Cry For Help

Could OCD be understood as a cry for help from the body?

To explore whether that might be true, it helps to look at how mental illness is usually defined. One simple definition is that it involves persistent irrational thoughts from the subconscious mind that create distress. OCD fits this description very clearly.

However, when we call OCD a mental illness, it can sound as if the subconscious mind is simply malfunctioning. In the short run, OCD certainly behaves like a mental illness. But I don’t believe the subconscious is malfunctioning — I believe it’s reacting to something. I explain this idea in more detail below.

With mental illness, you would expect random thoughts and feelings. But, with OCD, everything is deliberate. That is, the subconscious starts by sending one intrusive thought to capture the person’s attention, and if that fails, it then produces a different one, sometimes more than one. If that still doesn’t work then it could change the person’s beliefs. If that fails, then it could produce psychosomatic symptoms or get the person to associate an OCD thought with an object or area.

In other words, the subconscious is acting intelligently given the circumstances it finds itself in.

In my view, OCD doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It almost always emerges when the body is under too much stress or trauma. Seen this way, OCD isn’t the mind breaking down — it’s the body calling for help through the subconscious.

Therefore, OCD can be seen as a cry for help from the body, expressed through the subconscious mind.

So, is OCD a mental illness or a cry for help?

I would argue that, overall, it’s a cry for help. But in the short run, it behaves like a mental illness, because that is the only way the subconscious can signal that something deeper needs attention. Therefore, in the short run, you still need to use tools that reduce the immediate symptoms, such as ERP (CBT) or mindfulness.

The important thing is that, even though it behaves like a mental illness in the short term, your mind is not broken. Your mind is functioning as it should — even if it doesn’t feel that way.

The advantage of treating it as a cry for help in the long run is that it encourages you to look for the underlying causes of the condition.

The next section looks at whether OCD is part of a wider trend - please click the below button