Jump to content

Difficulty in articulating obsessions?


Recommended Posts

Apologies; this has developed into quite a long and involved post!

I know people say that everyone thinks their OCD is unique, but I think mine takes this to a particular extreme. I think this is because I hate the idea of being obsessed with something meaningless, and so my OCD takes particularly meaningless thoughts and makes an issue out of them, making things particularly difficult by me then not being sure about what exactly has bothered me.

As an example, I was driving earlier today and saw a vehicle on the road that I was thinking about telling my friend about (by email). I started imagining in my head what I would write, and was considering whether it would seem pedantic to write out the full vehicle designation rather than its colloquial name. I then started thinking it was odd how adding a few extra letters to an email could make it automatically pedantic, and got the oh-so-familiar feeling of OCD-unease, which made me wonder what had sparked the feeling. I couldn’t tell if it was my feeling that ‘being pedantic’ was somehow linked to something absolute, such as the exact number of letters written, or if it was the idea that as an abstract idea ‘being pedantic’ might bring up different ideas/associations in two different minds (suspect it was the latter, as I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently thinking about ‘subjectivity’). It’s weird and frustrating now, as it bugs me not to be able to clearly remember what it was that bothered me, and therefore not to be able to reassure myself that what I was thinking was rational.

As another couple of weird examples; I was watching a film about some footballers who were playing football in a park in London. As I was watching it, I felt like knowing they were in London put me in a particular mood, or frame of mind, almost as though I was watching the film and at the same time ascribing a load of pre-existing feelings about London onto it. I then started trying to picture the scene but imagine that it was somewhere else in the UK, to figure out how that would affect my feelings about it. As you might expect, this required quite a lot of concentration, but no real answers. This is something that has irked me a few times before – when I think of a particular time or place and it gives me a particular feeling, which could be positive or negative, and it feels as though my perceptions and outlook at the time were all quite unique and un-definable. I can fully accept that at different times of my life I have had different perspectives and outlooks on the world, but I feel as though there is something more to what I felt that I can’t quite put my finger on or explain, which bothers me immensely!

My other example, which is somewhat similar, is that while sitting in a meeting a few days ago, which was going well, I had a sudden thought that while a successful meeting was a reason to be happy for the people in the room, the universe as a whole was completely indifferent to its success or failure, and that I was finding a reason to be happy that had no basis in an objective reality. So far, so philosophical. Depressing as the thought might be, I can state that idea and I think anyone in the world would understand what I mean by it. However, this thought didn’t come in such a logical reasoned manner; I had at the same time a whole host of other swirling thoughts, one of which being something along the lines of whether the universe is a generally positive or generally indifferent place being dependent on whether there is a God, and wondering whether the thought that feeling like there is meaning to life / that one ought to be happy requires what you are doing (i.e. having a successful meeting) to have an external observer (an omnipotent God) who can register and ‘validate’ that success.

I almost feel that my brain picks moments when I feel I need to concentrate, such as in meetings, and chooses then to massively overstate the importance of some tangential thought knowing that it will distract and fluster me to try and concentrate on two things at once. Having said that, my previous example of a weird thought came to me when driving a familiar route, which I don’t find particularly stressful (though obviously paying attention when driving is important!)

As a final thought / question; I’m much like most ‘pure O’ OCD sufferers in that I tend to ruminate endlessly about things in order to frame them in my mind in a way that I am happy with. However, a lot of the time, and especially lately, with my more abstract and hard-to-articulate thoughts, I tend to find that my mind almost willfully rejects thinking clearly about a problem, or remembering it clearly, while simultaneously keeping it there as a mental itch. I find that I can remember being bothered by things, but my mind actively tries to push me away from thinking about them directly, while simultaneously telling me that they were very important. All in all, not a particularly enjoyable experience!

Link to comment

It's just OCD. The disorder latches onto something insignificant, blows it's importance all out of proportion, which makes you want to find the answer/solve the problem through analyzing and ruminating. Of course there is no answer or solution so you can ruminate endlessly fir no reason.

What you need to learn is to let these types of thoughts go. Stop trying to answer them. Stop trying to solve them. Leave them alone and let them wither and die.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...