Licking OCD Without Licking Toilet Seats (or Please, Oprah, go back to interviewing John Travolta and Eckhart Tolle!)

I rarely watch talk shows, but sometimes there's a topic on that I simply can't resist. Today Oprah covered a subject I find endlessly fascinating: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (or OCD, for short). I was ready to learn about the new developments in OCD treatment, but the whole show left me totally repulsed. The show followed Dr. John Grayson as he "treated" several people affected by time- and life-consuming OCD. His belief is that through "exposure", people can be "cured" of OCD, much like radiation or chemotherapy can elimiate cancer. While I believe exposure can be helpful, I found Dr. Grayson's methods abhorrent. He asked a man who suffered from germ phobia to touch a toilet seat and then lick his hands. Then he asked several people to touch the inside of a Philly Dumpster and lick their hands. (Don't we all want to just lick our hands after touching the residue of cheesesteak and Yuengling vomit?)

Now, like I said, I believe practicing exposure can be helpful, but this was ridiculous and disgusting. Dr. Grayson insisted that the people affected by OCD were in control during their "exposure", but he neglected to consider the influence of being told by a doctor in front of the richest woman in the world's camera people to perform these gross practices. And secondly, these people wanted to be free from the many rituals they perform to keep themselves clean. No one said they wanted to be able to lick their hands after touching a toilet seat or a trash bin. His "exposures" seemed extremely far removed from their real-life experiences.

When I was young, I wanted desperately to be able to jump off the high diving board at the pool. I was also terrified to go up there. So, I would go as far as I could before the fear would force me to turn back. The first time up, I made it to the top of the stairs. The second time, I went as far as the end of the hand rails. Then a step past the hand rails. Then to the very end of the board. I thought about turning back, but I remembered my goal and all the scary things I did before (and survived) to get there, and I jumped. This "exposure" worked because I decided how far to go, and each subsequent "exposure" built on the one before it.

We can overcome our worst fears. And we can do it without inducing gag reflexes or panic attacks!

When Perfectionism Conspires With Anxiety

I was just thinking back to the night when I was about eight months pregnant and reading "Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn" by Penny Simkin and Ann Keppler. I came across the section on risk factors for post-partum mood disorders. They listed perfectionism as one of the factors that seems to contribute to ppmds. This memory got me thinking about mood problems in general--and anxiety, specifically--and how perfectionism conspires with anxiety to make one feel less than fine.

Perfectionism can be a terrific motivator. But it can also sabotage. What happens when "perfectionism's expectations" go unfulfilled? Can perfectionism ever be truly satisfied? If you knew perfectionism were satisfied, how would you know? If perfectionism went unsatisfied what would it do?

My guess is that when perfectionism goes unsatisfied (say, because a baby is demanding more from a parent than s/he feels able to give), anxiety finds fresh fuel. Thoughts of "I'm not good enough/I can't fix it/It's hopeless" creep in.

Unfortunately, our culture does little to quash perfectionism's claims. Every time I hear the Oprah slogan "Your best life now", I want to scream. What if one's "best life now" means rocking a crying baby to sleep at 3:00 a.m., or waiting for a new driver's license at the DMV, or just having a rather ho-hum day. Is this my best life now? Is there something else I could be doing to have a better life now? Is everyone else around me having their best lives now, while mine is deferred by doing laundry and sorting through junk mail? On the surface, this desire to live one's best life seems a fine goal, but further mining reveals some very dry kindling for perfectionism's--and thus anxiety's--fire.

I'm working on a new slogan for Oprah. "A great life some of the time, and a pretty okay life the rest of the time" isn't quite as catchy as hers. But it might just help keep anxiety and perfectionism quiet for a while. And maybe that truly is our best life now.