OCD: The Doomsayer

Hi all,

I came across how a concept about how to view OCD as the "Doomsayer" while I was reading a book.

I wanted to share with you all.

The bibliography appears below.

Having OCD is like having this character living in your head. At any moment, he can step out of the shadows to warn you that you could be in danger or that you might be responsible for harming yourself or the people you love and care about most. The Doomsayer seems to know your deepest fears and apprehensions at every moment in your life. He can make you doubt things that you thought you knew about yourself and the world around you. He’s persistent, he’s crafty, and he’s with you every moment of the day.

Intellectually, you realize, at least some of the time, that the dangers depicted by the Doomsayer are overblown nonsense. But he speaks with such conviction, power, and force that you find it impossible to dismiss, diminish, or rationalize away his warnings. When he shows up with his latest foreboding sign and starts reminding you of all the things that can go wrong at any moment in your life, you feel powerless to ignore him. You have grave doubts. Your heart races, your pulse quickens, and your breath shortens. And the only things that seem to diminish his power over you, even a little bit, are your compulsive behaviors and rituals.

So you start washing, cleaning, checking, arranging, avoiding, undoing, or seeking reassurance. But you’re trapped. The more you engage in these compulsive behaviors, the more persistent the Doomsayer gets, and the stronger your doubts become. You know these behaviors make no sense, even that they are ridiculous. But you engage in them anyway, anticipating just a few moments of relief. You trade away more and more of your life to ward off your uncomfortable thoughts. After a while, you start to worry whether or not you’re getting your rituals just right. That’s when the Doomsayer starts to point out to you that, if you don’t perform them perfectly, you’ll be in trouble—big trouble.

Be clear that OCD is a bully that constantly lies to you about the degree of impending danger existing in your life. Because bullies feed on attention, the best way to deal with them is to ignore them.

DuFrene, Troy. Coping with OCD: Practical Strategies for Living Well with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (p.1, 20, 32). New Harbinger Publications. Kindle Edition.

[MothFir]

Sometimes near the end of a bad episode I finally realize that the OCD will never be satisfied, that no matter how much I think I've covered myself by checking, cleaning, rationalizing, whatever, it will find a scenario in which I or others are still in grave danger, and I feel like I have to do even more. This is almost always a relief to me because I finally see that OCD's demands are ridiculous, that nobody has to do what I'm doing to achieve a reasonable level of safety, and the urge to ritualize can be ignored.

Thanks for sharing this and your other excerpts today; they are helpful.

[Fearnomore]

Well said! We must all beat this monster! IGNORE him....he’s a LIAR!

[LuvSun]

Thanks for sharing!

[Mabelocd]

Thank you. That's a helpful way to look at it.

[MyOCD123]

Sadly, this is spot on. Thank your for sharing!