A lot of OCD sufferers do what I like to call emotional perfectionism. It’s trying to perfect your emotions based on the situation. This situation happened, so I should feel this. This situation happened, so I should not feel this. It’s this mental rulebook we create around what emotions are appropriate, when they can show up, and when they should show up.
That is an absolute perfect trap for OCD to use against you. Because the more you try to manually assign emotions to situations and control what you’re feeling based on what is happening, the more upset you’re going to become.
I used to do this all the time myself. I would constantly analyse internally, Am I feeling the right thing based on the situation? And that’s exactly why, if someone would tell me a heartbreaking or sad story about themselves, or if they would start crying in front of me, I would sometimes start laughing. When my grandmother passed away and I was told that she had died, my first reaction was to start laughing. It’s not something I found funny, and it wasn’t that I was happy that she had died. Somehow, instinctively, that was just my body’s way of reacting to it in that moment. I see that now as my brain’s deliberate, inappropriateness for the given situation.
The same thing could happen when something happy would happen. There would somehow be some sadness that came with it. Oh, but this happiness is going to end. What’s the point of this happiness when this and this is also happening? So there was always this sense of trying to determine whether my emotions were appropriate or inappropriate for whatever situation I was in.
And then, on top of that, I would start hating myself for having the wrong emotion. Why am I feeling this way? Why am I not feeling what I should be feeling? Why am I not having the right emotional reaction? Why am I not feeling it to the level I should be feeling this? I would also try to put myself into a box of who I thought I should be as a person, and therefore what my emotional reactions should look like.
One of the biggest emotional boxes that I used to put myself in was always trying to be mature, sensible and level-headed. So if I would be annoyed at a friend for something, I wouldn’t express it because I would think, “It’s such a petty thing to be upset about. It’s such a petty thing to complain about. If I complain about this, my friend is going to think I’m not mature, or that I’m being stupid and silly, or that I’m creating drama out of nothing.”
That would then make me feel, Okay, even if I’m internally annoyed, I shouldn’t allow myself to feel this immature emotion. Because I didn’t want to give it a platform. I thought that if I gave that emotion a platform, maybe an even bigger, more immature side of me would start coming out as well. So it was better to internally censor myself.
And this was ultimately coming from a total lack of acceptance of myself for having what I considered to be immature or bad emotions. I had this belief that I was someone who always needed to be mature, sensible and level-headed about everything.
That created this internal struggle where I would then try to overjustify things in my head. So if I would feel jealousy, for example, or if I would feel upset about something very petty or small, I would start explaining to myself why the other person had behaved the way they did. Oh, but they did this because of this reason, and they probably didn’t mean it that way, and if I look at it logically, there’s actually no reason for me to be upset.
I would essentially construct this entire logical framework in my head to try to neutralise the jealousy or the immaturity, so that I could prove to myself, See? I’m being stupid. I don’t need to feel this way.
And because of that, I would also never bring these things up with people. Let’s say somebody cancelled a plan on me last minute and I was annoyed about it. I wouldn’t express that annoyance. I’d just say, “That’s okay.” But internally, I’d be thinking, “I always want them to know that they can be flexible with me. If I get annoyed and express it to them, then the next time they want to cancel last minute, maybe they won’t feel like they have that same ease with me. And I don’t want to be high-maintenance. I don’t want to make them feel bad. What if they think I’m a difficult person? What if they stop wanting to confide in me or rely on me because of my personality? What if they misunderstand who I am?”
So I would never bring these things up. I would never express negative emotions towards people. I always wanted to be the easygoing, mature, understanding guy.
This was the opposite to compulsive confessing. I would compulsively bottle up my emotions. I would bottle up what I was feeling and not let anyone know what I actually felt.
That then created even more anger and resentment internally, because I would want the situation to change, but it wasn’t changing because, obviously, I had never actually communicated anything. Then I would get annoyed with myself. I’d get angry with myself. And I’d also get angry with the other person. Oh, they should have understood. They should be able to pick up on these cues. They should understand this.
I’d think, “Okay, fine, I haven’t expressed my annoyance about that thing, but now they should be able to change.” So I’d end up holding back even more and becoming increasingly frozen and stiff within the friendship.
What’s interesting is that, in other parts of my life, I was actually the opposite. I was a compulsive confessor. So, for example, in romantic situations, or even in close friendships, I would make sure that I over-explained certain things because I was afraid that if I didn’t, it would create distance or a rift between me and the other person.
So you have to understand that this is one of the reasons OCD is so nuanced. It can be incredibly contextual. Someone who is an over-confessor in one area of their life might be a compulsive bottle-upper in another area. That’s why sometimes you do have to look at things situation by situation.
Now, I’m not asking you to meticulously overanalyse every interaction and conversation that you have in your life. That’s not the point. I’m just saying that context matters, and that’s why trying to approach OCD with a blanket approach doesn’t always work. You have to understand what is actually happening in that particular situation and what role OCD is playing in it.
And this is where my emotional perfectionism really came in. I would go in and out of wanting to say things or do things and then stopping myself from saying or doing them. I would try to assign appropriate and inappropriate emotions to situations. I would try to determine which emotions were acceptable and which ones weren’t. And it just became constantly stressful.
Because ultimately, emotions are not something that you can control. You cannot control what emotion you have in what moment. You can control what you do with that emotion and the perspective you attach to it, but you cannot MANUALLY decide which emotion is going to show up.
What you can change is your perspective towards the emotion that you’re experiencing. And that’s ultimately what we’re working on when we’re working together. We’re trying to improve that relationship with your emotions so that you’re not constantly in this nitpicking mode of, Oh, let me weed out the unwanted emotions and keep the ones that are safe and healthy.
Because that’s another form of trying to control your internal experience.