When Pure OCD Feels Like Psychosis

Seeing through the mind-screen

I want to go further with the mind-screen, because this next bit is where Pure OCD starts to feel like psychosis.

Some complex thinkers, and many people with Pure OCD, seem to have a see-through mind-screen.

Not only do they see the thought the unconscious puts up on the board. They can see through the screen, as if it were clear glass, into the workings of the unconscious. That is a place they were not supposed to have access to.

The unconscious works a bit like this.

A problem arrives. What’s that noise downstairs?

In a millisecond or two the brain runs every scenario it can. It pattern-matches to the safe list and the unsafe list. At one end: someone in the house who might kill you. At the other: the cat coming through the flap, or the dishwasher.

Then it is supposed to pick the most likely answer and post that to the mind-screen. There is a noise downstairs, but it is probably the cat. Have a quick look if you want.

That is the finished thought you were meant to see.

But what if the screen is glass, and you also see all the workings?

Why did my brain think there was a person in the house?
Why is it saying it is only the cat when it could be a murderer?

Can you see that you were not supposed to see all of that?

The unconscious was just running every version, good and bad, so it could offer you the best and most likely solution. You walked in on that process and treated every version as if it were real. The body thinks what is on the mind-screen is happening. So now you have fear, checking, and a loop.

From the outside that can look like psychosis. From the inside it feels as if you cannot trust your own thoughts. Often it is just a clever person watching a part of the brain that was meant to stay out of sight.

Inner reality and outer reality

They say psychosis is the inability to distinguish between reality and imagination.

Have a look at that.

We have an outer reality. The world out there. Other people. The kettle. Gravity.

We have an inner reality. What is on the mind-screen. Thoughts. Images. Stories. Dreams. Memories. The argument you are having in your head while you do the washing up.

Both are real as experiences. They are not the same place.

Are dreams psychotic?

In a dream the body still reacts. Heart going. Sweating. You are in bed. In the morning most people can tell which one they were in. The dream was inner reality. The mattress was outer reality.

If you decide there is only one reality, then a dream looks like a failure. I do not see it that way. The dream is the mind-screen with nobody watching the join.

One person is happy with a strong imagination. They use it. They make things. They play. The pictures on the screen are useful.

Another person has the same kind of imagination and it frightens them. Same brain. They were never taught how to ground it. They have nowhere to put all that energy. They give the pictures meaning, and then they cannot get off the screen.

I do not see those as two different types of person. I see a potent imagination that was never given a way to land back in the outer world.

I am not a psychiatrist. I am an engineer. Thoughts appear on my mind-screen like anyone else’s. I lived with a loud head and I have sat with a lot of people who have one too.

If a person cannot tell inner reality from outer reality, and they are not safe, they need proper medical help. I am not talking to that moment here.

What I actually think is this. I do not see that condition as a disease that just arrives. I see it evolving, over time, in clever people with potent imaginations who were never taught how to manage all that creativity. Then they get frightened of their own pictures. Then they are given drugs that can further skew the senses they were using to find outer reality.

That is my view. Test it. Do not believe it because I said it.

To me we are all a bit psychotic, and that is OK.

We flip between the inner world and the outer world all day. You drive and run a story on the screen. You sit in a meeting and live in a future that has not happened. You wake from a nightmare and need a moment to find the room.

That is ordinary.

The useful question is whether you can be all right not knowing, and still take action in the outer world while the inner one is noisy. That is the difference between using the screen and living inside it.

Pure OCD is often the person who saw through the glass and decided every scenario needed an answer.

Further along the same line is the person who stayed in the inner world and lost the join with the outer one.

Same mind-screen. Different depth.

There is a film called Inception where they used a spinning top to ask: am I in the picture or in the room? You already have that test. Feet on the floor. Make a cup of tea. Do the next thing toward the life you want, even while the screen is still showing a burglar.

The little horse thinks the picture is the paddock. The rider can see it is a picture on the mind-screen.

Thoughts have no meaning except the meaning you give them. You can stop giving them meaning.

What to do

Do not argue with every scenario the unconscious ran. That is how you stay on the glass.

Do not try to force a blank mind-screen. That becomes another compulsion.

Notice: that is a picture.
Notice: that is the kettle.

If the imagination is strong, use it in the outer world. Make something. Build the life you want. If you do not give it a job, it will keep writing frightening stories because it has nowhere else to go.

You can watch the horse tell its story and still move. The mind can be calm even if the body is not.

Knowing this in a chair is knowledge. Walking while the screen is showing cats and murderers is wisdom.

This is the second half of Video 35 in The Calmness in Mind Process.

Access this video and over 60 others for $15 a month, along with guided meditations and practical workbooks. These are The Chronicles of Common Sense, forged from facing life directly and learning through real-world experience. They guided me out of anxiety, OCD, bipolar depression and crippling self-consciousness, and helped me become more trusting, energetic, optimistic, self-loving and courageous.

This work reaches mind, body and soul. The next action is yours. Take it.