Resources Recommendation Read More | Learn More | Achieve More

Obsessions are thoughts which penetrate the foreground of one’s consciousness which are relentless in a way that in spite of all efforts to get rid of them they are still unable to be suppressed or ignored and these thoughts have certain properties attached to them such as intrusiveness and inappropriateness and they are also persistent or recurrent and totally unwanted. No part of any obsession in a clinical sense is wanted or brings even the most remote element of pleasure. These thoughts or ideas cause much anxiety or distress.

The word ‘obsession’ is actually derived from the words ‘to besiege’ . The word besiege means to surround somebody or something in large numbers and is used about something that is unpleasant or annoying. So, we can see here that obsessions are invasive and can flood one’s mind in large numbers. They are like an enemy set to besiege its ‘prey’. The enemy is unwanted, completely unwanted. Fear or anxiety mounts as in an enemy besieging its target or victims. The enemy is intrusive, it comes uninvited and the enemy or obsessions come in force. Obsessions are like an enemy with a never-ending supply of troops or forces as obsessions are so recurrent. They never seem to let up or give the sufferer a break where his or her mind would be able to slow down and have a rest.

From more of a psychological point of view, a person with OCD has an inability to process information in a normal way. It is seen that obsessive thoughts come back again and again in order to be processed further. It is likened to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a way that if the sufferer tries to ignore intrusive thoughts that aren’t processed properly they return even stronger. In people without OCD, they don’t have problems with processing obsessive types of thoughts such as having an urge to drive one’s car off the road. The non-OCD person will think something such as “what a silly strange thought”, dismiss it, and not be further troubled by it. In a person with OCD something goes wrong with this mental processing. One part of the brain wants to dismiss such things, another part wants to process it further and it leads to an anxiety provoking mismatch. But do all people think things such as driving their car off the road? No, not all people will experience these thoughts or ideas, or have these urges, but the reality is that somewhere around 50 to 55% of people do. A person without OCD may have many initial thoughts similar to that of a person with OCD but it is dealt with very differently. They are able to adjust without these thoughts coming back again and again and with more intensity.

It is important to realize that intrusive thoughts are normal or experienced often by everybody. Everybody has them. An intrusive thought interrupts the normal flow of the mind. Anyone can be thinking of one thing when suddenly an entirely new thought will appear from the ‘wilderness’ out of nowhere and it is basically involuntary. However, a person with OCD just can’t seem to deal with such involuntary and unexpected thoughts. The OCD mind seems to have no defence and if one tries to ignore these thoughts, they just come back stronger. This leads the sufferer to performing either mental or physical compulsions which will be explained in chapter five.

If someone instructed you NOT to think about a chimpanzee for one minute, do you think you would be able to go the whole minute without thinking something like “I can’t think about chimps”? As for thinking this, we would be thinking in one way or another about chimpanzees. It would be extremely difficult not to think about them at all. Now imagine that you just heard a lecture or presentation about chimpanzees. Chances are you would leave the presentation and not think about chimps too much more for the rest of the day, at least not in the pressing foreground of your consciousness. Your mind will tend to focus on other things as if it’s ‘had enough’ of thinking about chimps for the moment. But if someone told you NOT to think about chimps, you may find yourself thinking about chimps constantly as you would be tying to avoid this very thought. For example, you may be thinking “I can’t think about chimps, I can’t think about chimps”. So when asked now to think about chimps you would most likely think about them with more intensity (it would be stronger). So by trying not to think about things whether it might be chimps or wondering if we have put our shoes on (among endless amounts of other possibilities), the thoughts just come back stronger. There is more focus on it and this is what basically happens in the OCD mind. Thought processes go hay-wire and if a person with OCD tries to ignore these types of thoughts they just come back stronger. Therefore s/he will tend to carry out compulsions but this also just leads to a negative cycle which only feeds obsessions in the long-run.

So it is sort of likened that people with OCD have problems like how any of us would be trying not to think about chimpanzees and the ‘problems’ associated with it and that people who do not have OCD are like the one’s who listened to the presentation and were able to put chimps out of the very foreground of their mind for the rest of the day.

What goes wrong in the mind though? This is where an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain comes into action. The processing of information is distorted in the minds of OCD sufferers and to put it simply the result is that initial intrusive thoughts become obsessive in a clinical sense. Obsessions are thoughts that just keep coming back again and again and again. There seems no ‘switch’ to turn them off and unless we reach out for help through doctors, psychologists, psychiatrist and others (depending on the severity of each individual case) chances are the sufferer will just keep o being tormented by these horrendous thoughts. However they can be broken and we will discuss this in later article submissions.

There are marked and distinct differences between obsessions and other problems that many other people face in society. Some very commonly confused and misunderstood issues that are so often seen as obsessions but are NOT are: * addictions * preoccupations * phobias * perfectionism

Obsessions are also NOT a psychosis, nor are they any type of sensation and certainly NOT any type of desire, longing-for or fantasy to have or obtain or be involved in anything that brings pleasure, satisfaction or any other type of positive feeling at all such as a desire (‘obsession’) to be famous or to have a sports car . Also worth mentioning here is a particular type of personality disorder which can be confused with OCD and that is a personality disorder called obsessive compulsive personality disorder (otherwise known as OCPD) in where there are distinct differences.

Addictions versus obsessions: An absolute and clear difference between an addiction compared to an obsession is that obsessions are completely and always 100% unwanted! Yes, addictions may be unwanted or at least claimed to be by the addicted person, yet with addictions there is a part of the addiction in the mental element of it that is pleasurable. Speaking from my own experience with my battle with alcohol and OCD (among many other things including hair-pulling, self-harm, Tics, personality disorder issues, depression involving the treatment of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and more) that when I was battling problems with alcohol, there was most certainly an element of pleasure involved in having a drink (although I had up to around 12-15 standard drinks or more a day). I remember looking forward to my next drink, where-as I never ever looked forward to any next obsession that would bombard me. Part of a person with an alcohol problem looks forward to having a drink with some sort of anticipated pleasure whether it is the effects of it, the perceived ‘numbing of the mind’, the taste or whatever. Obsessions carry NO pleasure at all, not one tiny bit, ever!

A person with an addiction (let’s say here, gambling) finds him/herself offering less resistance to this addiction than what is involved in obsessions. Yes, a person with OCD can easily forfeit and give in to obsessions and this can be almost instantaneously by performing compulsions (mentally or physically) but the resistance is with extreme anxiety and brings absolutely no pleasure at all/ A person with an addiction may ‘equally’ or similarly give in to an urge such as having a thought about gambling, but attached to this is a feeling of satisfaction, pleasure or even a thrill. With addictions the unwanted urge coincides with an element of certain thrills or a ‘feel-good’ factor. Some may say it is like getting a kick out of something. Obsessions do NOT carry these characteristics.

Preoccupations versus obsessions: I was sitting in a class/lecture once some year ago and my teacher asked everybody to talk about their ‘obsession’. Oh, how I was churning inside (as this was a class/course on mental health). “Obsessions”, I thought. “What on earth is she talking about?” Well, I knew pretty much that she meant normal preoccupations or fears, worries, concerns and so-forth in general life. Every answer I heard was clearly not an obsession, in fact nothing like it at all! The word “obsession” is so loosely used in the community now, but we’ll look at it here from a clinical point of view or perspective as in true clinical obsessions compared to these other ‘obsessions’ which are in fact normal common fears, worries, or re-current depressive thoughts.

A lady in my class/group briefly spoke about her worries with her children as being her ‘obsession’. She said “I obsess about them because I think about them so much and worry for their safety” etc. As touched as we were, she clearly was not troubled by obsessions. They were usual worries and yes they may be persistent to some degree as are obsessions, unwanted as are obsessions and intrusive to a point, but they are not as inappropriate as obsessions are. A person may claim or be seen to be obsessed about losing his/her job in where thoughts about the job loss, financial hardships, loss of pride and multitudes of other possibilities cause distress or repetitive thoughts or fears, apprehension, concern and worries, and these manifestations may be that of something like depressive thoughts that plague the person. It can so easily be confused with obsessive thinking in that the thoughts are so recurrent and so-forth yet they can also be ‘justified’ whereas with a person with OCD who has true clinical obsessions about let’s say touching a knob on the oven twelve times, where is the logic in that?

Preoccupations are generally normal worries, fears, concerns and reoccurring thoughts that are realistic (or justifiable or ‘appropriate’). The lady in my class was preoccupied with normal or realistic concerns not absurd inappropriate clinical obsessions.

Phobias versus obsessions: One of my fellow co-students participating in a course in mental health was adamant that her fears of spiders were indicative of OCD. How much she misunderstood OCD. Obsessions and phobias are very different. I personally hate snakes and I am fearful of them like many others yet never ever have I once become obsessive about them. A distinct difference is that as long as phobic fears are avoided such as staying away from snakes, not wondering through snake territory or putting yourself in a situation where you might come across a snake, your fear of snakes (or any other specific phobia) will be ‘quenched’, meaning that it is generally likely not to be in the forefront of your mind or consciousness at all unless triggered by such cues as to remind you of snakes. Another way of stating this difference is that a person can avoid a phobic fear such as staying away from cats, or avoiding using lifts, or not going up to high places such as avoiding aircraft, and these fears can be in a way ‘switched off’. A person with OCD (left untreated) can not simply ‘switch off’ obsessive thoughts. Someone with OCD can’t seem to manage to avoid certain thoughts (as in obsessions) whereas thoughts can be subdued in phobias with avoidance of the specific fear associated with one’s phobia.

Some phobias can be likened to being somewhat ‘justifiable’ in a way that snakes, or heights, or darkness, or blood, pointed objects, needles, spiders, all sorts of ‘creepies’ and crawlies and so-forth can give good reason to be afraid. Other phobias may be a little more irrational such as unreasonable fears about the figure eight, or Russians, Australians, Africans, or hair, peanut-butter sticking to one’s mouth, women, cooking, hats and many, many others that the majority of people in general society would say there is no logical reason to fear such things. Obsessions are certainly irrational too such as having fears that you sat on something poisonous or ‘disease-evoking’ on the train seat on the way to work when you clearly know it looked perfectly normal before you took a seat, but again OBSESSIONS CARRY FOUR ANXIETY-PROVOKING FACTORS, that of which they are intrusive, inappropriate, unwanted and reoccurring, whereas phobias (‘justified’ or ‘unjustified’) do not carry all these characteristics in tandem with each other. Phobias may be inappropriate certainly. They may be unwanted too. But the intrusiveness is nowhere near the degree of obsessions and they are generally nowhere near as reoccurring. Obsessions strikes at the minds of it’s sufferers in an unforgiving, unremitting manner and won’t leave despite all efforts, whereas phobias can be much easier controlled by staying away from one’s phobic fears.

Perfectionism versus obsessions: It became quite clear to me when I was receiving treatment from my psychologist for OCD of the differences between perfectionism and obsessions and compulsions. To put it simply, perfectionism does not involve anywhere near the degree of anxiety as clinical obsessions do. Like others would, I often wondered about traits of perfectionism versus true clinical obsessions and was I blurred between the boundaries of obsessions to that of perfectionism. It became clear to me when my psychologist worked with me in regards to my so-called obsessions and compulsive actions of keeping things perfectly in order in the kitchen cupboard (note: for some people with OCD, arranging the kitchen cupboard in an exact manner IS symptomatic of OCD if it carries clinically diagnosed obsessions and/or compulsions). For me (in this example) keeping the kitchen cupboard was not actually symptomatic of OCD unlike other similar problems I had such as arranging my work van and obsessing about it literally endlessly, over and over again. I concluded (before our ‘experiment’) that my kitchen-cupboard-keeping was problematic and added it to my list of obsessions that were to be treated or worked on with my therapist (note: preparing such a list IS part of the treatment plan often used for treating OCD which will be discussed in future articles). We (my therapist and I) spoke about my ‘obsessive’ concerns and my fears attached with them. We then proceeded to the kitchen cupboard where I had all of the bottles, containers and tins all stacked very precisely, evenly and orderly and I also had images in my head of everything in there being in ‘good condition’. My therapist instructed me to turn a couple of tins up-side-down (heaven forbid), turn a couple more around so their labels were facing sideways or to the back of the cupboard, put a couple of things in slightly different places, handle bottles without checking them that the tops may have come off, or to put it simply, mess it up a bit. Well, my first reaction to such instructions was ‘oh no, I can’t, I can’t. It’ll be chaotic’. Yet I did it (messed it up a bit) and surprise, I was amazingly calm. Why might this be I wondered? I soon came to realize that my ‘kitchen-cupboard-keeping’ was a trait of perfectionism and did not carry obsessions with it. Perfectionism does not bring the degree of anxiety as obsessions do. Perfectionism involves doing things perfectly or as close to it as is realistic or possible. Obsessions involve exactly that; obsessions.