The Man Who Couldn't Stop

Psychologists have identified three types of dysfunctional belief important in the development of OCD. The first is an inflated sense of threat and personal responsibility. The second is perfectionism and intolerance of uncertainty. The third is a belief in the over-importance of thoughts and the need to control them.

In OCD this means, the more that we do something, the less sure we can be that we did.

OCD dissolves perspective. It magnifies small risks, warps probabilities and takes statistical chance as a prediction, not a sign of how unlikely things are.

What we can call subclinical OCD is everywhere.

Compulsions can make obsessive thoughts go away, but only for a short while. One of the many cruel ironies of OCD is that the compulsions, the weapon that obsessed people reach for, make the situation worse. Compulsions act in the same way as thought suppression. An intrusive thought silenced with a compulsive act comes back. It comes back hard.

Obsession has no regard for rational explanation. No pathology of thought can be solved with more thought.