Have you ever bought a new pair of pants or a jacket, reached down into one of the pockets and found a little piece of paper? At first you might wonder, what is this at the bottom of my pocket? Maybe it’s a $20 bill?!!!
But once you inspect it, and get over the initial disappointment that no, you weren’t that lucky, you might look a little closer at this bit of paper, and find a few typewritten words that say something like: “Inspected by No.7.”
Who is this “No.7” anyway? And why does it always seem to be “No. 7” and not “No.3?” “Inspector No. 7” must be very busy indeed, with all of this putting pieces of paper into pockets.
Anyway, where is all of this talk about “No.7” going, you might ask? Seems random, right?
Well actually, the point of all of this meandering about inspectors, paper and pockets is to illustrate how our brains work, and a technique for pushing back against unwanted and unhelpful intrusive thoughts.
Our brains are designed to be busy. It is the average person’s experience to have their brain churn out random thoughts all day long, with loose connections and associations, even if we’re not noticing or paying particularly close attention to them. For the ordinary person, most of these thoughts are benign or neutral. But sometimes these thoughts may even be weird, nonsensical or absurd, and yet they still simply pass by with little notice.
But for people with conditions such as OCD, anxiety or depression, these thoughts can be particularly distressing, insistent and persistent, turning and co-opting our healthy brain mechanisms toward intrusive and unhelpful thoughts of worry and disaster.
For our purposes here, just imagine your brain as a machine that is designed to churn out widgets…all day long, day after day, one after the other. But instead of widgets, the thing our brain machine makes is THOUGHTS, and they’re coming down the conveyer belt consistently and regularly, one right after the other.
Now this is where good ol’ Inspector No.7 comes in. Imagine now that you are Quality Control at the end of this conveyer belt. YOU are No.7!
For example, you might have a thought about what to have for lunch? As it comes down your conveyor belt, you inspect it and give it a “GOOD/PASS.” Another thought comes: “giraffes are funny looking, aren’t they?” Despite the absurdity, you give it another “GOOD/PASS,” and these go into the bin of benign or helpful thoughts.
But what happens when an unhelpful or terrifying thought comes down your conveyer belt? Like “what if I hit someone while I’m driving?” Or “what if this ISN’T just a cold?” Pretty scary, right? For the person with OCD for example, a thought like this can be overwhelming and debilitating.
But this is where your training as Inspector No. 7 comes in. Your job is to inspect and label…to trust your training and to mark these thoughts with a “REJECT/FAIL” sticker, indicating that they don’t meet your quality control standards. And you can put them in the dumpster.
To further clarify: a thought is just a thought, and having a thought, even a “bad” one, does not necessarily make it true. If someone had the unfounded “garbage” thought that they were becoming a socket wrench, does that make them a socket wrench? No, that’s absurd, right? And you can discard it.
Now this may seem complicated, differentiating between garbage and helpful thoughts. Or maybe this seems oversimplified, the idea of just throwing away these unhelpful thoughts.
And maybe you have started to doubt yourself, your reason and your senses as a result of having these worried intrusive thoughts.
And yes, there’s a bit more to it than just “PASS”-ing or “REJECT”-ing these intrusive thoughts. But that’s where counseling comes in, where you are supported and guided by the staff at OCD Spectrum…to practice and work on being able to trust your skills, your senses and your experiences. To gradually rebuild trust in your judgment, experiences, and ability to tolerate uncertainty.
