Battling OCD
No. 42
Hi there:
A belated happy new year to all, both western and Chinese lunar.
In this issue, I feature an episode from the podcast Story FM about two OCD patients, which first aired on Sept. 2. Usually, I pen my own introductions to the pieces I translate, but in this case, Story FM founder Kou Aizhe prefaces the episode so eloquently I decided to just quote him instead:
We might have all said something along these lines. “I’m a bit OCD. I have to keep my desk perfectly neat.” “I’m a bit OCD. I have to clutch to something when I sleep, otherwise I can’t fall asleep.”
Comments like that come off as a casual joke, the term “OCD” being a label for an idiosyncracy, but they in fact contain a massive misunderstanding.
That’s because true OCD isn’t matter of habit. It’s matter of war. It’s a silent war happening deep in your brain.
On one hand, you have the intrusive thought saying: “You didn’t lock the door. Catastrophe is imminent,” “You’ve been contaminated” or “You’re going to hurt someone you love.” On the other, what’s left of your reason is forcing you to repeat ritualistic behavior over and over again, as a means of putting out this inferno of anxiety. It may be checking a door lock repeatedly, washing your hands frantically or counting in your head.
You’re not seeking perfection. You’re trying to save yourself.
This isn’t a battle with the external world. It’s a battle for control with your thought patterns and behavior.
Feel free to share your feedback by sending an e-mail to mlee921@gmail.com.
Take care and see you soon.
—ML
Total Mental Warfare: How OCD Crippled Me and How I Won My Life Back
Narrators: Da Zhi and Da Ke
Transcribed by Ma Xiaocheng
DZ:
1.
My name is Da Zhi. I’m 35 years old. I come from Guangdong Province. Currently, I work at an Internet company in Beijing.
My home province is Shandong. When I was 4, my parents moved to Guangdong for work and didn’t return until I was in sixth grade. It was around then I befriended a few classmates who were better students. They scored nearly full marks on their exams, whereas I perennially scored around 70 points. After I became close to these classmates and looked at my test scores again, I’d think: “Hey, how come they perform so well on their tests? Why don’t I work harder and match their performance?” So I subconsciously had the motivation to work harder.
What stiffened my resolve was also the way teachers treated different students. They never paid attention to average students and even openly despised students who did poorly. For example, there were these sisters in our class who didn’t do well in school. Our teacher would make fun of them in front of the entire class all the time. He’d tell the entire class: “Look, if you don’t study hard, you’ll be like the X sisters. What a dynamic duo they are!”
Anyone could detect the explicit irony. I’m also an extremely proud person. On one hand, I didn’t want to be mocked like that by our teacher. On the other, I told myself that I had to become a top student.
It wasn’t only the teachers. I was also triggered by my older sister at home. She was in the same grade. Before I applied myself, she was always named a “triple-stellar” student—outstanding in character, physical health and grades. Our walls were plastered with her certificates. None of them were mine.
2.
Due to the triggers I just mentioned, I started to work hard on my studies. In sixth grade, I’d study until past midnight. That upped the pressure immensely in a short period of time. In retrospect, that’s also when the compulsive behavior first began.
After a long period of studying, I’d subconsciously twist my neck. Initially, it was simply a form of relaxation. But eventually it was no longer relaxing and became a subconscious reflex. The twisting also became more frequent. I’d feel horrible if I didn’t twist my neck to the point where I couldn’t do anything until I did.
The escalation of the compulsive behavior came in the summer after eighth grade. My cousin was visiting and wanted to take us swimming in the stream near our house. Initially, I was excited, but when we got to the bank of the stream I noticed other kids were already there, one of whom I recognized. That former classmate had dropped out after graduating from primary school. In my eyes, he was a loafer, a standard poor student. As soon I saw him, I didn’t want to swim anymore.
I felt that because the other kids had swum already, if I popped in, their faults, such as their poor academic performance and idle behavior, would spread to me. I would be contaminated. At that point, my dad and cousin were already in the stream, asking why I hadn’t followed. They pleaded with me multiple times, but I refused steadfastly. My dad was puzzled, but he didn’t make much of the situation and shifted his focus to showing my cousin and others a good time. Ashore, I was actually dying to jump in, but a voice deep down in me told me: “You can’t go. If you do, you’ll get contaminated.”
While my brain was running in overdrive, the few “bad kids” had finished swimming and left. They happened to pass me. As they swung their heads as they walked by, I looked on as my former classmate flung a drop a water onto my arm. Oh no! I was thrust into extreme discomfort instantly. I kept thinking: “Has my arm been contaminated? Will that drop of water turn me into a poor student like them?”
On the way home, I kept glaring at that drop of water on my arm. All I could think was: “I have to wash it off repeatedly, otherwise I will lose my intelligence and become stupid. I’ll become shitty students just like them.” As soon as I got home, I immediately turned the faucet. I even went to the extent of avoiding use of my “contaminated” arm, using my other hand to turn on the tap instead. I rinsed my arm once, twice and three times. I made sure I rinsed my entire arm. After Lord knows how many rinses, I still thought to myself: “Did that work? Did I rinse my arm properly? Is it completely clean?” And then I’d get up and walk over to the faucet and rinse my arm two or three times again.
On another occasion, my sister invited a classmate of ours home. Even though she had got into junior high, she struggled at school and struck me as a loafer, also someone classified a “poor student” in my mind. By normal logic, she was my classmate too and I should have welcomed her presence that day. But because she was a “poor student,” I kept on avoiding her. When she was in the living room, I stayed in my bedroom. When she was in the kitchen, I remained in the living room. I just couldn’t be in the same space as her. Come noon, my sister actually asked her to stay for lunch. In my heart, I deeply resented the move. Our of courtesy, I couldn’t ask the classmate to leave, so in the end I skipped lunch that day.
Granny and Big Sis summoned me to the table multiple times, but I stayed in my room. Only when the classmate left did I dare open my door. Then I carefully took the bowl and chopsticks she used to the kitchen for repeated washings. In the process of moving the utensils to the kitchen, I even avoided touching them directly. I use something as a buffer and rinsed the utensils in the kitchen several times.
Yet when I returned to my room after the rinsing, my anxiety did not decline. I scanned every corner of the apartment for items the young woman had touched. By that time, my brain was overloaded because I thought anywhere she sat and anything she touched was dirty. I broke down, you know? I broke down because there were too much to handle. I couldn’t cope with so many contaminated items. When it was just a drop of water on my arm, my brain could still function, but in this case, there were too many items for me to pay attention to. There was too much information. I broke down in tears. In my mind, I kept blaming my sister: “Why did you invite her home?”
After that encounter, I started using my chopsticks upside down whenever I ate at home. After meals, I’d wash my bowl and chopsticks separately. From that day onward, I also kept my utensils apart from the ones other members of the family used.
At school, if a student I considered “poor” tapped or touched me, I’d wash my hands frantically when I got home, dozens of times a day. At that point, my dad noticed my odd behavior. He started asking: “How come you have to wash your hands so many times every day?” I also began to shy away from conversations with my sister and dad because most of my attention was preoccupied with all these tiny details. I didn’t have energy to think about anything else.
Eventually, my sister noticed I was struggling and asked my dad: “Hey, has my little brother become clinically depressed?” She told my dad: “You better take him to the hospital for a checkup.” After that conversation, my dad relayed the matter to his oldest brother, my uncle. First Uncle said: “Skip the hospital. Just give him a brutal beating. A beating will fix him.”
Luckily, my dad always treated me well. He never laid a hand on us our entire lives. In the end, he followed my sister’s advice and took me to a local psychiatric hospital.
3.
When we went, my dad didn’t tell me it was a psychiatric hospital. If he did, I definitely wouldn’t have gone. Ultimately, the doctor’s diagnosis was obsessive-compulsive disorder. That was the first time I was aware that I was sick and that the illness was called OCD.
The doctor prescribed a bit of anti-anxiety medication, but I barely took any, because I thought the medication would control my mind and make me stupid.
When I returned to school after summer break, my condition worsened. I started spitting furiously because I thought my saliva was extremely dirty. That’s because I thought someone’s saliva sprung into my mouth during a conversation. I felt contaminated again, so I had to spit out my saliva.
But after one spit, I didn’t feel sufficiently cleansed, so I kept on spitting. During class, I’d lower my head and repeatedly spit next to the right bottom corner of my desk. Eventually, my teacher noticed the issue because there was always a big pool of saliva beneath my desk. He had no choice but to move my desk to the side of the room because if I sat in the middle, such a giant pool of saliva was bound to affect my classmates.
I remember clearly how a few female classmates would chitchat and cast strange glances my way when they saw me spit. I especially remember their gaze. It felt like they were saying: “Wow, this boy is so weird. How come he keeps on spitting? Look at that big pool of saliva next to the corner of his desk. How gross.”
In retrospect, I can empathize with them, but the way they looked at me at the time caused me a great deal of pain. I didn’t want to spit but I felt extremely dirty and couldn’t control myself.
Later on, to cure me of my spitting habit, my family actually sought out a sort of a shaman figure in town. I have no idea what the shaman said, but my memory is that my family came back and put a pair of scissors under my pillow. Of course it didn’t work.
4.
I started getting better for good when I self-healed in seventh grade. I was at wit’s end. I couldn’t control my behavior. I cried in private many times. I had absolutely no energy left to handle my studies. I also didn’t have energy to communicate with my family and convey my emotions. My classmates thought I was extremely disgusting. So I thought to myself: “Why? How come I’m the only one with this illness?”
I thought of suicide, but I didn’t have the courage to execute. I forgot the exact day, but on one occasion when I was wallowing in pain, I decided to let go completely. I thought to myself: “I’ve even contemplated suicide. I can even accept death. Why can’t I accept the “bad?” I had an epiphany. Bring it on. Let me try to let the bad consequences bloom.”
I stopped demanding myself to become the top student that teachers desired. I started hanging out with the “bad” kids. It turns out they didn’t talk about their studies or exams. They talked about gaming at Internet cafes all night. I was full of envy. Deep down, it’s something I wanted to try as well, but I didn’t have the money, so I couldn’t actually go. Still, I had a ball and was fascinated just chatting with them. Just talking to them about gaming and so on was extremely interesting.
They also exposed me to many things I didn’t know about. For example, I thought the BBK reading pen was only used for studying. They told me it can be used for gaming. I also remember a classmate brought a PSP console to class. Wow! How could something be so much fun? These are all things I had never come in contact with before. After letting go, I suddenly realized the world could be so colorful, and so I started to fool around with and chase my new friends furiously. From that point on, my personality transformed. I evolved from an introverted child to one that was extroverted and cheerful. Even my parents and I myself could sense the change.
Gradually, my attention shifted away from the tiny details. It felt as if a new window opened and I emerged from the darkness. There was even one time when I broke our homeroom teacher’s glasses when I was fooling around with a classmate. The consequence was being named during a formal meeting for the entire grade. I had never been punished at all up until that point. But by then my mindset was extremely healthy. I didn’t care about things like that anymore. It was OK.
Objectively speaking, my grades declined. I went from third in the class to 10th. But I wasn’t anxious at all. I didn’t care about the slide. I feel quite happy now. I no longer dwell about the things I used to obsess about in the past.
I feel extremely fortunate that I could shed my problem back then. When I got to university, I attended an open lecture by a psychology professor. He described the case of an OCD patient. The patient didn’t leave his apartment at all. His family delivered his food. If you opened his door, you could see his bed surrounded by garbage. The only clean location was his bed. The bed was spotless. Another clean place was the path to his bathroom and the bathroom itself. The rest of the apartment was filled with garbage. He showered dozens of times a day, constantly. The professor said when he learned of the case, the patient was already in his early 30s. In other words, he was still trapped by his OCD when he was in his 30s. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if I didn’t tackle my OCD in seventh grade. My life would probably resemble his.
5.
There’s another incident I remember clearly. I was basically fully recovered by the time I was in uni. Our family started a breakfast business and hired an auntie. The auntie’s son also had OCD. She learned from my family that I had OCD. When I returned home for summer break, she brought her son to our shop. She said her son also spat furiously to the point where he had to take leave from school. She was hoping that I could counsel him as a former patient. I said a lot of things at the time. I expressed empathy and shared the way I coped. But eventually I noticed the boy wasn’t paying attention. At that moment, I knew I couldn’t help him overcome his problem because his focus wasn’t on me.
DK:
My name is Da Ke. I’m 42 years old. I live in Beijing.
I was a rather strong student when I was a kid. As my family put it, they never had to worry about my studies growing up. My worst result as a kid was placing 20-something in my class in an exam. I cried hysterically. I felt I did so poorly. Back then I was quite extreme. It was as if I was a clean freak. I thought to myself: “How come I ranked in the same league as such poor students? The same rank? That’s not who I am.” After that exam, I never dropped out of the top 10 of my class.
But things changed when I got to ninth grade. Suddenly the pressure of getting into senior high popped up in my life. There were two senior highs in my city. One was No. 1 Senior High and the other Experimental High. Both were elite provincial high schools. Only junior high students who ranked in the top 10 of their respective classes or higher could get into these two schools.
Once I heard a saying. I can’t remember if it was a teacher who said it or I heard it somewhere else. The saying went: “Those who accomplish great things always steel their determination, strain their muscles and emaciate their bodies.”
I became symptomatic from the moment I heard that quote.
1.
I started having to sort through my thoughts every morning. I’d ask myself: “Why do I have to study?” And then come up with six reasons for studying and verify if each one was legitimate. If they were, then I felt should study and I’d force myself to study.
The moment I opened my eyes every morning, I was lucid and my brain was empty. But one second later that thought formed in my head and my brain started running.
The question of “Why do you have to study?” emerged not just every morning, but also every afternoon.
And it didn’t rest after I reasoned the thought through once. I’d ask myself again: “Does that make sense?” and go through the thought again. And again: “Does that make sense?” and walk through the thought again.
These thoughts consumed a great deal of my energy. If my energy bar was 100 percent at its max, then 80 percent was spent pondering these questions—and obsessing with them constantly. That burnt nearly all my RAM. The end result was that I couldn’t study or listen to lectures.
The craziest state is when your brain is preoccupied with all your thought processes. At that point, you are numb to the objects around you. For example, I’d think: “How do human beings drive their hands to hold something?” If I didn’t get to the bottom of that question, I couldn’t hold anything.
Do I want to hold it out of personal will? Or is it the result of my thinking? Or instinct? If I can’t get to the bottom of it, how can I move? I didn’t know how I should move. I didn’t even know which foot I should set forth first when I set off for school.
When I approached a pedestrian path laid with brick, before I took the first step, I’d think: “Wait, I should step on that brick. If I step on that brick, something bad may happen in the future. I should step on the brick next to it.”
And then I’d retrace my steps and step on the “right” brick before proceeding. Initially, I wasn’t aware of this sort of obsessive thinking, but eventually I realized I was burning a great deal of energy on these trivial matters. I didn’t have the energy to study, so I started pondering how to cure myself.
I remember my first strategy was to bang my head against a horizontal bar. The reason is when I once accidentally bumped my head against it, it dawned on me: “Hey, that hurts. I feel something. My whole head is ringing. It feels numb.” Then I thought to myself maybe this was a way of rebooting myself. So I tried to bang my head on purpose, and again. Obviously that failed.
At wit’s end, I could only return to tackling the questions I had failed to resolve. Maybe if I resolved them there would be hope. But the reality is when obsessive thinking kicks in, the problems are never-ending. There is no finishing line.
2.
At that time, if we wanted to get into an elite senior high school, there was another pathway without making the cutoff score in the entrance exam. If you missed the cutoff but still had a decent score, you could gain admission as a transfer, but the price was a 15,000 yuan (US$2,180) fee.
That was 15,000 yuan back in 1998. My dad said: “That’s how much your mom earns in three years if she doesn’t drink or eat.” That comment kept popping up throughout my life. It remains absolutely fresh. For the longest time, I loathed the comment and I kept reminding my father what he said and its impact at the time. I told him I could never forget the line. That’s because I undoubtedly loved my mother wholeheartedly and the comment was a form of emotional blackmail. The subtext of the line was: “No matter what, you need to make the cutoff for your mother’s sake.”
Eventually, I did get into an elite senior high, but unfortunately it was as a transfer. In retrospect, I don’t think I studied much in my third year of junior high because 80 percent of my energy was spent fighting my obsessive thoughts.
And only when I arrived at my elite senior high did I understand that “elite” didn’t mean you had made it. It simply meant you had entered an even more brutal arena. Before that, your competition was the masses. But at an elite senior high, your classmates were the top few from their respective pools. Everyone was a stellar student. Everyone was extremely competitive. Everyone was studying. No one was chitchatting. No one fooled around in the classroom. There was no laid-back atmosphere. All there was was studying.
The first day of school left the deepest impression. When I entered my classroom, it felt suffocating.
“Bow down, pick up your pen, lower your head and start working on your exercise book,” the teacher declared.
It was also then that test-taking, which had been my strong suit, stopped feeling like a breeze. As hard as I worked, I could only raise my class ranking by five spots.
Before I knew it, it was the second year of senior high. The obsessive thinking kept up. When I could no longer deal with the torture, I started considering suicide. This wasn’t a bad thing. To me, it was a huge form of liberation. Just the thought of it brought mental and physical release and temptation. That’s because if you try to overcome the thinking, you’re faced with a countless number of problems, but if you seek death, the problems disappear.
The process of thinking about how to die cheered me up and I could take advantage of that joy to study.
But that wasn’t a long-term solution, until the day came when I really wanted to die. I decided to shatter the glass in one of our cabinets and use a shard to slit my wrist.
I remember I took action at night, at around 8 p.m. The rest of the family was watching TV in the living room. I was in my room. I had gone ahead and smashed the glass in a cabinet. After I was done, I picked up a piece of glass and waved it over my wrist for a long time. In the end, I put down the shard and sought out my parents in the living room. I said: “Mom and Dad, can you come in?” When they got to my room, they saw the shattered glass on the floor and asked me what happened.
I said: “I want to die. I want to kill myself with this piece of glass, but I also don’t want to die because I know there are a lot of highlights in life I haven’t experienced yet. I’ve seen them on TV. Still, death is an extremely tempting choice. I hope you can help me.”
My parents’ response was they couldn’t comprehend what was going on. They were baffled as to why I wanted to die. Their thinking was they took extremely good care of me, cooked proper meals for me and we had a decent standard of living. I was a decent student who attended an elite school and enjoyed material comfort. Why would I want to die? Where did that come from? Did something happen?
3.
Their understanding was that I was under too much stress. It so happened that my aunt worked at the psychiatric hospital in our city, so they took me there. The doctor’s diagnosis at the time: mid-level anxiety disorder and mild OCD.
The doctor prescribed medication: an anti-anxiety medication and a sleeping pill. Neither had much effect after half a month. When I went back, the doctor prescribed a new medication: Prozac.
This was strong stuff. I couldn’t take a single capsule every time. I had to take it apart and split it into two servings. I ate half in the morning and half in the afternoon. The medication made me quite high and my obsessive thinking disappeared.
Could you believe it? All of a sudden my brain was emptied of all thoughts. I had total peace. I was back to a normal state.
After about half a month on Prozac, I stopped briefly, but then I would gradually feel: “Hey, it seems that I’m slowly getting sucked into another thought pattern.” It felt as if I was caught in quicksand. It’s not like bang, an obsessive thought suddenly popped up in my head. What you feel is: “Hey, it seems as if I’m starting to obsess again.” When I felt that I was going to get swept up again, I took half a pill. Afterward, I’d think: “I can ignore the problem. I don’t have to resolve it.”
After a month on medication, I finally found a normal baseline. This baseline was extremely important to me because I used to be a normal person. Once I entered obsessive thinking mode, I couldn’t remember what normal felt like in that state. It was lost on me.
For example, it’s as if you had been poor for a long time and felt that rundown furnishings at home were the norm. And then you’re suddenly relocated to a lavishly renovated apartment and told this is your home. Only then do you realize that that’s your real home. Medication helped me find a normal baseline and made clear to me that my previous approach of searching for answers ad nauseum might not work.
That’s why I’ve always believed that OCD medication is the top choice, although I did try to stop taking it later on. One of the reasons was that it was too expensive. I believe it cost 150 yuan a box and that would only last half a month. In 1998, 150 yuan was a lot of money. Back then my parents maybe earned 1,500 yuan a month. But in retrospect, I didn’t really solve my problem completely. That’s because even though I found a baseline and a normal state after going off medication, I was faced with the new challenge of how to keep returning to that baseline.
First, I realized I had to find a way to relax. So I started studying in a more relaxed manner. I also started reading comic books and hanging out in Internet cafes again, as well as taking part in other recreational activities.
Obsessive thoughts would still surface in the process, but I’d try to stop them. It felt like being hit by a huge gust and walking against the wind. The most comfortable response is to turn around and comply with the OCD and obsessive thinking. That way you can run.
Now if you’re determined to fight the OCD, to not think and brave the wind, then what else can you do? All your energy is spent fighting the wind. At that point, my brain is frozen. From the outside, I’d look like a puppet, completely frozen.
I couldn’t handle text. Even when it came to comic books, which have minimal text, I had to exert myself. I also couldn’t play video games. Take Counter-strike, for example. The screen is constantly changing. When I’m overloaded with information and the pace is too fast, I can’t process at all.
So the price you had to pay for stopping the obsessive thoughts was to do absolutely nothing. Your brain is frozen. The good news is even when I was frozen, it would only last half a day. I’d feel better in the afternoon. After two or three hours of normalcy in the afternoon, the wave of obsessive thoughts would return. When that happened, all I could do was battle the thoughts.
The freeze would last until 9 p.m. And then I could catch a breather and do my homework for a bit. That was my daily routine. That’s how I spent the entire third year of senior high. And then I got into a second-tier university.
4.
The fact is life became unusually relaxed when I got to uni. Sometimes I didn’t have to go to class, let alone study. There was no pressure to do anything. At that point, I had more time to sleep and I could finally devote all my energy to fighting my obsessive thoughts. I used to still have to study after fighting the thoughts. Now I didn’t have to study anymore, so I could use all my energy to battle them. The worst-case scenario was freezing up. So be it! Then let me lie in bed all day!
When I started fighting the thoughts all out, that’s when I realized that the frozen state was for real. Sometimes it lasted more than a day. It could be up to three days, but I’d reboot after three days. When I rebooted after being comatose for three days, it felt like my world was reborn: “Hey, my brain is gradually functioning. It’s gradually running again. I can think more clearly. The pressure to do battle is gone.”
The problems that baffled me before were answered naturally. Initially, I could stay normal for three days. Then it was half a month. Ultimately, it was three months. The process of recovery got quicker and quicker. And once I recovered, I had fewer relapses. It was a process of beating the condition into submission. Eventually, I would only have two or three episodes a year.
Now I have a new form of co-existence with OCD. When the disease attacks you, when you engage in battle with it, the end result isn’t you beating it or it defeating you. It’s a state of co-existence. Plus you can make use of it. I’ve always been a good student and that didn’t come out of nowhere. People like that have certain qualifies. I’m a person who enjoys deep thinking more than usual.
And OCD is a great match for that quality. When I’m faced with a real, concrete problem, with OCD in play, I become more focused. Does that mean I get sucked into obsessive thinking? No. I know what it feels like to be sucked in. Being sucked in means wanting to stop but not being able to. Now I’m someone who can stop whenever I want to. I can now harness my OCD tendencies to work more effectively and live a better life.
5.
When my elder child was born, a doctor told me out of the blue that her head was a little small. I read tons of literature and learned that the condition is called microcephaly. A baby head one standard deviation smaller than the norm was considered microcephaly. Our kid’s head size was 2.5 times smaller than the norm. There was a 75 percent chance that her intelligence was subpar in that scenario.
The doctor informed me of the condition when my daughter was 1 1/2. My research told me that the golden period for treating the condition was when she was six months old. We had missed it. I was in extreme pain at the time. My wife and I had been in a relationship for six years before getting married because there is a big gap in our family backgrounds. Initially, our families did not approve. You could say that we overcame tremendous odds to be together. And then we have a kid and you tell me she’s an idiot? I couldn’t take that. My thinking was God, if you’re going deprive her of one of her limbs, or anything, that’s fine—just don’t take away her intelligence. That’s because if you have intelligence, you can reconcile and solve a lot of problems. But in my mind, taking away her intelligence was the cruelest form of punishment.
Normally in such a desperate situation, I should be sucked into obsessive thinking because I have that problem to begin with. In the face of such tremendous grief, I’m sure my obsessive thinking was in play when I was doing my research. I did research tirelessly to look for answers.
Searching for answers—that’s something homeboy excels at. But in the end I couldn’t find an answer. All I could do watch her grow and observe. How was I supposed to test her intelligence at 1 1/2, right? The bottom line was her head was small. What could I do? All I could do was observe.
But I was quite proud of myself that time because it only took me a week to recover. At that point, I was much tougher than I was in my teens. The metaphor I used to comfort myself was this. Say you leave home with 200 yuan on you and you’re robbed of 100 on the streets. What do you do? The 100 yuan is gone for sure, so what do you do? What are your options? You could complain about fate, how you of all people were robbed. But another mindset is you protect the 100 yuan you still have more fiercely than you did the 200 you had.
And then I asked myself what my daughter has now. She can laugh. That’s great. What about me? I have an income. I earn money for her to spend and she can laugh. Isn’t that a perfect cycle? What else do you need in life? All you want is for your kid to be happy. And now I can make her happy and she can show her happiness. That’s your 100 yuan. That’s something I definitely have. No one can take that away from me, because she has already shown the ability to laugh. Plus I can’t keep torturing myself because I’m tied to that 100 yuan too. If I get sucked into obsessive thinking, if I dwelt in self-pity, if I burned myself out, then I wouldn’t be holding onto the 100 yuan. I can’t be like that. I had to cheer myself up. If I’m happy, I make more money and my daughter will be even happier.
6.
From that point onward, I started using a new mindset to approach life. I accepted the worst-case scenario. I pondered the worst-case scenario. In my daughter’s case, the worst-case scenario was that she had low IQ. Now that I had accepted the worst-case scenario. The rest was good.
Later on, it turned out my daughter’s major motor skills were fine. The movement of fingers is considered fine motor skills. Major motor skills refers to jumping around. Her major motor skills were just fine. She was also decent at memorizing stuff and did it quite quickly. I said to myself: “Done deal!” Looking ahead, when it comes to the first nine years of compulsory education and three years of senior high, 80 percent of it is a matter of memorization. As long as your memory is intact, I should be able to send you to uni. The situation evolved such that not only did my daughter not have low IQ, I had to consider buying a flat in a good school district. So when you accept the worst stuff, the rest is good.
The attitude extended to the birth of my son, my second child. He was born with a heart condition. There’s a hole in his atrium and in his ventricle. Dealing with my second child’s condition, I didn’t succumb to grief. I only obsessed about it briefly. After pondering the issue for a bit, I decided it wasn’t a big deal. Why? Because I did my research and found that he could live until at least his 30s. I had him when I was 35. If he lived until 30-something, then I’d be 65. That’s OK. If you die then, Dad will go with you, so you won’t be lonely, will you? And come to think of it, when is the best time in life? It’s your youth. You’re happiest before 35. If you’ve already enjoyed the happiest part of life, what else can you ask for? No big deal!
I think there is a standard treatment for OCD. First, you need to get diagnosed and then take medication. Taking medication was a turning point in the breakthrough for my recovery. Secondly, you can stop your obsessive thinking. It’s just that you have to deal with huge pressure and a tremendous amount of pain. But once you deal with the pain, there is a pathway from frozen state to recovery. It’s like retracing your steps.
It’s just like the movie Ready Player One. When the main character was tackling the first key, everyone was following the arrows on the course, but he decided to go in reverse. That’s how OCD works. When you’re not dictated by it, you’ve found a solution. And when you can genuinely crack the code once, you can do it again many times.