Chapter Twenty Five:
Hot Potato
You may wonder, how OCD actually manifested and how I dealt with those manifestations. I will tell you a story,...just one of very many. It involved me reaching out for help with my friend David S. This story will show how reaching out for help was difficult, and awkward, but possible. Some people are kind and compassionate, some can look at a person in distress and offer words of encouragement, or listen patiently, and others will conversely, criticize, sighin frustration, or roll their eyes, telling them to “just relax.” I found David to be in the former category, and I reached out to him many times over the years, because he would listen and offer words of encouragement and support. This is how I asked for help from David. The story starts back in the year 2000.
I was working at Frank Dunn Toyota, and things were going okay. I had a rifle that I didn’t like because I thought it required too much cleaning. It was a black-powder rifle.Black powder was the kind of gunpowder that was first used up until the late 1800s. It was less powerful than the more modern version of “smokeless powder” that replaced it and the black powder was more conducive to causing corrosion in the firearm after being fired…. Thus it required more cleaning than a regular rifle that fired cartridges using modern smokeless powder. Special early hunting seasons are offered for hunters who use primitive weapons which include black powder rifles and archery, and I wanted to get out and hunt in that early season so I bought a black powder rifle, but I was all distraught with anxieties about the potential corrosion from the black powder rifle, so I decided to sell it.
I wanted to get rid of the black powder rifle, because it bothered me. I didn’t like the idea of rust on a gun. I worried excessively about rust somehow forming on a gun and then an accident happening and me never being able to get over it.
One day, I went out and shot the rifle, and then when I got home and went to clean it, the bolt wouldn’t thread out, as it was designed to do. I had not put grease on it when I last assembled it and it was now seized. I tried several different ways to get the bolt free and to unseize it. I tried lubricant and penetrating oil. But it wouldn’t budge. Then I decided to heat up the bolt with a small propane torch and see if I could move it by having the steel expand with heat. I had seen my Grandpa Bob do it a few times with seized nuts and bolts. I asked my dad about heating it, and he assured me that if you heated it, and then let it cool slowly in air, not plunging it in water that it would keep its strength, and not become brittle. I still got anxious about it, but I had to try to get the bolt free. In the end I heated it but I couldn’t free it. I took it to a gunsmith and he got the bolt free. He said he almost couldn’t get it, but he did, thankfully. (it would have bothered me otherwise…)
After that I would think, sometimes, about that rifle, and what if it somehow exploded, when the next person fired it because I had possibly weakened its structural integrity when trying to fix it. The thought made me feel terrible. It was OCD. I wanted to sell the rifle because I wanted to rid myself of those thoughts and feelings, but I didn’t want to sell it and have another person get hurt by it!
I became friends with David, and I decided to tell him about the rifle, but I didn’t mention the bolt, and how it had been seized. Why should I mention it? It was embarrassing, that I worried irrationally, so I didn’t mention it. I told him I would sell it to him. I anticipated that I might worry about it later, down the road, so I talked to my dad about it. He was the one who had helped me try to loosen the bolt. He reassured me there was nothing to worry about.
I sold David the rifle. I didn’t mention anything about the bolt. A couple years later though, I found myself in Japan, thinking about the rifle and that I couldn’t be sure that David was okay and that he hadn’t been hurt or killed by the gun I sold him, or that something wouldn’t happen even though I had preemptively discussed it with my dad, even though,..., well, even though a lot of things… .
It didn’t really make any sense, any more than any of the other obsessions ever did. Yet the thoughts happened one day, out of the blue, and they sparked a little fire of anxiety, the flames of which grew slowly but surely, as I focused on the thoughts and tried to quiet them with more thinking.
I grew more anxious and, as usual, worried that I would never stop obsessing about this particular obsession,.... “Some bushman I am!” I thought to myself in shame and self contempt. I tried to just leave it. I went to the computer and read my articles. Again. What did the “experts” say?
“ Let it be there!”
“ Embrace the uncertainty!”
“Tell yourself that the worst is happening or has happened or is going to happen!. Tell yourself that you're going to take the risk and live with the uncertainty!”
The instructions were so clear. I tried, believe me, I tried so hard to follow them,…, but it wasn’t that simple.
Obsessions and their accompanying anxiety ate away at me, as they always had. They gnawed and gnawed and gnawed. It’s as though I couldn’t stop looking at something because it was so terrifying to look away. I felt like I might go insane with panic if I didn’t know for sure that what I had imagined could happen, would never happen,… . I tried to calm myself, and in order to do that, I needed to review the problem, to look at it, and be sure.… If I just thought it through one more time…, that is what the mind kept thinking - try it again, just one last time- but it never worked.
I was perfectly aware that I was performing mental compulsions and the “experts” had written that I should not do that, and I had read that, but it didn't go well at all. I always panicked. Why? I did want to stop obsessing. I felt as though I might lose control of myself and go insane, and, it is nearly impossible to describe but a critical point to emphasize- that I feared I might get so anxious that my mind would be damaged or changed severely and maybe permanently, and that scared me with a special type of intensity.
I would very often spend the whole week on a single obsession, or much longer,...sometimes months, sometimes even years. I could work, (I had to work) teaching, but it was oh– so daunting. All day, everyday, I was drawn to these obsessions. Then, someone would say something, or spontaneously, I would think of something else and it would catch hold, something equally disturbing and I’d be off obsessing about a different thing,.... Different, but it would be the same theme, “What if something happened and you were to blame and you couldn’t cope with the guilt.” Same idea, but different details….
Obsessions that have a moral theme can be explained by using the analogy of the game called “Hot Potato.” Hot Potato is the children’s game where children are sat around, on chairs, in a circle and a potato wrapped in tin foil is given to one of the children and they have to pass it to their neighbour as quickly as they can, pretending it is hot, while music is played and when the music stops the child holding the potato loses the round and has to step out of the game and at the end the last child remaining is the winner! (I used to love that game as a kid! We played it sometimes at birthday parties!).... But in real life, the Obsession (potato) isn’t actually hot, it has the potential to be hot, but the chances of it ever becoming hot,-- are extremely low,... The word “hot” could refer to the concept of danger or risk in real life. When you imagined the “potato” (thing of risk) becoming hot and burning your hands (adversely affecting your life somehow), you imagined a host of unpredictable potential scenarios (even though they were highly unlikely), like the potato could be your hands and you might be a person who works with your hands and then you might fear losing the use of your hands and then suffering a catastrophic domino effect of loss of income and then becoming depressed, and killing yourself and it would all be because of your irresponsibility or failure to be careful,..., and you could never live with that,.... and you wanted to get rid of that risk, so you had to pass it off, hence the hot potato analogy, but you had to pass it off in a way that was “morally permissible.” You couldn’t just hand someone the potato and tell them it was fine, that was lying,..., I couldn’t lie, It would cause me to get extremely anxious,... too (in many cases)., If I gave someone the “potato,” I had to tell them that it could possibly someday become hot, even if it wasn’t actually hot, and there was a very very very slight chance, like a burning snowball in the heart of Hell– chance, I would have to tell the person who might get burned by the ” potentially “hot” potato, about the extremely slight chances of their being burned. It sounds like a crazy game- -it felt “crazy,” but it wasn’t a game at all. It is 100% real. Millions of people have OCD around the world!!!
I began to think about calling David. That way, I could be sure he was alive. I had researched his telephone number a few months prior and I had called him. I had told him how things were going, and how I had these worries and I told him I wanted to call him from time to time, and I asked him if that would be ok. He said yes, but that he was often busy, and that he couldn’t always take a call. I began to call David from time to time and we would chat about various things…. Now, I was calling him to check. Checking is a huge compulsion!!! Checking the stove or the light switches or the car door locks or the water faucets,... those were common compulsions of mine that didn’t really involve another person but checking to see if someone was alive, this is another compulsion that I did engage in, secretly, and it involved other people. When I was about 20 years old I would sometimes call my mom after driving to the lake to make sure that I hadn’t somehow hurt her or run her over when I drove away from the house! It was so irrational and humiliating! The obsessions were irrational but the anxiety they produced was 100% real and nearly impossible to tolerate– hence the compulsions– I thought about it, to call David, to get the reassurance I so desperately sought, and to just get rid of the panic that was gnawing away at me everytime I started into the cognitive cycle of imagining a disaster with the rifle I had sold David and there were so many potentially horrific outcomes (because I have an amazingly creative imagination)…. If I called him, he would perhaps tell me to never call him back again, or, he might not answer the phone….Then, I might worry more, and fall down in a fit, unable to work, unable to provide, and be the subject of community gossip and scorn for the rest of my life.
I dialed the number. My heart beat sped way up,...,
“Hello?”
“Hello is Dave there?”
“You got the wrong number!”
“Oh sorry,” I said.
“Jeez,....”
I called a different listing
“Yallo!” It was David!
I started talking and I pretended to just be calling to say “hi,” I felt embarrassed, and ashamed but I tried not to let that show. I was performing a compulsion. I was calling him to relieve myself of the anxiety that I was feeling about the thoughts of him being hurt, and then me being affected. I swallowed my pride. Nervously. I began to explain how I had heated up the rifle and everything….
“I’m not too worried about it,....” he said in a kind, calm, almost nonchalant manner. He truly didn’t care…. Also, he wasn’t angry! I spoke more, now so relieved, telling him a little about my life, and about my OCD…. It was a difficult and embarrassing call to make, but I was fortunate with David that he was as he was! He could have scoffed at me, and berated me, he could have told me to go fly a kite. But he didn't. He was kind…. How lucky I was.
I wanted to be like David. He was so different from me. He was calm and "normal" and he had done so much more hunting than me….He was a mechanical guy. I started to examine our differences. He was the way he was and I was the way I was. But why?
What if I tried to try to change myself so that I was more like him? Maybe I could, I thought to myself,....
He was doing a different kind of work than me, and he was living in a different way. He spoke differently, he lived in a different place. Maybe, because he did the different things, was why he was different. I began to consider making choices that would make me more like David,…. I was thinking of trying the concept of modeling. I had read about it in a Tony Robbins book- you do the same types of things as a person who is achieving a result that you desire. What if I did things similar to what David was doing? Wouldn't I, theoretically, feel like him, and, if I did things according to ERP theory, I very well might, eventually, be OCD free! The thought of all this made me stop and think about my future.
I began to consider changing the sector of employment that I was in, from private Education in Japan, to construction and the building trades in Canada. It would be a 180 degree turn! Going from private teacher, self-employed, in Japan, to Laborer, a physically harder job in a sector of building that I have very little natural interest or inclination. Perhaps, if I worked hard enough, and proved myself, then I could perhaps become an apprentice. I knew I could work extremely hard, I was good at that…
From the perspective of the ERP Narrative, written by the certified "experts" it seemed like it had the potential to work. If I switched sectors, from education to construction, I would certainly experience more stress, because I had no contacts or experience in that area. The critical issue would be whether the exposure to stress and anxiety would reduce my OCD or not. I contemplated it. What if I chose a line of work, like mechanics, that made me have to learn about stuff that I wasn’t intrinsically interested in? Wouldn’t that be hard? Wouldn’t that be stressful? Maybe that would be a good thing, as counterintuitive as it was…. But, that was a key element to it too–. According to the experts, OCD treatment is usually counterintuitive— if I flooded myself with new and stressful experiences it would result in tons of Exposure and if I tried as hard as I could to embrace the anxiety and live with the uncertainty, instead of doing what my instincts dictated (performing compulsions) maybe, just maybe, I could become free from OCD.
It would be ERP in grand proportions. I had to do something! I liked the idea: grab your destiny by the horns and take charge! Be who you want to be! Rewrite yourself! It sounded good, in theory…. After all, it was the advice of many “experts” and I was leaning toward putting my money on it. What was the worst that could happen? I wanted to know…, oh sweet Lord how I wanted to know! I began to consider my options…. I had a project simmering in the background of my mind, I pondered it carefully , and I began to hatch a plan.