OCD, guilt, and lack of words

I have OCD. After a few years of therapy, I'm doing much better, even if there is still a way to go. I would like to share a few things about my experience.

First, OCD for me was related to guilt and shame. Second, and I believe this is very general, its main cause was a limited ability to put emotions into words.

Guilt and shame are important emotions: they help curb harmful actions. It's an evolutionary advantage to feel bad when you do something wrong; otherwise it would be very difficult to live in society. However, they are helpful only if one lives through them, just like grief: it's necessary to fully express these emotions, feel them completely - and relate them to the actual cause.

It wasn't my case. As a child, I wasn't allowed to express guilt and shame ("you're not guilty, don't say that, you're a good boy, you shouldn't be ashamed of this and that.") Instead, I displaced these feelings: unconsciously, I created artificial situations in which I was guilty of some other problem: I would be late for an appointment, or fail to deliver something I had promised. I would 'fix' these situations with a new displacement, now to irrelevant things, typical of OCD: organize things symmetrically in my desk, or scratch my left ear after scratching the right one - even if the left didn't itch. Without it, I would be essentially paralyzed by anxiety.

It was always about compensation. I was always making an adjustment because something was out of place. I was always in debt. This was my everyday combo: create situations of guilt and shame, then 'fix' them with something irrelevant. At the same time, I had these obsessive daydreams ("maladaptive daydreaming", or MDD) in which I was flawless, guilt-free.

Therapy helped me approach, slowly, the original causes of guilt, and live through them. 'Slowly' means that I began far from the core. One day I would feel guilty because there was a red car in the parking lot across the street; the next be day, I would be ashamed because I forgot something irrelevant at home. Allowing myself to have these nonsensical feelings was the entrance door: I was starting to taste these emotions. In time, I moved towards the actual, long-buried causes of guilt and shame.

Sometimes I see a parent cut off a child for expressing a non-fact-based emotion. The following dialogue is representative:

- Dad, I am afraid of the wolf.

- You don't need to be afraid because there are no wolves here.

It looks like it makes sense: the child is distressed because she doesn't have some important piece of information (about wolves). The parent gives it to her, and the problem is solved. This objective transmission of information, so useful in daily communication, is however hurtful in this context. Distress was not caused by lack of information; it's not about wolves, it's about fear, it's about developing ways to cope with fear. The child needs to express this fear - the wolf figure is there just to help.

This is what happened to be: I wasn't allowed to represent guilt, seen as something wrong, to avoid. But this lack of verbal representation didn't remove the emotion; just buried it where I couldn't see. Now, I'm trying hard not to do the same to my children. I hope they will be able to express all kinds of feelings.