Don’t Try to Be Sure About Everything

[80_Zil_ian]

Hello, as someone who has lived with OCD for a long time (Two decades diagnosed and a lifetime of almost 50 years with symptoms), I’ve experienced enough to know that if you learn to manage it, most aspects of OCD won’t stop you from working, building a career, having a family if you want, and enjoying a social life. You can have a normal and functional life!

However, I’ve also learned that we need to be extremely cautious about one particular aspect of OCD: the need to be sure about everything. This tendency can cause problems when dealing with external factors…

Classic examples:

• The need to be sure of what some people think about you. Generally, people will never express everything they think about you, and most of the time, they don’t even care about you at all.

Potential problems: You can end up annoying someone when you start giving too much importance to their approval. This can be terrible for work and romantic relationships.

• Got into an argument, a fight, or even a legal issue with someone? Don’t try to understand every single reason why, don’t ask too many questions, don’t investigate their lives on social media, and don’t involve other people who might know you both. This can create even more problems simply because you couldn’t accept that not everyone will be nice to you.

Problems: The effect can be the opposite you imagined: You were so anxious to be sure about everything to feel safer and more in control that you ended up exposing yourself too much, appearing as someone trying to know more than you should.

• Don’t try to be sure you’re always safe or always at peace. This is time-consuming, mentally exhausting, and ineffective against real threats. You can minimize risks, but you can’t eliminate all of them. The greatest people in history were never always peaceful and calm… So, what makes you think that “being at peace” is a human right? Adult life is never about complete peace. As soon as you accept that there are things beyond your control and that you can’t always be certain, the fewer OCD intrusive thoughts will invade your mind.