I want to talk a bit about how embracing uncertainty is a key factor in OCD recovery and how much pressure we put on ourselves to achieve this illusion of certainty.
All of us with OCD think things like, “If I knew I wasn’t going to hurt anyone my life would be perfect”, “If I knew I loved my partner everything would be great.” These thoughts are prime examples of trying to be certain and they really spur on the compulsions and internal checking, keeping you locked in the fear cycle. Our brains tell us we are in danger if we do not get certainty about this particular idea. So we ruminate, we test ourselves and we do compulsions, trying to achieve this made up certainty that we believe we couldn’t possibly live life without knowing.
Think about it this way: can you rationally/scientifically say that you will never get cancer in your life? No. Can you scientifically prove that you won’t ever hurt anyone? No. So that shows you that being certain is an illusion, it’s unachievable and you don’t need it to survive. You need to take a leap of faith and embrace the uncertainty because life is full of it.
Once you realize it’s impossible to achieve certainty and you can live without it you should find you start to search for it less. It is something you have to keep on top of and remind yourself of. Something I recommend is when you notice you’re trying to achieve certainty think about all the times you’ve tried to reach for it, and ask yourself have I ever achieved it before?
It’s an illusion we live by that we need certainty on things to be happy and to be able to live life. There’s absolutely no universal law to say that you have to know X or Y isn’t going to happen. It is just something that your brain is telling you that you need to know because you are anxious about it. It’s only you feeding yourself that lie. You can live with happily uncertainty, if you let yourself. You can’t be certain that bad things aren’t going to happen, you can’t be in control of everything.
It’s time to embrace uncertainty, OCD recovery requires taking risks and getting out of your comfort zone.