Do you wash your hands 10...20..40 times a day? Do you count till 20 before you go out of your house every single time?Do you check whether your cupboard is locked at least 20 times in an hour?
Is your answer to any of the above questions a yes? Is it a long-standing habit or an obsession / compulsion? Let's explore when to say no to a long standing habit before it turns into a nightmarish obsession / compulsion.
To begin with let's first understand what an obsession or compulsion essentially means:
* Obsession: Obsessions are involuntary, seemingly uncontrollable thoughts, images, or impulses that occur over and over again in your mind. You don’t want to have these ideas but you can’t stop them. Unfortunately, these obsessive thoughts are often disturbing and distracting. Obsessions typically cause stress and in order to alleviate that stress we engage in a behaviour. Since relieving of stress is a pleasurable experience we end up performing a behaviour every time in response to the stress which ultimately gives rise to a compulsion.
*Compulsions: These are behaviors or rituals that you feel driven to act out again and again. Usually, compulsions are performed in an attempt to make obsessions go away. For example, if you’re afraid of contamination, you might develop elaborate cleaning rituals. However, the relief never lasts. In fact, the obsessive thoughts usually come back stronger. And the compulsive behaviours often end up causing anxiety themselves as they become more demanding and time-consuming.
Just because one has obsessive thoughts or performs compulsive behaviors does NOT mean that one has obsessive-compulsive disorder. With OCD, these thoughts and behaviors cause tremendous distress, take up a lot of time, and interfere with one's daily life and relationships. (A diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder is given only & only if an obsession or compulsion or both are present in accordance with the the diagnostic criteria mentioned in the DSM 5)
Some of the most commonly seen compulsions / obsessions are:
- Cleaning (contamination obsession & cleaning compulsion);
- Symmetry ( symmetry obsessions & repeating, counting & ordering compulsion);
- Forbidden or taboo thoughts (e.g., aggressive, sexual or religious obsessions and related compulsions)
- Harm (fear of harm to oneself or others & checking compulsions)
- A tendency to hoard items of no apparent use as a response to a specific obsession. (Source: DSM - 5)
After having understood what an obsession or compulsion means, let's try to differentiate between a healthy habit and a compulsion (with its underlying obsession). For this we take a few examples:
The first is that of hand washing.
We all wash our hands before & after our meals, after using the loo, etc. This behaviour is by far considered healthy and has been shown to have positive effects in our life. So, I use the loo, wash my hands and am done with it. But what if, I wash my hands 10 times after flushing the toilet and am still not convinced that they are clean. And while am busy cleaning my hands till I feel satisfied with the work done, my children are waiting anxiously for me so that they can go to school, after all they are running late. Or what if I keep cleaning my hands with the soap, a scrubber and other such cleansing agents even after blood starts showing through the cracks that developed in my palms, after all I have been cleaning them since the past 45 mins non-stop?
In the above example, when I engage in a normal healthy act of washing my hand once that will
be considered a good habit. But in the second case wherein I do the same hand washing behaviour innumerable times, at the expense of other things that are causing serious difficulties in my life or those involved in my life as well as causing me physical dismay and I still am not able to stop the behaviour that's a compulsion. This cleaning compulsion could have been driven by a persistent thought (obsession) about getting contaminated from flushing the toilet.
Let's take a second example of counting till 10.
So for instance, you count till ten in your mind when you are leaving for work. It started as just a random thing. One fine day you felt like counting. The next day, the thought again came to you and you counted till 10 just before you left for work and so every day after this you continued to count. Is this harmful? Why would it be? After all you are just counting a few numbers before you begin your day, it's not eating up your time and gives you the mental satisfaction of having done something in a routine.
Then one fine day you forget to count and you coincidentally had a bad day at work. Instantly you assume that since you forgot to count in the morning, your day turning into a nightmare is related to that. So now ritualistically you count every morning, slowly you start counting before every important task you do and eventually it takes over a considerable amount of your time and you end up spending almost half your waking time in indulging in the counting behaviour. Now this is a compulsion which is slowly taking hold of your life and actions.
In both the above examples, I have tried to reiterate the fact that a pattern of behaviour or thoughts is considered healthy and should be kept as a habit if that behaviour brings about a positive change in your life, does not cause any social or occupational difficulty and finally does not end up binding you. On the other side, a thought or behaviour pattern that is disruptive, time consuming, exacts an adverse impact on your social, mental, occupational, physical well-being or results in magical / wishful thinking, then may be its time to cut down on that habit and seek professional help if needed.
5 steps to get rid of a compulsion / obsession / habit:
1. First and foremost seek professional help. It's most important that if you are suffering from an obsession or a compulsion you get to the bottom of it straightaway and seek therapeutic assistance.
2. Admit you have a habit you want to get rid of. Ask yourself questions such as why a particular habit is bad, what's holding you back from getting rid of the habit, etc. Gaining more perspective into your habits is likely to help you get rid of it.
3. Refocus your attention. Whenever you are experiencing obsessive thoughts or more simply an intense urge to do something, try shifting your attention to something else like go for a jog, listen music, etc., just to delay the performance of the compulsive behaviour. It's likely to reduce the urge to perform the act.
4. Think and act in slow motion: Select a behaviour, for example, hand washing; slow down your thinking and physical movements while performing the behaviour, pause at several points to take a calming breath and let go of tensions; & finally when you do feel ready stop performing the task completely and tolerate the stress that follows.
5. Prepare a journal. Take some time out and write a journal wherein you can write about that one specific habit that you want to get rid of, how is it affecting your life, on a specific date how did it eat through your time which you could have used otherwise and the like. You can also make a journal record for an obsessive thought or compulsion in a similar manner.
Remember, if a habit is pulling you down in any way, may be its time to take a second, have a look at it and stop it before it starts ruling your life.
(Article first published in Evescape: November 2013 as Obsessions & Compulsions: Say no to a long standing habit.)
No comments:
Post a Comment