Read Online Brain Lock: Free Yourself From Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Beverly Beyette - Free Book Online
Authors: Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Beverly Beyette
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he not gotten it right then, he might have had to ask it 333 times. These kinds of symptoms are common with severe OCD. The fact that he denied repeating himself indicates that he felt humiliated by having done the compulsion.
While testing an amphibian plane, Hughes insisted on landing in choppy water 5,116 times, although the aircraft had long since proved its seaworthiness. He just kept on and on, and no one could stop him. When this incident was reported in earlier biographies of Hughes, it was explained by Hughes’s need to be in control. Other things in his life were slipping out of control at that time, among them his fortune. That may be part of the explanation for his behavior, but I believe that the answer is less related to deep emotional factors and that Hughes wouldn’t have behaved this way had he not had OCD.
THE CASE OF THE FLYING PAPER CLIPS
Josh had a whole range of bizarre OCD symptoms. One was a fear that he had brushed against someone’s desk at the office, thus causing a paper clip to flip into that hapless person’s coffee cup. In Josh’s worst-case scenario, the person would then drink the coffee and choke on the paper clip. Now, Josh knew there was a one-in-a-million chance that a paper clip would flip into someone’s coffee cup, yet he couldn’t get the idea out of his mind.
Josh then developed an obsession that he had grazed a parked car while driving and, in doing so, had knocked loose the hood ornament or a chrome strip. Then he imagined, “That guy’s driving along the freeway, and the part falls off and kills six people.” Josh went so far as to memorize the license plates of all the cars that regularly parked on the street where he lived so he could check each day to make certain they were there, intact, and everything was fine. But he was constantly plagued by worry about cars that he might have come in contact with during the day and would not be able to trace. Once, he drove two hours in a vain effort to track down a car on which he had inflicted imaginary damage.
Another time, Josh flew to St. Louis on business, flew home to Los Angeles, then turned right around and flew back to St. Louis, intent on finding the car on which he imagined he had loosened the hood ornament.
Josh knew that none of his actions made sense, but he also mentioned—and this shows a deep insight into OCD—that sometimes when dealing with a particularly vexing business problem, he found that his compulsions, unpleasant as they were, had the power to divert him. During a very stressful time, he would literally prefer to be doing the compulsion to thinking about what he was supposed to be doing at work. In the same way, Howard Hughes might have been using a compulsion as an outlet. First, there was just the thrill of that amphibious landing, but he soon developed a compulsion around it. Without behavior therapy, which teaches you how to resist those urges, the urges can escalate into an unstoppable cycle. The lesson is: If you let your emotions cling to an OCD behavior, the behavior can easily get out of control .
In a similar way, Josh tended to have relapses during treatment because, by his own admission, he would let his guard down when his OCD symptoms were, say, 80 percent gone. As a consequence, he’s been dealing with the same symptoms for a number of years, never quite dispatching this devil OCD, doing the Four-Step method just enough to give him a livable comfort level. Then, in times of stress, his OCD flares up badly. Josh had the insight to realize that, in effect, his brain was looking for something mischievous to do all the time he’d put it in neutral. Mentally, he was allowing the OCD to lie in wait and not attacking it aggressively enough.
What he should have been telling himself was that by doing the compulsion, he was only assuring himself that another compulsion would follow, that his ability to function effectively would decrease and his stress level would soar. He needed to be
While testing an amphibian plane, Hughes insisted on landing in choppy water 5,116 times, although the aircraft had long since proved its seaworthiness. He just kept on and on, and no one could stop him. When this incident was reported in earlier biographies of Hughes, it was explained by Hughes’s need to be in control. Other things in his life were slipping out of control at that time, among them his fortune. That may be part of the explanation for his behavior, but I believe that the answer is less related to deep emotional factors and that Hughes wouldn’t have behaved this way had he not had OCD.
THE CASE OF THE FLYING PAPER CLIPS
Josh had a whole range of bizarre OCD symptoms. One was a fear that he had brushed against someone’s desk at the office, thus causing a paper clip to flip into that hapless person’s coffee cup. In Josh’s worst-case scenario, the person would then drink the coffee and choke on the paper clip. Now, Josh knew there was a one-in-a-million chance that a paper clip would flip into someone’s coffee cup, yet he couldn’t get the idea out of his mind.
Josh then developed an obsession that he had grazed a parked car while driving and, in doing so, had knocked loose the hood ornament or a chrome strip. Then he imagined, “That guy’s driving along the freeway, and the part falls off and kills six people.” Josh went so far as to memorize the license plates of all the cars that regularly parked on the street where he lived so he could check each day to make certain they were there, intact, and everything was fine. But he was constantly plagued by worry about cars that he might have come in contact with during the day and would not be able to trace. Once, he drove two hours in a vain effort to track down a car on which he had inflicted imaginary damage.
Another time, Josh flew to St. Louis on business, flew home to Los Angeles, then turned right around and flew back to St. Louis, intent on finding the car on which he imagined he had loosened the hood ornament.
Josh knew that none of his actions made sense, but he also mentioned—and this shows a deep insight into OCD—that sometimes when dealing with a particularly vexing business problem, he found that his compulsions, unpleasant as they were, had the power to divert him. During a very stressful time, he would literally prefer to be doing the compulsion to thinking about what he was supposed to be doing at work. In the same way, Howard Hughes might have been using a compulsion as an outlet. First, there was just the thrill of that amphibious landing, but he soon developed a compulsion around it. Without behavior therapy, which teaches you how to resist those urges, the urges can escalate into an unstoppable cycle. The lesson is: If you let your emotions cling to an OCD behavior, the behavior can easily get out of control .
In a similar way, Josh tended to have relapses during treatment because, by his own admission, he would let his guard down when his OCD symptoms were, say, 80 percent gone. As a consequence, he’s been dealing with the same symptoms for a number of years, never quite dispatching this devil OCD, doing the Four-Step method just enough to give him a livable comfort level. Then, in times of stress, his OCD flares up badly. Josh had the insight to realize that, in effect, his brain was looking for something mischievous to do all the time he’d put it in neutral. Mentally, he was allowing the OCD to lie in wait and not attacking it aggressively enough.
What he should have been telling himself was that by doing the compulsion, he was only assuring himself that another compulsion would follow, that his ability to function effectively would decrease and his stress level would soar. He needed to be
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