avoidance avoid……
Question:
Can OCD cause all sorts of Phobias, because a person can feel if they try something it can’t possibly come out right? - uncertainty – I might be afraid to get in my car because I feel it won’t start or will break down. The mechanic tells me it runs fine, but I just FEEL it will break down, so I don’t want to drive it and get trouble. I might be afraid to check my balance in an account because I am afraid the balance will be too small even though I am the only one on the account and I didn’t write any checks or use the debit card. I know logically it’s not true but I feel it is true, and ask someone else to check it for me. I might be afraid to find a new location because I feel I will have to get lost, even though I in fact rarely get lost. I might be afraid to buy something because all the details in the store are new to me and confuse me, and the store frightens me as a result. My family reassures me that anyone is confused with something new and cannot get it all right with no experience, and that what I am buying is not expensive and there is little to fear. I still feel I cannot approach buying it. I use old things or do without instead of buying new ones. I do not refer to major purchases, but small things like buying a radio under $100 or a shopping cart or a cheat voice recorded under $100 but I cannot approach it so my wife buys it for me.
Response:
Hi there…. I know that for me, obsessive tendencies cause all sorts of anxiety….and in a couple of cases, have caused actual phobias, I think. This was a big one for me, and I’m getting better with it: I am always afraid of losing control away from my home, away from my safe place. This causes all sorts of dilemnas for me. One thing that I became obsessive about was keeping my car full of gas, so that I’d never run out and have to get help from someone (which to me, spells being out of control) It’s a good thing to keep gas in your car, but it’s getting a little bit unhealthy when you’ve only driven 5 miles and are putting 37 cents worth of gas in it, which is absurd. But a few years back that’s where I was with this particular obsession. It’s a huge effort for me to not put gas in my car when I’ve driven somewhere, but I’ve made myself do this, so that now I can almost have the tank 1/2 empty before I put gas into it. You know, thinking about this now, it seems that a lot of my phobias have this obsessive element to them, and the obsession usually stems from my basic fears, that of being trapped in a situation or of losing control of myself, of my mind. You said, "I might be afraid to find a new location because I feel I will have to get lost, even though I in fact rarely get lost." The thing about obsessions and phobias is that we can know that they are irrational, but that doesn’t make them go away, until we start truly believing, knowing, that they are irrational. This is cognitive therapy, an example of it. The behavioral part of this therapy is when we start to put into practice what we have learned. For example, for me, that means not putting gas into my car when I’ve only driven 30 miles.
