Some time ago while reading a blog post on autism I learnt about the concept of existential OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder):
Existential OCD involves intrusive, repetitive thinking about questions which cannot possibly be answered, and which may be philosophical or frightening in nature, or both. The questions usually revolve around the meaning, purpose, or reality of life, or the existence of the universe or even one’s own existence. These same questions might come up in a university philosophy or physics class. However, most people can leave such classes or read about these topics and move on to other thoughts afterwards. Similar to other forms of OCD, individuals with Existential OCD can’t just drop these questions. – source
Then I read a graphic novel on OCD and I started wondering if I have OCD, on top of autism and adhd. My ongoing problem is that all my symptoms – adhd, autism, ocd – are relatively mild. They do not prevent me from functioning in my daily life, but everything accumulates into a lifelong sadness and fatigue. It is very exhausting to feel like I have to fight against my brain every moment just to live a normal-ish life.
I am increasingly at that age where people around me will start to get sick, and some will pass on from this world. I feel a deep sense of dread whenever I feel the prolonged vibration of my devices, indicating an incoming phone call. These days, even text message notifications give me a mini-jolt. I remember the feelings I have felt when I had received news of people passing away or being hospitalised.
Since terrible things can happen in the very next moment or ten years later, this is a torturing way to live life. It is not like I consciously fret every single moment, but there is a chronic background anxiety that haunts me everywhere I go. Sometimes especially before I fall asleep, the thoughts start to take a life of its own and become truly intrusive. It is as though the already weak psychic wall I have starts to lose its strength once my brain starts blurring the lines between the conscious and unconscious.
Buddhist monastics and the stoics are known to contemplate and meditate about death regularly:
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus told his students that when you kiss your child goodnight, you should remind yourself that your child could die tomorrow. – source
It makes me wonder if people who voluntarily become monastics or philosophers have some form of existential OCD. To be so aware of the potential of impending loss can be a very depressing existence, so perhaps the only way out is to stare at it in its face by consciously contemplating about it and making it a regular practice, rather than letting it haunt us into shrinking our lives. I suppose it is like self-initiated exposure therapy.
I have allowed these intrusive thoughts and feelings to paralyse me for so much of my life, but once in a while I muster enough psychological strength to rebel against it by consciously living a fuller life than I would have had. This blog may (or may not idk) perpetuate the impression that I do plenty of things, but my default state is that I am often too tired to feel like doing anything. Living life itself is a constant battle for me. I would just lie horizontal the entire day if I gave in to my feelings. I look at my partner and she is driven by her innate life force in her. To her, stopping is an unnatural state. She has so many things she wants to do. I have nothing I truly want to do.
But it is tiring to keep rebelling against one’s self. Sometimes I burn out trying to shake myself out of my deadened existence. There is some magic dance between letting myself be, and shaking myself up. I have not learnt that dance yet.
Can I train the brain like I train my strength? The signals of the physical body is obvious. We can progressively overload our muscles close to failure to gain strength and muscle. But the signalling of the brain is a lot more obscure to me. I can only rely on qualitative measures like my journalling, and even that requires a conscious effort to review them.
Buddhism teaches that there can be a sort of refuge to be found when one leans into impermanence instead of running away from it. as the There is nothing permanent except change, they say. If we anticipate change it is less shocking when it happens, and we may be more ready to encounter it. Sometimes in our effort to escape pain we end up escaping life itself. Can I become a person who is able to endure the suffering that comes with loss?
I often wonder what was it like to live at a time when there was mass violence like the world wars. Do people get desensitised? Or do they live in a numbed, deadened state like me? Or do some attempt to find joy even in the harshest of times?
I think of stories of ancient taoist philosophers renunciating the world, going into the deep mountains to become hermits. Did they find peace by choosing not to witness the violence and politics of their times?
It is ironic that I often think about ending my own existence yet I detest the idea of wasting my life. But I don’t know what it means to not waste my life. Busy-ness can be a kind of wasting too, just like sitting in silence can be enriching. Is it even possible to live life fully, as though it is a container that can be stuffed full? Or is life inherently full of unavoidable regrets, and the key to fully live is to bravely choose to trudge ahead despite knowing there will be regrets, to do our best even if our best inevitably leads to a ton of mistakes? The only way to not make mistakes in life is not to take risks and not to attempt new things, which is also the fastest way to accumulate regrets.
I am skeptical that my brain can be rewired to perceive life differently. But maybe I can perceive my mis-wired brain differently. Even if I know it could be ultimately a futile exercise I must learn to live as though I believe otherwise, just like they say even if life has no meaning we have to live as though it has one.
If eradicating the intrusion of my thoughts is impossible, can I learn to be unbothered by them one day? If I no longer fear the idea of death, does that make me less human? Can I live my life with as much joy as there is suffering? And if there is not joy that I can experience, how about a sense of depth and expansion?
I think I am trapped by some conventional idea of happiness or wellness. But it takes experience and skill to see that we are all different, and what looks like a thriving life for me may be something I am still unable to recognise or imagine.
I wonder if I’ll be able to find the answers I need before it is too late. Or to be able to accept that maybe my life is simply an ongoing search and there may not be answers waiting at the end. That even if I am permanently dysfunctional in some forms, I can learn to appreciate the healthy parts of me. Or that I finally learn to accept my chronically fatigued state of existence, to see that just to co-exist with myself and stay alive is the work, instead of chronically judging myself for always not being and doing enough.
Reading my past journal entries yesterday I came across some notes about Winnicott. He believed that spontaneity is an outcome when one is healthy. I am seldom spontaneous, and every act is a prolonged inner persuasion. There is such a thing as trying too hard, and sometimes it backfires on me when I try to compel myself too much.
But I think for people like me spontaneity can only arise after being cultivated by a practice. It is like the formation of a new habit. It is difficult at first but once we start getting used to it, it becomes goes on auto-pilot. So I nudge myself into doing things even though I don’t feel like it, and each time I have an intrusive thought I try to counter it with a different chosen thought of my own, hoping that one day some of these will become second nature to me. There are many things I used to be so afraid of but now I am no longer afraid of them. But the fear of death and loss seems unconquerable.
I guess I don’t have to conquer these fears, but gently allow them to sit alongside my self. Maybe instead of haunting me into shrinking they will simply become part of me. Like a person who can see ghosts no longer fear them because they are experienced as part of the environment.
Is this wishful thinking? But hope and wishes keep us sane and alive.
note: I often wonder what is it like for a third-party to read my posts. Do they sound like they are rambling incoherently? Are my thoughts convoluted and nonsensical? I’m just glad there is a space for me to express these winding thoughts that go nowhere in my mind, at least now there is somewhere for them to live. This is just a tiny slice of my mind: imagine being surrounded by these thoughts every moment of my life, and they are already the gentler ones, having gone through the process of being translated into the written form. Sometimes they exist as a ball of dreadful and anxious feelings – I guess that is why I have to write them out, if not they will continue to exist as unspecified balls of weight swirling around me. Writing this is cathartic for me, even if just for a while before they start forming and growing again. Like dust balls.
At least the obsessive compulsion outputs itself in words.