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OCD Ruining My Game at Chess Tournament


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Hello, yesterday OCD ruined one of my games at a chess tournament. I started out playing well and got a winning position, but then OCD took over and I started playing like a different person. It all started when about half way through the game, a spectator who I am familiar with came to watch. When he first stood by the board, I wasn't sure who it was because he was standing at a 90 degree angle from me while I was sitting down, and all I could see was his waist when I turned my head. I would have needed to turn my head 90 degrees to the left and look up to be able to see who it was for sure. I'll call him "spectator" here.

This particular spectator is always almost overly friendly with people. He's in his early/mid 30s, a couple years younger than me. About a year and a half ago he actually asked me if I wanted to go into the real estate sales business with him, but I ended up declining. Other people that I've talked to said that his whole politeness is just a fake, and one of my friends told me they didn't trust him. A month or two ago he got into a controversy which people in the local chess scene have been talking about. He was at the chess where club he had been talking to some of his students, while the other man was talking with someone else at the same time. So, they had been interrupting each other's conversations. It became a nasty shouting mach which ended in spectator pushing the older man who flew like ten feet and into a wall. The older man wasn't injured, but I thought it was pretty cowardly and disgusting of him to push someone in their sixties, even if they were being annoying.

Back to the tournament game I was playing, I was worried that if I did turn my head to look at him, he'd interpret it as a sign that he was distracting me, and by looking at him I am telling him to go away. That caused me anxiety, especially after what he did to the older man. I was curious, though, to see if it was him, so, instead of just turning 90 degrees to look at him, I turned my head 180 degrees, pretending like I really wanted to see what was happening with the games going on behind me, but then as I was rotating my head back, I caught a glimpse of him and saw it was him. Then I started to obsess even more that to him it may have seemed cowardly that I just couldn't look directly at him, and had to pretend to be looking elsewhere. Now I felt that he, like a shark smelling blood, would potentially be even more aggressive towards me in the future. Although he's never done anything directly to me, he was kind of abrupt with me and my opponent after the game rushing us to report our result so the next round could begin.

I no longer could concentrate on my game after seeing him. I felt like the only way I could stop obsessing would be for him to come back to my board so I could look directly at him this time instead of pretending to look elsewhere. I feel like I wont be able to play well again unless the situation is re-created where this time I act braver.

The stakes for me were high on that game, I ended up loosing from a winning position and my opponent went on to win the tournament. Had I won, I would have reached my 25 year old goal of becoming a chess master. If I'm lucky, I could still become one in a month or so (assuming this ocd spell ends), but it could potentially take years more and is not guaranteed to happen at all. I don't want to quit now after putting this much time into it. I've quit before and come back to it, but then it takes me even more time to get back to the level I was.

I really don't see any importance for me to even turn my head and look at him at all. Had I never known for sure whether it was him watching my game or not, my life would not have changed. Now I feel like I need to correct the fact that I pretended to look somewhere else instead of at him. If I am playing a game in the future and he comes to watch, should I look directly at him? Would that be a compulsion because I'm trying to "correct" things, or would it be a compulsion to not look at him at all because then I'd be engaging in "avoidance"? This all may sound minor but I'm so confused and feel down about myself right now that I have this illness that is preventing my progress.

Thank you.

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1 hour ago, NoahsArk said:

. If I am playing a game in the future and he comes to watch, should I look directly at him?

I am not sure this is the right question to ask.  You are asking how to deal with a specific obsession/compulsion but, the question I would be suggesting is a better one to ask is "what can I do to eradicate my OCD so that it doesn't intrude on my chest playing"?

 

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Thank you Ashley and Polar Bear. It makes sense that I should be looking at the broader issue, and not whether or not to look at him. OCD has consistently interfered with my goals and values. I used to have ocd issues about taking a test in school. Fortunately I was able to overcome those for the most part. With tests I would start to have confidence just by telling myself that I prepared, and because I prepared I'd be fine. Doing well in chess also involves preparing and obtaining knowledge. Unfortunately though, for my ocd, in chess there is someone sitting across from you. Now that I think of it, one of my previous posts was about fearing that my opponent would use a weapon on me if I won lol. I got support on this forum for that which really helped. Now it's about a particular spectator:)

Is it possible to overcome this by just not doing anything about it at all (i.e. not caring whether next time I look at him or not), and just strictly focusing on the game itself? I can't count the number of games I've lost because of OCD and having obsessions during the game- some of which are totally unrelated to chess itself. For example, there've been times where during the game I spent a lot of time trying to remember something totally insignificant and irrelevant. From my experience I know that I'm my most difficult opponent when it comes to excelling.

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