The Ramblings of a "Mad Man"

All,

So I have been a member of this web site since its early days when there were very few members and everyone new everyone. Since then it has blossomed into a very large site with more people joining daily than used to post daily. There is one common theme I have seen in the last few years, specifically with people who struggle with Pure O that I’d like to address. Th constant need for reassurance.

Normally, reassurance is OK in small doses, but what happens quite often, is reassurance becomes an unnoticed compulsion of the original obsession. The obsession may be “What if I could hurt someone I love?”. Many people would be looking for others to say, “Don’t worry, you just have OCD and that is normal.” As true as that statement is, it may not be helping the person we say it to, especially if you notice a constant need for reassurance from that particular person. I can comfortably say this because I was that person at one time.

When I was younger and still not quite convinced of what disorder I was dealing with, I needed reassurance constantly. The need for reassurance was insatiable. If I didn’t get the reassurance I was so desperately seeking I would get anxious and this anxiety would torment me endlessly. I was probably in my early twenties when I decided that I needed to understand more about what was going on with myself, so I read every book on OCD I could get my hands on. Unfortunately not many of them dealt with the Pure Obsessive, but I did find enough information to determine what was going on with myself. No doctor was every able to give me a diagnosis and still to this day, no doctor has. In the reading of these books, some of which I describe in my earlier posts, I have found that the search for reassurance was self defeating and a compulsion I needed to act out in order to regain control over the anxiety and intrusive thoughts. I immediately stopped looking for reassurance from other people and started looking for reassurance within myself. Really, that is what we are all looking for. Not someone else to say “everything will be OK.”, but for us to be able to say that to ourselves and believe it.

So I have been tough on people that look for reassurance on this site. Not because I want to scare them or because of some twisted desire to see other suffer, but because I want to see people examine their own compulsions. I feel the need to point these things out because like I had done previously, a lot of time can be wasted in this particular phase. I know a lot of people come to this site looking for reassurance, and that is OK, unless no amount of reading will satisfy the need for more reassurance. At some point, someone who knows what is going on has to say, “stop”. I spent years telling people everything is going to be OK. Now I’d like to teach or show others that they truly are OK.

Thanks,
OE