Yes I can jump out of the window, but I am safe. We forget we are safe, and get obsessed with jumping out of the window. I myself am the danger, and I get afraid of myself.

As I discovered in the Summer meditate on the fact you are safe. This is rule 1. Then meditate to shut down the narrative: the I can jump out of the window. Just shut it down and think about something else - takes time and practice. This is rule 2. Then feel the fear, cos it isn't that easy to beat, but feel it safely now, and feel as much as you can: really take it on. With narratives shut down, fear does not become "I am going to do it" it is just fear, just a feeling. This is rule 3. And rule 4 is feel the suffering of everyone who has this problem, take that suffering onto yourself and try to empty the bucket of OCD suffering not just for yourself but for everyone.

Its a shame that tackling OCD hasn't given me deep existential insights into freedom. It is rather that struggling with OCD and struggling with "freedom" have both carried me forward.

p.s. OCD is usually associated with much simpler checking behavior. I've had them all from cleaning to being unsure I've switched lights off, to being unsure I killed someone the night before, to feeling responsible for a piece of glass I moved off the pavement, etc etc. In every case however we go into a checking behaviour that cannot be satisfied. I want to be sure that 'x' is true. Even with the room gone black, I still have no proof that the lights are off. I switch them on to be sure, and off again, but its still not 100% sure. It is like Descartes doubting everything. An obsessive desire for perfection and unobtainable certainty is the problem. With cleaning it came to a head when trying to arrange the contents of a box, which needed to be put back on a shelf. Each time I put it on the shelf I could not be sure I had not upset the contents.I tried again and again to find satisfactory certainty that the box was still tidy inside. Eventaually realising that perfection was impossible th whole project of tidying became worthless and after 6 months of this strong desire I threw everything on the floor in a mess. Job done. No more interest in perfection... till next time.