Tag: OCD

Training the mind

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I am consciously training my mind to behave in ways that are different from …

My goodness, I realised I never completed this page. Dear diario, a long time has passed since my last writing, but my thought goes almost daily to you, and I wish to write much more often than I actually do.

I have been very busy with work, and have also been on holiday. I am still in Southern Italy enjoying my favorite place on Earth, but despite the fact that I am free to write these days, I don’t, cause I am really enjoying not being on the computer. This happens about 2-3 weeks per year, and I love it. Sometimes I wish I had an agricultural or a sea job, where you don’t need to be on the computer all the time.

Anyway, what I wanted to write when I last touched this diary, is that I have started training my mind to behave in ways that are different from what I am used to. I believe that our minds are all engineered by the genes that are transmitted by our family line, and by the behaviours that we develop during our childhood. Habits that occur on a regular basis at home, at school, etc. I am doing a lot of self-analysis, also with the assistance of my psychologist, with whom I relate to see if I am on track with my self-analysis (to avoid that it derails into something not useful to me). Since the habits are well ingrained, and tested over years and years of practice, I need to de-grain them, undo the habit.

So, the training consists of stopping my mind over a behaviour that I would usually have over something, say for instance at breakfast, and turn that behaviour into something that gives me more pleasure over time. Hard to describe right now, because I need to find myself in the moment in order to best describe what I mean. But in a nutshell, here is an example.

I am about to have breakfast; I make sure I clean the whole table before I sit and enjoy what for me amounts to the best meal of the day. I observe myself from the outside, right at the moment when I am starting to clean the whole kitchen; this behavior is forcing me to delay my breakfast, and it will delay everything else I have to do in the morning, including work; so I force myself to clean half the table instead of the entire table, and I force myself to not start cleaning the sink or the kitchen counter. I leave the sponge and I sit down to have breakfast. It is hard at first, because my mind is set to cleaning the whole thing before I allow myself to move to the next action, but in the longer run (a few minutes later in this case) I know that forcing myself to change my behaviour will be rewarding: I can enjoy my breakfast sooner, my mind will give me a break over my OCD, the compulsive behaviour that limits me.

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OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]

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For sake of defition, here is a meaning of OCD that I have found on the internet:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental illness that causes repeated unwanted thoughts or sensations (obsessions) or the urge to do something over and over again (compulsions). Some people can have both obsessions and compulsions.

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/obsessive-compulsive-disorder#1

I think that each of us has some OCDs. I wouldn’t talk about mental illness, for the OCD I am referring, but I’d say they are little personal compulsions and obsessions that we feel the need to execute, otherwise we can’t proceed with the rest of the day. If you think of my OCD, I can find many. And now that I an working on knowing myself consciously, to strengthen my inner core (not the muscles…), I feel that OCDs are part of the things that distract me from being a better me.

WebMD writes: “OCD isn’t about habits like biting your nails or thinking negative thoughts. An obsessive thought might be that certain numbers or colors are “good” or “bad.” A compulsive habit might be to wash your hands seven times after touching something that could be dirty. Although you may not want to think or do these things, you feel powerless to stop.” (source link).

I definitely can live without washing my hands seven times an hour, an excessive cleaning of the house, repeatedly going up and down the stairs, or rearranging objects to ensure a specific symmetry. If you search for common OCD behaviours you’ll be surprised. But: I do have some impelling push for certain things that comes from within inside, sometime during my regular week. For example when I am looking for a specific tab in my browser (I usually leave 10-15 tabs open for work), I can’t but look at all other tabs and close them or act on them, before I finally get to my tab. Sometimes I feel the urge to clean the room where I am working before I can work; I start with the PC table, and then continue with other surfaces (the kitchen is just behind me, with a long long metal counter that asks me to clean it well); if I don’t stop, I can continue with an OCD propulsion towards cleaning up the whole apartment, getting the vacuum cleaner, the calc remover for the bathroom appliances, the dishwashing soap for the two glasses left in the sink from the morning breakfast, etc. This behaviour has been more evident to me since isolation time due to COvid. Being at home most of the week, I end up being a lot in company of furniture, sinks, WCs and showers, and have started cleaning more than usual.

I remember my sister in law had an OCD that would drive my brother crazy sometimes: after dinner she had to clean the kitchen spotlessly, and she would not relax until she did; this involved mopping the floor with detergent and all. Like deep deep cleaning, not just a wet cloth over the dinner table and off you go.

I am not too interested in why we have these compulsive behaviors, I find them amusing and irritating, I find them as an organic part of who we are as human beings. I haven’t met a person who has no OCD, small or light that it might be. In my case, some of my OCDs are distracting and I want to sever them from my everyday life.

So, part of my conscious “getting better on my own” process involves forcing myself to catch these OCDs and correct them. Not easy, but if you want to try you’ll realise how liberating it is. I give you an example: instead of cleaning all the surfaces of the apartment at once, I force myself to clean only one or maximum two, and stop. I put the cloth back to the closet and resume my work on the laptop. Easy? Hell no. But when I have done it, I feel satisfied, as if I had won a lottery! Another example: I follow my train of thoughts in an extreme way, a little bit like in James Joyce’s “Ulysses“. This is the most distracting of my OCDs, as I start off with one aim, say going to the bedroom to pickup my phone, and on the way I find an empty glass that I feel the need to put in the sink, so I do, and while doing that I am reminded by my car keys on the living room table that I need to change the parking disc in my car before the agents write me a fine; and my next thought goes to the paper I need to pickup at the office with the car, cause I can’t print at home anymore; more thoughts surface and after many minutes I still haven’t fetched the phone in my bedroom. Thoughts and objects distract me and oblige me to act immediately iupon them, for fear of forgetting (my short memory is as bad as Dory in Finding Nemo) :-).

I have found a solution that works for me, which helps me not only remember and not distract when I go from A to B, but also to be more organised: I started writing post-it notes in the places where it makes sense. I need to change the car’s parking disc? I will write a quick note next to the keys (or set the phone alarm 5 minutes before); do I need to respond to a client and at the same time I get another call where I have to urgently finish up an email for a colleague? I take the ten extra seconds required to write down task n. 2 so I can finish task n. 1 without stressing. This is so helpful, and takes a lot of pressure off me. If I find myself too stressed, I take a break, go for a walk, pause for 20 minutes-half hour and resume later. I take more the time to breathe and this makes me enjoy the moment more. It’s such a great excercise. I feel good about it.

More soon. Oh: this is day 3 of reducing the intake of Fluoxetin: 10 mg a day instead of 20mg. So far so good.

Perfectionism: how to’s

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In another post I was talking about one of the reasons I have slowly and constantly come to depression. It’s my sense of perfectionism. There are a lot of words ending in “ism”: we borrowed this suffix from the Greeks and the Latins. If I search for its meaning, I stumble upon the Dictionary, which defines it a suffix used in “the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence, etc.“. There’s criticism, egoism, intellectualism, humanitarianism, instrumentalism, photojournalism, fraternalism, etc. In medical terms, it denotes “a medical condition or a disease resulting from or involving some specified thing” (from the medical dictionary). Wow, a disease, even…

Just when I thought that perfectionism was a strength in somebody’s character, I realised it can be either way, and for me it was (it IS) more of a “condition”. I won’t call it weakness, as opposed to strength, because I can see how perfectionism can serve us well in many situations. In my case, over time perfectionism has become a hindrance. Why? Because, unless something was perfectly executed, it wasn’t worth spending time on it. I am talking about everyday habits as well as work practices or sport. I won’t put makeup on unless I have a nice dress, matching shoes, and a good hairdo. I won’t clean the kitchen after cooking unless I clean it to the very last corner; once I start cleaning there’s no stopping me. But because it’s such an endeavor in my mind, it is rare I do cleaning every day after cooking. another example: I will procrastinate writing a report for work, because I can already envision the whole picture as being complex and a lot of work to execute perfectly. So I leave it to another moment. And I postpone by telling myself there are other easier tasks I can do before I get into that bigger task. So I start making calls, updating my calendar, add customers to my CRM, etc…

Oh, yes. Procrastination. It goes hand in hand with perfectionism. A podcaster’s account on her perfectionism felt so familiar when I listened to her 7-minute story. Listen to her: it’s really good. Elly Varrenti. So, immediate gratification is partly the reason of our constant dissatisfaction. If we don’t get it now, we don’t want to do the effort. And, even if you do succeed, you won’t be happy anyway. Failure is considered by me failure, in a negative way; but what if I start looking at my results, albeit not perfect, as positive? Elly says: “There’s good failure and bad failure […] as there’s a difference between passion and ambition, winning and accomplishment. […] The secret to happiness is rising from the ashes of disappointment, humiliation, aching inadequacy, and just getting on with it“. Like Winston Churchill said: “If you are going through hell, keep going“. Thank you Elly for quoting Churchill. He must have been a very interesting and wise man. He is also the author of the line “Never, never, never give up“. And I shan’t!

A bit of diversion that took me to Churchill and to the Australian correspondent to ABC, to remind myself that now I now know one strategically important thing: I am a perfectionist and I can recover from it. I am already working on this, and believe me: it is a super difficult task.

Oh, and we haven’t spoken about OCDs…. oh well, let’s tackle it in another post.