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If the Prince of Darkness Invented a Disorder
In April of this year, I entered into another dimension of reality … or unreality, as I’ve come to understand it. It’s as if I was picked up and placed in the front-most, center-most seat of a classroom within which the darkest strategies of destruction would be presented. The topic? A disorder so sinister, so shrewd, and so malevolent that one could not be blamed for turning tail and jumping off the nearest cliff to certain death in order to escape the hellish existence this disorder voraciously seeks to foist with determined intent upon unsuspecting innocents.
Forgive the drama. I’m trying to get your attention.
This is a malady of disintegration and fragmentation made up of lies, superstition, fear, and despair; manifesting uncontrollable compulsions, illogical rituals, and overwhelming blasts of a thousand voices in the head, accusing the innocent of fabricated faults and irredeemable flaws without end, leaving the innocent with only one thing: the belief that they are hopelessly insane and of no worth.
Now, when I tell you the name of this disorder you might say to yourself, “Oh, yeah. I know what that is. I saw As Good as it Gets with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.”
And I would say to you, “You, Sir (or Madam), are an ignoramus.”
It’s okay. I was (am) an ignoramus too. Most people are ignoramuses about this topic.
All right. I will tell you what it is.
But first, for those of you who’ve seen Pixar’s The Incredibles, there’s a big fight between Mr. Incredible and a “learning machine” that aims to destroy the world. This learning machine never tops fighting, recalculating its next move given newly learned information, and always finding another way to get to Mr. Incredible, without pause, between attacks. It’s a cosmic game of whack-o-mole.
That’s how this disorder is. And it isn’t just about washing your hands a certain way or avoiding the cracks of a sidewalk as you stroll the avenue. These kinds of rituals are a tiny part of it. At its core, underlying myriad manifested behaviors, lies an intolerance for uncertainty. You can’t see it, but it’s there.
I’m talking about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
According to the International OCD Foundation, about one in 100 adults currently have OCD (that means 10% of you reading this article are impacted). That’s over 3 million people in the US. About one in 200 kids and teens have OCD, which is twice as many kids and teens suffering from diabetes. Kids live with their OCD an average of two and one-half years before being diagnosed. And it’s worse for adults; a recent survey found that it takes an average of 14 to 17 years for an adult to find effective treatment.
My daughter has OCD. And it’s a bad case. It’s had years to develop its strategies and tactics, and they are now entrenched. I didn’t know. And she didn’t know; how could she? She thought she was insane, of no worth, and that she must be a bad person who’d been sentenced to suffer for eternity in her own interior hell.
She hid it, coping with it by trying to be perfect and meet everyone’s expectations. To calm herself, she would pull out her eyelashes and her eyebrows and cut herself and not eat. She became anorexic, a more recent development.
Then on a single day in April, she finally hit a wall. It was a very big wall. Two terrible things happened. Her boyfriend of 18 months suddenly broke up with her over text, and the birth mother who gave her away for “no reason” contacted her for the first time.
She was numb, almost stoic. I couldn’t see what was happening inside. Then, at 5 a.m. the next morning, she came into the kitchen and asked me for help.
It was at that moment I entered into her world, a place beyond the entry gates of hell.
It is impossible for me as a layperson to describe OCD in a way that gives you a true sense of the breadth, depth, and cunning of its power to deceive and to fragment and destroy a person’s being. In the fullness of its power, the disorder’s reach extends to all parts of the human soul, spirit, mind, and body.
I will give you some tidbits that may, altogether, help you form a conceptual understanding of its monstrous nature. Keep reading … this applies to the bigger picture. The categories and lists of specifics are borrowed from the book Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty by Jonathan Grayson, Ph.D. There are several tables in this post. You don’t need to read each one in detail (except the last one). Skimming the contents of each will give you enough of an idea to see my points.
Fundamentally, OCD is about an intolerance of uncertainty, one of the disorder’s cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are patterns of thinking that lead a person to have irrational beliefs about the world.
Yes, I knew that would get you thinking. More on this later. First, a conceptual picture of OCD’s structure.
The Core of OCD
The inability to live comfortably with uncertainty is at the core of OCD, and from which all manifestations of the disorder emerge. These manifestations can run across several areas of a person’s life, or only a few. The aim of treatment is helping a person live comfortably with uncertainty in those areas of life where they’ve struggled. Every person who suffers this disorder has a unique experience of, and response to, OCD.
What causes it? It is both genetic/biological and learned. So, for my daughter, it is both; first genetic, and exacerbated by early childhood trauma related to years of serious health issues our family endured with her little sister.
OCD is about fear. It’s about the use of fear to divide and conquer (disintegrate and control). It tears away at the integrated wholeness of a person, fragmenting the individual into an anxiety-ridden, disorganized, and irrational reactionary machine desperately seeking relief through rituals, compulsions, and impulsions.
As a disorder, OCD focuses like a laser on a limited number of uncertainties that have become a person’s source of anxiety. Those obsessions can focus on the external world (my personal brand of OCD), or the internal world, such as unwanted thoughts. These obsessions (or fears) threaten consequences that the person is afraid of.
Categories of Obsessions (Fears)
[1]This is a high-level list of categories. When you understand the concept of OCD and how it exploits a person, you will see why this list is only scratching the surface. That said, the most common types of obsessions treated are:
- Fear of harm to oneself and/or to others
- Fear of what a thought or action might mean
- Fear of forgetting and/or loss
- Fear of misperceptions and/or misunderstandings
- Fear of anxiety or other uncomfortable feelings resulting from the obsession and/or not experiencing feelings the “right way”
- Fear of constant attention to thoughts or images and/or constant perception of bodily sensations
- Fear of imperfection
Specific Obsessions/Fears
The list of categories can be decomposed further into more specific types of [2]obsessive concerns. This is necessary when diagnosing a patient because treatment is tailored to address the specific type of fear or obsession plaguing the individual. Again, it is not an exhaustive list, but these are the types of obsessions most commonly addressed in the OCD treatment space.
OCD’s Response to Fears
OCD is crafty. First, it sets up the playing field by introducing the irrational fears, and then follows through with a whole slew of fear-affirming responses. Sufferers are thrown deeper into an abyss of irrationalism as they carry out certain actions, or rituals.
There are five types of responses, and following this list of five, there are examples of specific response methods.
The Specific Ways OCD Manifests Itself
Here is a [3]list of the ways these five responses are manifested by OCD in behavior and thought. Try to stay with me. Just skim these lists … you’ll get the idea, which is all I’m asking.
Yes. That’s a lot. Maybe you’re beginning to see how challenging it is to reveal OCD, working from the outward manifestations to the hidden root of its power.
And it sounds like we might be wrapping up, right? Uh … no.
Cognitive Distortions
I briefly described the what … the manifested behavior, but we haven’t covered what’s happening in the brain; that which introduces those fears that trigger the behavioral compulsions and impulsions. It’s time to cover Cognitive Distortions.
As explained at the beginning of this post, cognitive distortions are patterns of thinking that lead a person to have irrational beliefs about the world.
[4]Common OCD Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive distortions are “systemic flaws” in reasoning, causing the individual to draw erroneous conclusions about the world around them, which then introduces irrational fears about which the individual experiences anxiety.
These six types of cognitive distortions pertain to OCD. Be sure to read this one.
So, if my analysis is correct and I did an adequate job of following the line of reasoning from the book Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder by Dr. Jonathan Grayson, PHD, the onslaught of OCD is rooted in the adoption of irrational beliefs about the world.
My main question is this:
Does the experience of the individual suffering from OCD scale up to the masses, and if so, how is that manifested in our culture?
If the answer is “yes” to part one of the question, then my next questions are:
- How are those irrational beliefs being introduced?
- Who is introducing them?
- And what is their purpose?
And I’ll answer my own questions in reverse order. You can offer your own answers if you’d like.
- The purpose is to divide (disintegrate the individual within and the collective en masse) and conquer (steal, kill, and destroy) on a global scale.
- The “who” are the misguided and delusional cadre of state and private sector tyrants bent on gaining and keeping power (surveillance governments; corrupt politicians; WEF acolytes conspiring to transform the world into an ESG compliant digital surveillance and control state with two tiers – the elites, and the peasants). You will own nothing and be happy.
- And the “how” involves indoctrination, propaganda, gaslighting, forced compliance, and false promises (academia, Hollywood, big tech social media, central banks).
Regarding part 2 of my original question (how is OCD manifested en masse in our culture?), I’ll leave that to you to consider.
As a Christian, I view almost everything through a spiritual lens, that lens being nuanced and ever-evolving as I find myself repeatedly called to kneel, surrendered to uncertainty at the foot of the throne. And through the suffering that most of us understand is required for character growth, I’ve noticed some things about how the enemy operates.
The Prince of Darkness thinks he has the upper hand.
I see it differently.
The one who disintegrates cannot stand against the One Who heals and makes whole. And I sense that this may be the interlude before His final victory. In the meantime, we must pray for rationality and truth to prevail over the deceptions of the dark and clever one. We must pray to be turned around, and motivated to find wholeness through Him, individually and en masse.
[5] 7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.[a] They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
[1] Freedom from Obsession Compulsive Disorder, Jonathan Grayson, PhD., pages 28-35
[2] Freedom from Obsession Compulsive Disorder, Jonathan Grayson, PhD., pages 74-80
[3] Freedom from Obsession Compulsive Disorder, Jonathan Grayson, PhD., pages 81-92
[4] Freedom from Obsession Compulsive Disorder, Jonathan Grayson, PhD., page 97
[5] John 10:7-10, New International Version Bible
Published in General
If this story was reported accurately, then the “blowback” she received was certainly uncalled-for. But that kind of catty back-biting is not by any means limited to the world of psychiatry.
More generally speaking: it sounds like she “solved” only one of the problems her OCD was currently causing. I’m all for that – if someone is unable to put their OCD in remission, it needs to be managed as best as possible. She had difficulty getting to work, and then she didn’t, and that’s good.
But it’s rarely that simple, with OCD. I’ve had clients/patients that “solve” OCD-type problems with similar tricks, and the tricks rarely work long term. OCD symptoms change over time, and usually in ways that make life harder.
Thank you for that! Thats very helpful. I will likely go with my daughter to her appointment and will ask the doc about this. I appreciate that you picked up on the meds in my post. Really do. You bless me.
This is what I was referring to as whack-a-mole of the OCD experience. The biggest challenge we face now is the void in routine after nine weeks of treatment. The voids are always filled with something. I hope to get in front of it with her before she lets the inertia take over. I hope that makes sense.
A week ago I had lunch with this woman I frequently meet with who has some combination of Asbergers and OCD. We were at a pizza joint and the waiter told her there was no ice for the water he brought us. However, it was cold, so that didn’t matter. Except to her. She is, and I quote, “addicted to ice.” I tried to explain to her that the water was cold, but even with the consensation on the outside of the bottle proving it, that wasn’t enough to allow her to even eat her pizza. I guess her logic was the pizza would make her thirsty and there was no ice water to drink, so she took it home. She had also ordered, and wasted money on, 2 cans of some artisanal tea drink and was bothered that the waiter didn’t tell her it had sugar, though she didn’t ask.
I hope she is getting some help. One thing I’ve learned is that logic has little to do with rituals and compulsions which is one reason it’s hard to understand when you’re with someone who suffers from OCD.
Helping her would involve her actually listening to someone. Yeah, there is no logic but a kind of internal logic to her I guess, based on bad premises.
Interestingly, a little before I and my friends met her in 2014 I listened to the Delingpole/Young podcast on here and Toby Young made a comment about some movie or something contributing to the false impression that all people with Asbergers have great intelligence or talents. Then we met her and she has neither. She has never told us she has Asbergers but my friend was told that by her uncle she lives with.