Posted by Kev on January 31, 2000, at 14:18:26
In reply to Re: Kev---are you a consultant, or a lawyer????, posted by Noa on January 31, 2000, at 13:32:34
> > Kev---
> >
> I like this pragmatism. It makes sense. But that is just it. No matter how much rational talk I give myself, it is the IRrational parts of my brain that object, that cause me the anxiety.
>
> But I'll add your model to my bag of tricks, and try to use it.
>
> Thanks.****I will readily admit that I usually can't follow it myself. In your post you described freezing up while writing; my academic career has been crippled by the same problem. I definitely believe that this phenomenon is related to OCD; I get overwhelmed with anxiety when trying to write, and- in what seems to be an effort to make the anxiety go away- start ritualistically editing sentences, modifying paragraphs, and so forth. I also start experiencing unrealistic perceptions about my own writing; sentences which are grammatically and stylistically fine appear ugly and poorly formed, and then I compulsively start re-writing them. At this point, I am so tense that my back starts to hurt and I start getting extremely absent-minded. Interestingly, if I don't censure myself in this manner, after a while I start "brainstorming" and enter into a really classic hypomanic state; the articles I write end up being tangential, rambling, disorganized, but often brilliant.
Is it possible, I wonder, that OCD and hypomania are variants, at the level of actual behavior, of the same underlying phenomenon (an excess of neural energy) corresponding roughly to a distinction between "condensation" (OCD) and displacement (hypomania)????-Kev
poster:Kev
thread:19971
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000128/msgs/20208.html