Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is marked by obsessive thoughts that repeat, over and over — against the individual’s wishes — and are only relieved by a compulsive behavior.
The really nasty part is that the fear is only temporarily relieved by the compulsive behavior. You feel better for a second, but in fact, you’ve just reinforced the problem by doing the compulsive thing and getting brief comfort from it.
I’ve had OCD, in some form or another, for decades.
My obsessions have changed, some have increased my productivity, others have practically debilitated me, and the only consistency is that the obsessions lead to a place where the one thing you want to get away from — your mind — is the only thing you can’t escape.
Soon after my dad passed away, I was sitting at my desk, working, and my 1 year old son came crawling around the corner, smiling, right up to my desk.
He knew exactly where I was, and that’s why he was smiling, and he knew that I would put him in my lap, and that’s why he crawled to my desk.
Suddenly, the thought hit me — what if I died, and my son came crawling around the corner, looking for me, and I wasn’t in my chair? He wouldn’t understand anything except not seeing me. And he would crawl through the whole house and I wouldn’t be behind any corner.
That morbid thought fueled about 6 months of obsession over my health and the idea that I might die on my son. I wrote him birthday letters for every year that I would be dead, so that he would never have to go a birthday without his dad.
I googled every possible health issue, I have about 300 bookmarks from WebMd, the Mayo Clinic, Healthline, Drugs.com, and every discussion board out there. And that’s not including my cell phone home screen. I couldn’t even find my camera icon for awhile.
“Nothing else really matters,” I thought, “except staying alive for my son, so he always has a chair to crawl to.”
The obsession was staying alive for my son, the compulsion was googling or writing my son “letters from my grave.” I felt better for a few seconds, then terrible again, and had to write to make things momentarily better.
I was miserable. And both rational and irrational. Nearly everyone with OCD knows, at some point or another, that their obsessions are irrational. But the more you want out, the more you get pulled in.
It’s like saying, “I will not think about polar bears, I will not think about polar bears.” Well, what are you thinking of?
In fact, one of the truest principles is that the more someone with OCD fixates on “fixing” their obsession, the stronger the obsession becomes.
That’s why hours of earnest prayer about your obsession itself can be dicey. “Lord, please help me not think about polar bears! Please, please, take my mind off polar bears!” Pray that for two hours, and you’ll still be in the Arctic Circle.
Now I want to talk about a spiritual aspect to OCD, but first, it’s important to bring up a few scientific studies, because they complement that perspective.
Stanford University notes that we’re getting clearer evidence that OCD is a biological disease, and functional brain imaging studies are giving us a much clearer picture of what goes on in the OCD brain.
“It is thought that in people with OCD, the basal ganglia is unable to filter the messages and sends out wrong signals to the thalamus located at the top of the brain stem. When the thalamus receives a wrong signal, it becomes hyperactive and sends back strong signals to the prefrontal cortex via the loop.
The prefrontal cortex reacts to these signals by increasing compulsive behavior and anxiety.”
And indeed, results of neurosurgical treatment support that idea.
“Surgical interruption of this loop by means of cingulotomy, anterior capsulotomy or subcaudate tractotomy brings about symptomatic improvement in a large proportion of patients unresponsive to all other treatments.”
So that’s the neuroanatomy.
Then there’s a neurochemistry component, with improper seratonin levels being one of the likely culprits. In fact, the efficacy of SSRI’s in many cases of OCD suggests just such a mechanism.
A recent, fascinating study comes from the University of Cambridge, which shows just how poorly brains with OCD adapt to, well, reality. Particularly, when it comes to fear.
People with and without OCD were shown two angry faces. One face was associated with an electric shock, while the other wasn’t. Both groups responded with appropriate fear to the face associated with the electric shock.
Then, the investigators reversed the stimuli. They linked up the electric shock to the “safe face”, and withdrew it from the “unsafe face.” Healthy people’s brains were able to re-learn and adjust to what was unsafe. And they now correctly judged which face was safe. On the other hand, those with OCD were unable to distinguish between the safe and unsafe.
Instead, they now saw both faces as unsafe.
Why?
“Unlike in healthy participants, there was no signal from the OCD patients’ ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain area that normally signals safety.”
So you can see the problem. Someone with OCD has trouble appropriately adjusting their sense of fear based on new information.
Instead, the thing that was fearful and has now been proven safe — well, it remains scary.
And this fear isn’t a choice. It’s an inability for the brain to adjust to new information about threats.
The authors conclude:
“An avenue for improving future treatment for OCD would be to explore better learning in patients that not performing compulsive safety behaviours is truly safe. This could be achieved by boosting rewards in therapy for not performing safety behaviour or possibly with the help of certain drugs that can enhance the positive experience of not having to perform the compulsions.”
Now in the face of all this, doctors have given me this message — an irrational sense of fear will always accompany my obsession du jour (or for me, obsession du mois).
My brain will probably have it no way otherwise.
For many of us, uncertainty is the fundamental tributary into our obsessions and, ultimately, our fears.
That’s why some measure of certainty from our compulsion relieves us, but never changes us.
OCD is closely-related to anxiety, because anxiety is about uncertainty, as well.
Think about the things that make you anxious. Isn’t there some measure of uncertainty involved in every single one?
So what do we do about uncertainty? We could think about God’s sovereignty, but in a way, that’s about trying to squelch uncertainty, and for a brain with OCD “trying to squelch” will lead to “magnifying massively.”
Instead of trying to squelch uncertainty, it’s best to learn how to live with it.
I was reading John 6 a few weeks ago, and something struck me.
Christ’s miracles in the Gospels often involve an instantaneous reduction of uncertainty.
For example, a blind man is begging for mercy, and Jesus turns around and heals him (Luke 18). A woman touches Christ’s clothes and she’s immediately healed (Luke 8).
But there’s another miracle that demanded much more of the beneficiaries.
In John 6, when the disciples are in their boat, and the storm gets all stormy, Jesus comes, walking on water, and what doesn’t he do? He doesn’t immediately calm the storm. Instead of giving instant relief, he asks the disciples to live with uncertainty a bit longer.
Why?
Of course, it’s perilous to read into the Son of God’s mind, but I wonder if it’s because of a consistent theme in the Bible – that the closer we get to Him, the more he demands of our faith. The disciples were far closer to the Lord than the lame or blind, they had seen his miracles, they knew him better.
So here’s my big question for you – have you ever thought that maybe the Lord is asking you to live with uncertainty for a longer time because of your deep friendship with him?
That instead of it being a sign that he’s abandoned you, that you’re actually quite close?
That’s not the way I instinctively view the cross of uncertainty.
When God doesn’t resolve my uncertainty, I implicitly take it as a sign that he’s distanced himself from me. And so do many who suffer.
But in reality, it could be the opposite. Uncertainty might mean you’re closer to him than ever.
That’s a hopeful thought — that this uncertainty could be a sign of friendship, not distance. But if you’re like me, it’s also a troubling one, because a pessimist might answer, “Well, if I get closer and closer to him, won’t he just wait longer and longer to calm the storm?”
Good luck, you can torture yourself with that. It’s a close cousin to, “If God grows my faith through trials, what’s next for me after that car just hit me?”
Who knows. It’s uncertainty. Maybe God will grow your faith by letting a bus run over you next time. Or maybe you’ll win the lottery, and he’ll use something about that to grow your faith.
Here is the important thing: you can never beat uncertainty, and the only way to live with it is to trust the mind of God, not try to read it.
Now one more verse about those of us who try to fight and subdue uncertainty any way that we can.
When Judas and his cronies come to arrest Jesus in John 18, Peter pulls out a sword and cuts off an ear. But Jesus tells him.
“Put your sword back into its sheath. Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering the Father has given me?”
In the face of our OCD and anxieties, you and I pull out swords all the time to try to fight the uncertainty. But just like Peter, we need to realize who is standing by us as we pull out the sword. Jesus, God Almighty. We aren’t pulling out our swords in the absence of God, we are doing it in his presence.
Our swords are illusions of power, yes, but as importantly, they are delusions about his purpose.
For someone with OCD, thinking about purpose is more meaningful than power. If we think about power, we’re likely to say, “Why won’t God make this better — he’s powerful enough!” But if we think about purpose, then uncertainty enters the picture, and we need to make peace with that.
And in the case of Peter’s ear cutting, and Christ’s arrest, this is much more about purpose than power.
The next part of the “Put your sword back into its sheath” proves it:
“Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering the Father has given me?”
This completes the OCD and anxiety picture. Our swords aren’t just impotent, they also might run counter to what God has planned. And, in Christ’s case, and maybe in ours, it might be actually experiencing the suffering that our anxiety or obsession is based on.
When you say, “Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering,” you don’t just put down your sword, it falls miraculously. You don’t need to come up with a thousand ways to fend off your anxieties because fending them off isn’t important anymore.
So this is all I can say.
First, like the disciples in the boat, if Christ is asking you to walk through uncertainty right now, try to think of it as a reflection of his friendship, not his abandonment.
Second, as you think about that uncertainty, don’t pull out a sword.
Whatever trials lie ahead of you, Jesus also lies ahead of you.
So I say this to myself, and to my friend Jesus, who is both walking toward me in the storm and beside me in the dark garden.
“Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering the Father has given me?”
If so, I will be drinking with him.
Disclaimer: If you have or suspect you might have OCD, see a mental health professional.
CBT and medication can be very helpful. God gives us these things to help. Facing cancer can be easier with devotionals, but devotionals don’t fix it. The same applies to mental illness.
Picture: It’s called “Dazzle Camouflage.”
Good resource for OCD here.
