The main problem with OCD is that it pulls everything which comes near it into its brambles. It can morph anything into its own image and attempted solutions soon become part of the problem. This makes it very difficult to be able to tell what is real and what isn’t. When I try to explain to someone else what is happening [and this goes for this essay too], I am overtaken by the need [compulsion] to explain every detail, in fear that I won’t get things across and be properly understood – this desperate need to confess, and the result of ending up very far from the point, is a solid example of OCD. When my therapist tasked me with writing down how I felt, he warned of how I might end up writing too many pages. The wish to unravel the problem only added more string and potential for tangles. Hopelessness follows these seemingly minor issues with surprising speed. Transfer this process to any larger issue, throw in some more distressing fears, and stand powerless watching chunks of your life fall away. Then add guilt for allowing this to happen, and the cycle will continue. God forbid you let it know what is most dear to you.
In creating these visual poems [using CBT materials – diagrams, mood forms, emotion scales], I was aware almost constantly of how easily OCD could take over – thankfully I had enough knowledge of my problem for this experience to be interesting and not distressing [almost funny?]. I tried to embrace the urge for perfection and what it really meant. The key to escaping the problem is to understand that solutions usually look very counter-intuitive. It’s all about embracing, and other words which rhyme with it [facing, chasing]. I tried to expose enough of what I wanted to, without explaining. In trying not to explain, I stuck to the original idea I had, which was to reflect the nature of intrusive thoughts. This is probably the most important part of these poems to me.
For OCD sufferers the problem begins with attaching meaning and significance to meaningless thoughts [which become known as ‘intrusive’ thoughts once they distress you]. The initial spike of fear and wonder at how you could think such a horrible thing [insert your own] is the drug which hooks you. You obsess over the reasons for why this thought came into your head, and later create compulsive actions to try and atone for/control/push away the likelihood of it happening again. This only cements the cycle which soon turns to torture. What you should have done was to realise that the initial thought was normal/nonsense/brain noise, or even not notice it at all – but you have a malfunction and you notice too much, and 'should' is a bad, bad word. In filling out the forms and diagrams with apparent nonsense [broken bits of my own poems/thoughts/speech] it allowed me to see how my thoughts could just be brain noise. In most cases I used ultra-personal, ultra-detailed phrases or images which could only be seen as nonsense to a stranger-reader – the phrases still have personal significance to me and are not meaningless per se, yet they are put into a context where they sound ridiculous and the focus of meaning shifts. Furthermore, a stranger-reader might find interpretations in the text and attach their own meanings – this here is the reflection, the urge to scrabble for meaning where there might be none, or at least none that you can understand.
An added niceness here is the thought that sufferers are not alone in their strangeness. This is a thought which OCD has long denied me, and which I have happily learned – this is also something I would like to communicate to others. These poems will still appear as nonsense to many readers, and this is fine, even fun, but I have kept in mind the one or two who might see their own strangeness shimmered back to them, should the poems be lucky enough to have that reach. There is potential to view things in terms of complexity, or in terms of simplicity.
On that note, another observation I had while making the poems is that there is a strong presence in them of binary [or ‘black-and-white’] thinking. This is a staple of OCD [and probably all other anxiety conditions] and is something I now catch myself upholding. I make a conscious effort not to think of things in terms of two extremes, because it is too easy to feel that if I am not ‘perfect’, then I must be ‘evil’. Having said that, I think the poems do reveal the close relationship between distress and humour, clinical and artistic, etc. I’m happy for any reader to think that I have not achieved any of what I’ve said here, and that the poems are not effective in a way other than being purely visual – if that is the case, it has at least been a useful exercise for me to do.
Going back to the idea of counter-intuitive solutions. The aspect of CBT which is effective in treating OCD is the introduction of exposure. In exposing yourself to what is terrifying you [no, I mean really, properly leaning into it, screaming up to the church ceiling that you wish your beloved were dead, or accepting that it is not possible to be 100% certain you do not wish your beloved were dead, or that you are not a paedophile], you are able to realise how really it has no power, and equally how your imagined efforts to change things have no power. I’ll resist the urge to explain this any further. Initially I worried that immersing myself in the nonsense while making these poems might be unhealthy, or even ‘dangerous’, but soon saw that it was actually a healthy exercise in exposure. I could embrace the fierceness of the ideas, and the setting out of everything in strict patterns, for the sake of showing myself, whilst being aware that it could flip at any point into something less healthy. Finding the pathway between what is real and what isn’t can be very difficult, and I’m not sure I’ve managed to communicate this effectively, but I’ll stop here before I’ve written too much.