Chapter Twenty Six:

A New Idea

 Imagine being locked up in jail. You didn’t commit a crime, but you got locked up anyway. Your life was severely altered. You couldn’t do what you did before. Your whole life had been about freedom, meeting people, going places,..., and all of that was taken from you when you were imprisoned. That is how OCD can make you feel,..., like a prisoner of your own mind.

 

       It is of key importance to understand the natural and instinctual response versus the proposed therapeutic response advocated by experts.  In life, the natural inclination is to take the comfortable way. The natural way is to go with the flow. People naturally choose the easiest way. The easiest, most natural way for anyone is to seek out a job that involves his strong suits. My strong suits were emotional intelligence, which included communication skills and the ability to relate to others in the written and spoken word mediums as well as empathy and strong skills in reading, writing, speaking, and presenting.

 

    Taking the comfortable way in life is the easiest way. You do what you are naturally suited to do. You don’t get as stressed out because you are talented at what you’re doing. You don’t get anxious because you are doing what comes naturally and effortlessly. But what if stress and anxiety were the necessary ingredients for conquering OCD? That was the theory being proposed in modern Western psychological studies, in countless books and articles,.... Taking the easy way was fine but if it meant I would be stuck in “prison” for the rest of my life, I was willing to take the harder route. Or you could say the “therapeutic” approach.

 

     I began to consider it all. To take action against OCD. To change myself. Taking action but doing what? And why? 

 

  So I began considering ERP therapy and what it would look like to just plunge myself into a life where I was forced to do things that made me anxious. I thought of the typical logical flow of life. You were born into a family in a town. You grew up in the town. You took over the family business. You stayed with what was familiar. Everything was familiar. Nothing was unfamiliar. You had very little uncertainty. This was one scenario. You were naturally talented in numbers, so you were an accountant. You followed the path of least resistance, and the logical, natural progression.

 

    But what if you did the opposite? What if you made decisions to purposefully challenge yourself so that you would be forced to experience uncertainty and doubt and if you have OCD, then anxiety as well?

 

     I didn’t want to stay in the grips of the mental prison. I wanted to be free. So I thought all about the plan. Drastic times were upon me! Now I was coming up with drastic measures! People might disagree with my actions and decisions. But that would mean I would feel discomfort, because disagreements trigger discomfort, but that was a good thing according to the theory. I was going to challenge myself, and purposely take the “therapeutic route.” I decided to go for a totally foreign occupation. I was going to try a trade. I wasn’t really interested in “trades”, but…. That was part of the point! How about moving to Vancouver?  It was a bigger city, and I knew almost nobody there. Another perfect breeding ground for uncertainty! Plus it was notorious for its high cost of living. Perfect again, if what I was seeking  out was uncertainty and psychological discomfort and anxiety themselves!! Do you see how I was thinking? I was doing the opposite of what my natural tendencies were. I was choosing the unknown and the grey zones precisely because they were tough and uncertain! 

 

   The plan was extreme, Of that, there was no question! But my wife and kids would feel comfortable in Vancouver. I thought about a job. Trades stood out to me. They were the one thing that I naturally didn’t gravitate towards. Could I weld? No. Did I know anything about mechanics? No. Building? No.

 

    But, I could learn, I thought…,! I could force myself to be interested in it. Anything to  increase anxiety and OCD in the short term in order to reduce it down in the long term. Even if that meant learning a whole new way of earning money, or basically going through Hell. What times—very hard times, (by choice), lay ahead of me! I dove headlong into this new tangent of “adversity and uncertainty seeking” and I prepared myself for a whole new way of thinking, decision-making, and living in general. Make no mistake,..., I chose to seek out adversity and the discomfort of uncertainty, and believe me I found it- in spades!