Making Peace With Obsessive Tendencies
Coming up on 2020, I bought myself a new planner for work - something I’ve always used to help me stay on task - and the first thing I did when I got to work on Monday was add my weekly meetings for the whole next year.
I flipped to every weekly page in the 14-month planner, writing “team meeting, 10:00” and several other repeating events (like writing my blog posts!) in every single one. If I’m doing the math right, that means I wrote these and other phrases 56 times before I looked for my monthly meetings, planned trips, and everything else I write in my planner for the year.
Many of my friends who keep planners do this on a monthly or even weekly basis, not bothering to get everything done at once. But I always tell them I do this so that I don’t have to worry about forgetting a weekly meeting I’ve had for over a year or neglect this blog that I haven’t missed a week for since I started it.
That probably seems like a flimsy excuse for obsessive behavior, and it is. But for some reason, repetitive behavior like this can help me feel better when I’m down. December has been a hard month for me between a loss in the family, a difficult new project at work, and a lot of changes to my routine. And I’ve noticed that, all month, I’ve been doing a lot of repetitive things.
These actions aren’t associated with thoughts like “if I don’t fill out every page in this planner, something bad will happen.” It’s more of a way to keep myself calm. If I feel stress building up, this helps it flow away. Sometimes, there isn’t even a conscious thought to do it - I’ll notice it’s late when I’m done with a task like this and realize I’ve been doing it for hours when I’ve planned to make it a quick errand.
I think this works as an in-the-moment coping mechanism because I know what comes next. I know what I need to do, and that the next page will also have the same meeting at the same time on the same day. I can zone out and let my mind be calm, knowing that I’m doing something useful that will help me over the next year while also giving me time to decompress.
This is the same reason why I can identify any song from the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy within the first few seconds (a feat I enjoyed displaying to some friends last week), why I’ve read my favorite books until I know what’s on every page, why I listen to the songs that inspire me until I can choreograph music videos for my stories in my head. It’s why I have patience for things like hunting shiny pokemon, which involves pressing the same button over and over for days or weeks or even months until I reach my goal.
It may be hard to accept sometimes, but my brain is hard-wired to want to do things over and over. Sure, there’s a special thrill when I read a new story that becomes a favorite or listen to a wonderful new song, but the positive feeling is almost as potent when it’s the tenth time or the hundredth. Some of my friends can find it hard to understand why I’m content to do the same things over and over, but I find it equally hard to understand the boredom of repetition.
I hadn’t thought about this much before, but as I filled in my planner this week, I realized that these benign sorts of obsessive patterns can actually be good for me. I’m so used to trying to defeat my OCD that I hadn’t stopped to think it’s sometimes good to work with it, especially at a time when I’m fighting on other fronts.
I’m not at the point where I’m entirely comfortable with what I call my “obsessive tendencies,” and sometimes my love of repetition scares me. But in one of the front pages in the planner, in the space for new year’s resolutions, I’ve put in that I’d like to work more with my brain rather than instantly thinking everything related to OCD is the enemy.
For now, I’m at the point where these thoughts appear and I challenge them, but I hope to reach the point where I don’t automatically think it’s bad that I knew “Return of the King” from four bars in or have read a new favorite book too many times to count or organized my planner a whole year ahead. Sure, it’s something I’ll want to stay vigilant about, but as long as it isn’t disrupting the rest of my life, I want to make peace with these tendencies in my very well-planned 2020 and beyond!
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.