What are we really afraid of?
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*Trigger warning: in this post I introduce the concept of ‘core fears’ and lightly describe some of my fears around authority figures. Please gently consider if you’re in the right headspace to benefit from this post right now.
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In acute periods of REOCD, I’ve had so many different intrusive thoughts and images jump into my mind around past events and their potential consequences. Needless to say, they have usually been accompanied by shots of adrenalin in my gut, and an urgent need to think or act my way out of them.
Before developing insight around OCD, I found myself stuck in this cyclical pattern for years; intrusive worry —> shot of anxiety —> compulsive urge to ruminate / review / imagine / confess. I wasn’t capable of going beyond this cycle and exploring what might be driving it at a deeper level.
Discovering the work of OCD specialist Dr Michael Greenberg was a breakthrough moment for me, at least at an educational level. I recommend reading the articles on Dr Greenberg’s website to build your understanding of OCD and what may drive this condition.
https://drmichaeljgreenberg.com/articles/
In particular, I encourage you to read about the concept of a Core Fear. As Dr Greenberg writes, the concept is “very powerful, because OCD symptoms can seem very random and nonsensical, but when you see them as strategies aimed at preventing the Core Fear, they suddenly make a lot of sense.”
Essentially, it is suggested that we OCDers are acutely terrified of certain types of emotional suffering – whether that’s feeling judged, ashamed, rejected, vulnerable, or anything else – and our obsessions and compulsions are all about trying to prevent ever feeling those emotional states.
If I were boiling down my core fear, it could be summarised as the intense shame and humiliation of being scolded by an authority figure for doing something ‘bad’. Even the thought of that can reduce me to a quivering child state. When I consider all the intrusive thoughts and images which have plagued me, they all boil down to this catastrophic idea in the end.
Intrusive OCD thoughts are often a displacement or disguise for this kind of Core Fear. If, for example, someone is obsessing about how their eyebrows look before giving a public speech, you can understand that this might be a way of displacing their deeper anxiety about how the speech goes. Same thing with REOCD. I find that REOCD obsessions or compulsions can spike a little before I go into a work meeting, for example, perhaps because they are an abstracted version of my performance anxiety.
So what might be the value of identifying your Core Fear? Well, it could take you beyond the apparent intrusive worries you’re experiencing, and help you get closer to the deeper trauma or fear which is limiting your life. By doing so, you can then work more directly on those core fears, in how you expose yourself to them and how you manage them when they arise. I still have flutters of nerves when it comes to authority figures and being ‘in trouble’, but at least I can now recognise what’s happening and challenge myself to tolerate the discomfort in a more conscious way. I can even connect to a sense of not caring whether I’m ‘in trouble’ with other people, because I now recognise they don’t get to measure my worth as a person.
Of course, this is not a task to take lightly or attempt without support. Dr Greenberg certainly suggests that this is something to undertake in the context of therapy. After all, this is a process we could easily become obsessive-compulsive about – i.e. thinking about it excessively, or trying to make it feel perfectly resolved.
It’s important to have healthy tools to manage the vulnerability which this exploration might bring up. If therapeutic support is an option for you, perhaps this is a process you could begin with a qualified person.
