I came across something in that book about freeing yourself from Death Anxiety that really connected with me. The authors were describing something called existential ocd and it described some of my thinking almost perfectly. I think it was very severe for a while and has been gradually getting better over time. I feel like it is something I could potentially get over almost completely.
It’s something that I probably would have dealt with at some point in time in my life in general, because the fear of death was always in the background and I would have had to come to terms with my own mortality. But, I think some life circumstances kinda pumped steroids into it though.
My mind started speeding up and I started getting racing thoughts many years ago. Especially when my schizophrenia was really starting to onset and I was questioning my life and feeling like I was in the middle of a conspiracy theory. I was in a race to figure things out and to help the world. So my brain really got fired up.
Then eventually when I started to get depressed and have negative thoughts, I was still thinking fast, so those kind of mixed together. I would eventually develop suicidal thoughts as well. I was trying to solve the world’s problems and dealing with all sorts of negative thoughts, my mind was starting to get really screwed up and it was still racing.
Eventually I started to develop a strong fear of death and hypochondria, which I feel were in direct relation to my negative and suicidal thinking. I feel those things are the exact opposite of suicidal thinking. So it was my mind’s way of keeping me alive. A form of anti depressant and anti suicide.
I was mentally all over the place during that time and my mind was still racing. My racing mind just went along with whatever I was thinking about. I had started taking medicine, started reading about mindfulness and breathing techniques, and had started my journey to feeling better and getting into better mental health. I’m not sure I am recalling the exact order of events, but it was something along those lines.
I started getting lots of physical sensations, strong ones. Feelings that would really grab your attention or make you worry about your health. I would eventually learn that my mind was just doing a form of forced mindfulness. By giving me overwhelming sensations, I would be forced to focus or think about that, rather than my normal negative thinking. Then while I was focused on something besides my negative thoughts, my mind could go to work on getting rid of all of the negative thought patterns that I had developed. I completely embraced what my mind was doing. I can remember sometimes when I felt the sensations were too much and I would wish they would stop. And when they did stop a couple times and my old negative thinking came back to the forefront, I was begging for the physical sensations to come back again. I would get a glimpse of the way I used to think and couldn’t believe what a nightmare I was living in.
But, my mind completely took control of me. It broke me down to the point where I was relearning how to think again. The physical sensations would be so bad at times that I would just be curled up in a ball and scared to think about anything in case it was something that my brain felt was bad for me. It felt sometimes like someone had literally kicked the cr*p out of me. It was an extreme form of therapy.
It broke me down to where I was not thinking almost at all. Then I would have to test the waters and see what was acceptable to think about lest my brain beat me down again. Eventually I would start thinking more and think things were going pretty good and then one day my brain would decide we are going to work on these types of thoughts next. Just one day my brain would start beating me up again and I would have to figure out what it wanted from me. My brain was systematically fixing my thinking. It started with my worst mental habits at first and worked its way up. And I never knew when we would start working on the next things. Maybe a month or two later all of a sudden I would be flooded with strong physical sensations and my brain would start working on the next bad mental habit.
It’s insane what your mind is capable of. But at the root of it, your mind wants to be happy and relaxed. It wants to achieve a homeostasis. It all really kinda started when I first started meditating, doing breathing exercises, and taking my medicine. I was briefly able to show my brain at times what relaxation felt like and what was possible. Once it got a taste of that calmness, it was on a mission to have that feeling all of the time.
But, anyways, during that time my brain definitely took advantage of my fear of death and hypochondria. It would make me feel sensations that would trigger those feelings all the time. I’m sure my mind was thinking, this type of thinking is way better than the negative thinking and suicidal thoughts. In fact it is the exact opposite. It became acceptable thinking for my mind and was even encouraged by my brain. It was the state of mind that my brain was trying to achieve all of the time so that it could work on getting rid of all my bad thought patterns.
So, I started thinking about death and my own mortality all the time. Which is uncomfortable in its own way, especially when you are scared of dying. It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t like thinking about death and Heaven, it was that I didn’t like being scared of dying all the time. So queue the existential crisis. I wanted to know for certain that Heaven was real and that was where I was going. I wanted to be certain that I was eternal. I didn’t want to believe in Heaven, I wanted to be positive. So, I just started thinking about that stuff all the time. My mind found this to be acceptable thinking and did things to keep it going.
I started figuring out all sorts of different facts and things that made me feel better. I proved God’s existence amongst other things. I just compiled many facts and reasons why I should be certain that God & Heaven existed and that I would live forever. It would give me moments where I was certain and would feel good. But, then I would lose that feeling and need to reassure myself again and again. It formed this loop of just doing the same calculations and reassuring myself over and over again. Every once in a while adding in some new facts or thoughts. But I would just enter into this loop everyday and spend most of my time there.
In the beginning of all that I still had racing thoughts a bit, so that thinking was fast at times. Granted, my thoughts were starting to slow down. And even at one point in time my brain started to see racing thoughts as a mental problem, so it started working on that as well. Even to this day when I get racing thoughts at times it is normally just a matter of time before I start getting physical sensations unless I am able to get them under control beforehand.
But, I started to believe that my racing thoughts were kind of the way that my mind worked. That I would just always think fast and needed something to think about. I started to see this fear of death thinking loop as like the ultimate way to cure my boredom. I could never get myself to be certain enough to end the cycle, so it was/is something I can always think endlessly about.
My thinking just gradually keeps getting more and more slower and under control now though. Even when I am in the loop, I am not necessarily thinking extremely fast. And now my thinking is slowing down to a point where I can enjoy thinking about other things now. Before I just felt like I would get bored with other lines of thinking so fast and would need to revert back to my fear of death loop so that I wouldn’t get bored. I started spending less and less time in my loop and enjoying other thinking though. Granted I was still spending a lot of time in the loop.
The fear of death anxiety was starting to annoy me a bit though and eventually I decided to look for a book. I feel that I was supposed to be in that loop for a while to learn a lot of things and share my thoughts with people. It definitely served its purpose of diverting my thinking away from negative and suicidal thoughts while my brain repaired itself and pruned my thought patterns. It served the greater purpose of God’s Plan under the Holy Spirit’s guidance and leadership. Definitely meant to happen, and played an important part of my recovery. Played an important part in just making me feel wise and putting me into a good place spiritually.
But, I started reading the book and there was a section about something called existential ocd, and it explained the way I was thinking almost perfectly. I 100% had that. Still do to some extent. But, I feel that the book and that knowledge has come to me at the perfect time in my journey. It connected with me immediately and I started connecting so many dots. It also almost immediately allowed myself to detach myself from that thinking. I started to see that loop almost as a program that my brain is running. I didn’t believe it was my thinking anymore or necessarily part of me. It was just a program and a tool that I used. I am able to observe it. It coincided perfectly with another book I am reading about mindfulness when it speaks about observing a program like that or what that author would call “the thinking man”. That thinking wasn’t who I am.
So I had this immediate detachment when I read about existential ocd and I thought about it for a little bit. I thought, I don’t need to be in or use that program anymore. I can stop running the numbers all the time to reassure myself and give myself small glimpses of calm before the loop starts again.
I thought, you are certain, you have run the same numbers thousands of times and came to the same conclusion that God Exists, Heaven is real, and that we are Eternal. The only thing left is a small amount of faith. For the first time in a long time, if not ever, I need to engage in faith regarding death and going to Heaven. I need to just have complete faith in God in general now.
I feel a great comparison is the Wright brothers and the invention of the airplane. They did all of the calculations and ran the numbers over and over again until they were certain. But, eventually they stopped running the numbers and put faith in the idea that the plane would actually fly, and it did. It was all really set in stone beforehand, it was a fact, but they still needed that faith in the middle. They were facing the possibility of death. Even though the possibility didn’t really exist in a philosophical or theological sense.
But, now I just think it is time to stop calculating and running the exact same numbers over and over again. It is time for me to mentally step out of the loop and learn to have faith. It’s time for me to believe. The loop served its purpose, was meant to happen, and provided many important revelations, but it’s time to move on to the next phase of my life and thinking.