Did you wash your hands enough times? Is your morning alarm clock set for exactly 7:14 am? Have you forgotten to check if you turned off your oven an even number of times? Do you need to make sure you didn’t accidentally run over that stranger with your car again? Are there monsters under your bed because you stepped on a crack in the sidewalk? Can you make sure your mom isn’t dying of cancer because you gave her a hug while wearing the wrong color shirt?
Are you sick of orchestrating a complex solar system of choices that orbit around your neuroses? Are you tired of being in control?
Great. Because you’re not. And you never were.
These intrusive ideas and habits are our mind’s way of believing we are in charge. If you can’t control when you fall asleep at night, maybe that fear turns into setting an oddly specific alarm clock time. Maybe setting that exact time helps you believe that if you simply organize things “just so”, then you CAN fall asleep whenever you choose. If you can’t stop calling your ex, maybe washing every single object he touches will “clean” him out of your life and create the boundary you can’t set. If you count just right, you can prevent your loved ones from dying. If you tidy your house perfectly before your trip, the plane won’t crash. If you act precisely, you can create order in a chaotic, unpredictable world.
The Formula of False Control
Every single obsessive thought and compulsive behavior follows the exact same formula:
Overwhelming emotion + need for control = a need to rationalize the experience
In order to survive, we humans must feel safe and capable. That’s why a majority of us believe we’re smarter than average, even though not all of us can be. That’s why we’re prone to believing in a higher power after remembering our mortality. That’s why we develop strange patterns of behavior after experiencing an uncontrollable event or fearing an event will occur.
The Mask of Magical Thinking
We trick ourselves into believing we are greater than we really are because the alternative is simply too scary. Our brain assigns terrifying emotions to neat, little, neurotic numbers or pairs abstract fears with concrete actions. Of course, these tangible responses are simply bandaids. If you mask your existential dread with an organized system, you never need to face reality. But at best, this magical thinking (read more about magical thinking and OCD) is fluff to make us feel better. At worst, these superstitions can impair our day-to-day functioning, impact our quality of living, and become crippling.
1. You Are Not In Control
So what’s the solution? Shattering the illusion of control and feeling the pain of those shards.
Remember that each time you give into an obsessive thought or behavior, you’re reinforcing the false notion that things can always go your way. Or worse, that you’re always responsible for the way things are. By allowing yourself that temporary relief from anxiety, you’re rewarding your brain for its fabrications. And thus, the lies you tell yourself grow more and more true.
2. Life is Uncertain
Additionally, you must sit with the discomfort of uncertainty and trust that you will be safe.
Yes, you are not in control. But that doesn’t have to mean there’s an imminent threat. Perhaps at one point, you were in danger and you were helpless. But sit and ask yourself: are you truly unsafe now? Is there an emergency? Most likely, there isn’t. Or the stressor that is present is not life-threatening. If, after assessing your current situation, you realize you are in harm’s way, please access the resources you need to feel safe. But know that your OCD habits will not save you.
3. You Are Insignificant
Finally, the answer is embracing your insignificance.
In the grand scheme of life, we are absolutely minuscule. Think of your home. Now think of the neighborhood your home exists within. Zoom out a bit more to consider your state or province. Your state or province is housed within a nation, which belongs to a continent. Each continent is part of the planet earth. Earth is just one planet within our solar system. And our solar system’s sun is merely one of the 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy. And our galaxy is just one of the billions of galaxies in the universe.
Can you picture yourself in all of this? You are just one of the 7.7 billion people known to take up space in this large, strange world. You are merely one of the neurotic ants running around among all the other neurotic ants. You are one of the specs of dust, brought to life for a very brief moment before returning to dust.
In the words of Carl Sagan, we are “just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting round a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.”
Blaise Pascal mused, “when I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the little space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me…”
The lesson here is that your smallness means your worries are even smaller. Finding comfort in obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors is a very egocentric approach. YOUR actions are the answer. YOU are in control. But the reality is that you are a tiny gear in a massive machine. The more you see things in perspective, the less effective or comforting your neurotic patterns and OCD habits will appear. Perhaps this is why studies show that students who study abroad score lower on the trait of "neuroticism" in The Big Five personality test. When stepping back and looking at the world, all the things that felt big suddenly appear trivial. Most of the time, they are.
I’ll end with a poem I wrote about OCD (1/15 begins here), as well as a quote from Charles Bukowski:
“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
You Are Safe
So what does it matter if you counted to seven?
You can’t prevent life from happening to you. You can’t prevent death from happening to you. You can hardly drink a coffee without spilling it on yourself.
You Are Safe,
Brainwave Blog ❤️
REFERENCES
“A Quote by Charles Bukowski.” Goodreads, Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/64329-we-re-all-going-to-die-all-of-us-what-a
Heck, Patrick R et al. “65% of Americans believe they are above average in intelligence: Results of two nationally representative surveys.” PloS one vol. 13,7 e0200103. 3 Jul. 2018, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0200103 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6029792/
Kahane, Guy. “Our Cosmic Insignificance.” Nous (Detroit, Mich.) vol. 48,4 (2014): 745-772. doi:10.1111/nous.12030 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340547/
“Magical Thinking.” Magical Thinking - an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/magical-thinking
Niehoff, Esther, Linn Petersdotter, and Philipp Alexander Freund. "International sojourn experience and personality development: Selection and socialization effects of studying abroad and the Big Five." Personality and Individual Differences 112 (2017): 55-61.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188691730123X
“Solar System, Galaxy, Universe: What's the Difference?” NASA, NASA, https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/news-display.cfm?News_ID=573
Wojtkowiak, Joanna, and Bastiaan T. Rutjens. "The postself and terror management theory: Reflecting on after death identity buffers existential threat." The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 21.2 (2011): 137-144. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10508619.2011.557008