I’m sure you’ve heard someone talk about obsessions. Most obsessions are accompanied by behaviors that reduce discomfort, however, in the case of pure obsessions, this is not so obvious, you probably have a friend, family member or acquaintance that everyone says is very obsessive, but what exactly does that mean?Before we talk about pure obsessions, do we think it is necessary to define what an obsession is.
The word obsession comes from obsessive, a Latin word meaning harassment or siege. We can define obsessions as intrusive thoughts, images, ideas, and impulses that invade (harass, surround, or eliminate) a person’s mind against their will and interests. The person classifies these thoughts as disgusting, unacceptable and absurd.
- In addition.
- These ideas.
- Images or thoughts cause significant anxiety and discomfort in the people who present them.
- They can be triggered by stimulating or unused external situations.
- The person tries to eliminate.
- Ignore or neutralize them with other thoughts or actions (DSM-IV) And that’s where compulsions come in.
- Which we’ll define later.
The content of obsessions can and is generally very varied, the most common topics are pollution, death, dirt, disease, violence or aggression, and religious or moral issues. There may also be sex-related obsessions and even meaningless obsessions.
Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or actions that the subject performs to neutralize obsessive content, aiming to reduce the anxiety or discomfort of the person. Compulsive conduct is performed in a stereotypical manner or in accordance with certain rules (DSM-IV).
For some people, coercion is unacceptable. Others accept it only in part. The person usually exercises compulsion to escape the anxiety of obsession. In this way, the person may feel a strong desire to be compulsive. This is what we call compulsive emergency.
It can be said that compulsion permeates the patient’s mind. It is voluntary action, although the person is aware that the behavior is irrational. Coertion is also called ritual.
Rituals or compulsions can be of two types: manifest or cognitive. Manifested rituals are characterized by behaviors that other people may observe (for example, repeatedly cleaning the door knob). Instead, purely cognitive rituals are those that take the form of a thought, an image, or an idea.
A cognitive ritual is defined as a mental act performed in a specific and coherent way throughout a series of stages, examples of this type of cognitive ritual would be to recite a sentence, visualize a specific image, repeat a series of phrases or numbers, etc. (Aldaz, 2005).
These rituals are said to have a purpose, because the person performs them to avoid some kind of harm or disaster, so some mental events function as secret compulsions and that’s where pure obsessions come in.
Now that we know what obsession and compulsion are, we can understand what pure obsession means. We understand a pure obsession as an obsession that is not accompanied by any restriction or that is accompanied by a purely cognitive restriction.
In other words, cognitive compulsions are cognitive rituals that the subject performs to neutralize obsessions or intrusive thoughts; the person is aware that cognitive compulsion is irrational and meaningless, but he does so, not for pleasure, but for relieving short-term tensions.
The treatment of any obsession with compulsion (manifest or secret) is an exposure therapy with response prevention, with this technique the patient is invited to expose himself to his obsessive thoughts, but not to perform any behavior to neutralize the anxiety that provokes him.
In short, the goal is to get the person to let intrusive thoughts or obsessions into his mind, this will cause him a high anxiety that he will have to endure until gradually disappears, it is important that the patient is aware that anxiety is reduced on its own, without the need to neutralize it with any thought.
From the point of view of our experience, pure obsessions are more complicated to handle, because we don’t have d?Access? In the patient’s mind. Only he can know whether or not he is doing what we ask of him, and that is an additional difficulty.