OCD A to Z: B is for Body Fears

My awareness of my body as something to be feared started at age 8 or 9, and as symptoms started cascades of anxiety, I grew to believe that my body was against me, betraying me. I once made a list when I was 19 or 20 of all the different body fears I'd had experienced: swollen lymph nodes, strange moles, pounding in my stomach and on and on. I filled a long sheet of looseleaf, both sides. I would get very angry at my body, imagining it was willfully sabotaging me, generating symptoms. About 10 years ago, I had symptoms I didn't understand, and the fury I felt at my body was intensifying, when I had a sudden thought: My body doesn't know any more than what's going on than my mind does. My body isn't plotting on how to get me anxious. OCD is generating the anxiety based on what I feel in my body, but adding a whole layer of interpretation, quick plunges into fear of serious illness, and increasing my focus on the symptoms.

[Revisiting OCD A-Z from 2011]

OCD A to Z: A is For Assurance

Assurance comes from Old Latin, to secure, to make safe. I believe it's a natural human desire to assure the ones we love, to make them feel safe, and it can seem counterintuitive to put a limit on re-assuring someone who has lots of anxiety and suffers from OCD. Assurance evokes the hymn Blessed Assurance, by Fannie Crosby and Phoebe Knapp which I remember singing in Sunday School, and loving the feeling of certainty, the exuberance of knowing something for sure.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!  
O what a foretaste of glory divine!  
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,  
born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

Refrain:  This is my story, this is my song,  
praising my Savior all the day long;  
this is my story, this is my song,  
praising my Savior all the day long.

I used to try and figure out the difference between "assurance" and "reassurance"--was I seeking information that I really needed, or was I doing a compulsion to lower my anxiety briefly, before researching again and again. I finally accepted that I can't definitively know this, that OCD is crafty in coming up with ways to bluff and say "You really need this information. You really need to search. This is new." My longing to definitively figure everything out is part of the disorder of OCD. Yes, uncertainty is painful for human beings, even without OCD, but OCD tells the lie that you can think your way through using compulsions. Reassurance doesn't last. Reassurance is a false sense of safety and security.

[Revisiting the OCD A-Z series from 2011]