Pure o.

Marduk made the world by wrestling with the dragon...
Only by fighting to the bitter end...

The piece of paper - the letter - that husband and I signed, saying: We give you 30 days notice....
I burnt it on the lawn, last night.

This week has been truly awful

So, what made me burn the letter?

An article in the Guardian, actually.
Written by a person suffering from Pure O...

I'd never heard of it.
The OCD society don't see why such a term is necessary...
But I for one, am very grateful to the person who wrote that account, because it has radically changed our relationship with ex-Service User. Literally, it was as if someone broke down the roof cave-in, that had held us trapped in a dank and dark prison cell ever since we first brought ex-Service User home.

I would never have got to  see that Service User is suffering from a form of OCD without the term Pure O. It explains why he wont go to see a psychotherapist, because the shame of seeing a therapist would be too awful for him to bear...and within this, lies the engine of his 'madness'. Pure O is a parade of obsessional beliefs about oneself, each belief is humiliating, shameful and disgusting, and each 'attack' has two components: the idea (any most awful thing you can think about yourself) followed by the 'cover' (rumination). The cover is the dangerous part for the mind, rather than the intrusive thought. Rumination feels like the wrong word to me so I will stay with my word 'cover'. The cover story will keep Pure O going forever, because it shuts off any truth-seeking. The cover ex-Service User uses is: I should have....in the past.

When he gets to 'I should have...in the past' there is nothing to be said. A 'yes you should have, and what is you would have done - in detail?' type question could appear to be useful in a solution seeking kind of way one may think, and then bring the idea forward into ' so you could do that now, what would the first task be I wonder?' But in practice, this doesn't lead anywhere good.

According to people who understand Pure O, it is the negative belief alone that needs to be worked upon. Counterintuitivly the recommendation is to disrupt the rumination by pouring fuel onto the fire, rather than attempting (as we have generally tried to do) to shut it down. Attempting to shut down a thought makes it pop up stronger and more determined to be heard...so....the way out is for the thinker to elaborate on the negative belief, to push it, to seek it out, to climb into it, to ultimately wear it out....So when the negative belief starts to paralyze ex-Service User and he begins to pace - he has gone straight from negative belief into rumination. Pacing in his case isn't (to use another jargon term) agitation, it is an OCD behavior to shut down his mind.

OK, well all that is a fairly radical shift in perspectives for us, and it makes sense. My problem now is how to find a therapist? It doesn't matter how much I say talking to a therapist will not mean he/she will instantly call the police....His Pure O absolutly tells him otherwise.

On a positive note, I prefer to be positive about things, and pushing the negative beliefs, asking ex-Service User to go into detail and not being shocked, is somehow a more joyous challenge than trying to avoid the outbreaks of crazy thinking. The danger with how it appears, in the way that he presents his anxiety is that he doesn't sound crazy. He will tell people that he has done awful things and he is truly sorry and.....that he needed help when he was a child....and that now it is all too late. He needs you to think he is as bad as he says he is....

And the kind answer from kind people is along the lines of: that must be so hard for you, none of it is your fault confirms that he really did something bad and that there is a fault somewhere...and this feeds his Pure O.

A better answer, the more useful to him answer is: 'you say you are a psychopath, tell me more!' this strategy leads ex-Service User to increasingly feeble attempts to bring persuasive evidence for that burning statement he has just confessed to you.

Well...this has all been most interesting.

I am a wreck!

If I didn't know better I'd take myself to my doctor and ask for a prescription for an SSI!
But knowing that best way to deal with this out of control 'super-ego' as Freud would see it, is to step into its world and really take a good look at what it is saying - until it sees itself - and is able to laugh!

Gives me hope...