Chronic OCD is a name given to one of the most distressing forms of mental illness: obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD sufferers are constantly ruining and investigating: a poisonous gas is seeping into the house, a sharp knife may have been left out in the kitchen and could be seized on by an intruder, there’s something inappropriate they might have looked at online a while back and the police might be on their way, their skin may be ageing prematurely and they need to look in the mirror constantly to learn more.
There is no point in merely reassuring someone in these situations. No matter how many times you show the patient that no gas is flowing, knives are locked away, they haven’t done anything bad online, and they aren’t physically disintegrating, it doesn’t work (though one might do it for a bit anyway, just to be nice).
This is due to the fact that the true source of terror is elsewhere. OCD is a paranoid reaction to a traumatic event in one’s past that has been projected into the present. As a result, the case can only be solved by a dedicated team of investigators. The fear of gas poisoning may have its roots in a depressed mother who appeared to want to asphyxiate us as children; the dread of a sharp knife may reflect an unacknowledged fury at a caregiver who let us down appallingly. It’s possible that a fear of arrest is linked to a sense of inadequacy in one’s family of birth. The fear of ageing may be a result of a parent’s jealousy of their child’s success. As if on cue, fear has manifested itself in bizarre, almost poetic ways, leaving one with only the protective shell of the animal.
Because of our minds’ predilections, we may believe that our terror stems solely from the gas tap or that dimpled look on his face, and nothing more. Protesters should be sceptical, if only because solving one problem without investigating its root causes will only serve to spread it elsewhere. We must return to the source of dread and drain it thoroughly. As soon as a person remembers their original injury, locates it, separates themselves from modern anxieties, the world will feel safe again.
OCD sufferers may be surprised to learn that they may be able to return to a normal life once they have re-learned the traumatic event that shook their foundations and spawned the subsequent obsessions.
