This week I am launching a new community: the Neuropsychoidiology Community.
Neuropsychoidiology (NPI) is the self-awareness study using neuroscience and psychology. NPI is a concept that I coined in 2003 that a great deal of self-reflection could be done through the lens of neuroscience and in doing so would help advance our way of understanding the brain in general and our own unique brains. Self-reflection through neuroscience is also an opportunity for individuals to better understand neuroscience. Since its first conceptualization, I have taught university-level neuroscience and psychology using the personal narrative approach by inviting students to explore how their brain and minds work. In order to create space for people to feel comfortable to do this personal exploration, I offer examples of how and why I do the things that I do.
At its core, NPI is simply an awareness practice. But practically, I think NPI offers a person the ability to make more informed decisions about their life, work, relationships, and health and wellness by coming to a better understanding of who they are. At least, this has been the case for me. Self-study has always been a driving force in my personal life and also in my pursuits of psychology, neuroscience, and many other psychologies, philosophies, and energies of the world and beyond. I want to share this with others.
Below is an excerpt from this next book and one of the pieces of content already available on the new course website dedicated to the NPI Community. If this type of thinking resonates with you. Please consider joining the community. The summer membership trial is available now and details are available here: https://www.knowyourbrain.ca/events/join-the-neuropsychoidiology-community
Obsessive-Compulsive
I was very superstitious as a kid, which generally would wax and wane. During one period of my life — probably high school — I was tortured by the compulsive practice of “knock on wood”. Knocking on wood (also referred to as “touch wood”) comes from a Celtic/Pagan tradition of invoking the spirits that were thought to live in trees in order to avoid tempting fate. For example, if I thought “I haven’t gotten sick in a while” I would need to knock on wood right after so that I would avoid that coming true. These are the type of thoughts that make us think, Shit, I wish I didn't think that! Or that we just jinxed being well, as per that above example.
For most people, they can let the thoughts go and be done with them. But when they emerged for me, I would be filled with anxiety and would need to rid myself of that feeling through knocking on wood, which I think may have happened because I knew of the practice of knocking on wood and therein worried that if I didn’t knock on wood, they would come true! Wood is generally not that hard to find so it was relatively benign to just knock on wood. But then I would be laying in bed (my metal-framed bed) and my mind would be wondering and then one of those thoughts would pop into my head. And then I would have to find wood… I would have to get up and go knock on my dresser. This got do disruptive to my sleep that I started sleeping with a piece of wood!
With obsessive-compulsive disorder, two things are at play. First, are the obsessions, which are the worrisome thoughts that creep into our mind. Compulsions, on the other hand, are the behaviours that we do to alleviate the anxiety associated with those obsessive thoughts. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is when all of that becomes so bad that it is disruptive to normal functioning. I was never diagnosed with OCD but obsessive-compulsive experience (OCE) would wax and wane throughout my life.
This video is a good description of the spectrum from obsessions and compulsions and when it moves into a disorder. It also goes into the neurobiological basis of OCD.
Driving over train tracks was another bad one for me, particularly growing up in Winnipeg, a prairie city with trains everywhere. The superstition was that you had to lift your feet up over the tracks or it would be 7 years bad luck. Being a very superstitious kid, this caused me session concern. So generally, I got good at lifting my feet up, even while driving a standard transmission car. But then there would be those times that I missed it and my feet would remain on the ground while I drove over train tracks. That would haunt me, or rather obsess me because I was now without the compulsive behavior to ride the anxiety. Eventually, it was so anxiety-provoking that I made up a new rule that every time I lifted my feet up, I incurred 7 years of good luck and then eventually I incurred so much good luck that I began being able to leave my feet on the ground without any anxiety. Overtime (like years) I lost track of how much I incurred and found that my feet would just be on the floor over tracks and I was not worried.
I don’t know how I ended up learning to sleep without wood but the strategy for the train tracks was great because it mimics what I later learned were effective strategies for clinical OCD: exposure and prevention therapy and cognitive therapy. On the one hand, I used cognitive therapy to alter my experience with obsessive thoughts. I essentially reframed what would happen if I lifted my feet: I incurred 7 years of good luck. The more I lifted, the more years of good luck, which meant that if I forgot to lift them once or twice, I would still be on the plus side and it wouldn’t affect me. Eventually, I lost track of the balance and the OCE went away. This strategy — without knowing it — was exposure and prevention therapy and it worked. Although to this day, I don’t worry if I do leave my feet on the ground over train tracks, I also don’t actively leave them there if I do realize we are coming up to train tracks. I do lift them up!
There was another time when OCE reared its head in my life. It was when I was pregnant. I had developed an intense worry of germs and this was very novel to me. It was the first time in my life where I had actually begun carrying hand sanitizers. The obsessive thought was that I would get sick and cause health problems for my baby. The compulsive way of relieving that anxiety was to a) use hand-sanitizers, b) wash my hands a lot, c) avoid touching things, d) keeping away from sick people, and e) avoid touching my face with my fingers. All of those are fine as general precautions and during our COVID-19 times, many people remembered this very important health practice and that it reduces our statistical chance of contracting contagious illnesses through mouth, nose, eyes, etc. The problem isn’t doing any of these. The problem really is what happens inside if we are prevented from doing any of these and the energy behind the need to do them. I remember one time being on the subway and having to hold the handrail because there were no seats (and I wasn’t pregnant enough yet for people to give up their seats for me). I grabbed it and immediately felt the rush of nausea seep in… and then linger all the way until I got home and washed my hands. Walking home I was so incredibly conscious of my hand. My hand was buzzing with energy. It felt like it was growing and growing as my somatosensory brain cells devoted more and more attention (and neural architecture) to it and the potential germs covering it.
For information on neuroplasticity in the somatosensory cortex go here: https://youtu.be/lZR3_yxRdhI and here: https://youtu.be/T9gINprUvlU
My hand began to throb. If I hadn’t been able to get to a handwashing station, I honestly think my hand would have exploded. Ew. Today, I’m back to my baseline state. The obsessive-compulsions associated with my pregnancy vanished a couple of months after I had my baby, which made me think it was very hormonally-based. I don’t love germs today but I don’t worry about them and I certainly don’t avoid them altogether. I apply the 5-second rule to things that fall on the ground, mostly just our kitchen group but also the grass outside. And despite the COVID-19 pandemic, my worry of germs hasn’t really returned.
I will add though that a different kind of postpartum (i.e., after birth) OCE did emerge, which was in the form of intrusive and unwanted fears of my baby dying or being harmed. This experience is quite common in new moms.
You can read a scientific review here if you’d like about how the thoughts of harm are not related to infant harm: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30898103/.
It was a horrible experience for me, which at the time, I thought was totally justified. In my mind, of course, I would be obsessing over keeping my baby out of harm, but the visions that would come into my head were unbearable in actuality. In my mind, I would go over all sorts of scenarios of what would happen if… and how would I respond to save my baby? Possibly, as an OCE, the thoughts of my baby being harmed was the obsession and the compulsion was the rationale for how I would deal with that situation was the compulsion. I don't know. But I leave this here because one thing that was really hard for me when pregnant (and which relates to the purpose of this book) is that thoughts that are common human experiences need to be shared so that we don't feel so alone and ultimately, we can seek help if needed! So… anyone out there who experienced this, I hear ya! You are not alone!
For a scientific review of OCD in pregnancy and postpartum go here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32445002/
Triggers
Sleep deprivation is a HUGE trigger for my OCE and so are hormonal changes. My OCE was highest when I was in puberty, when I was pregnant, and when I was sleep-deprived, which may have been worse at different points during my cycle but I have never calculated that. If the latter is true, then all of these experiences include changes in estrogen. They also include changes in cortisol, described earlier about anxiety and stress. Furthermore, we know that OCD and depression are both have altered HPA axis regulation.
After noting that sleep deprivation was a real trigger for my OCE, I did come across this scientific review, which corroborates my thinking: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30593425.
There is also scientific evidence that OCD does fluctuate with menstrual hormones. For a review please go here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15816784.
It's also worth noting here for people two conditions: 1) Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) and 2) Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections (PANDAS). Briefly, these two conditions are associated with the onset of neuropsychiatric disorders, of which OCD is one manifestation. PANDAS is one that is related to a step infection. It's worth thinking about if you have children who have undergone a sudden change in behaviour. I know at least one friend who feels that she successfully reduced some of her son’s symptoms of autism with probiotics because of her research into PANDAS and in consultation with her medical doctor.
For a review, you can head to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Conclusion
From a neuropsychoidiology perspective, I have been able to identify patterns in my own behaviours throughout my years that helped me identify my own triggers for this very disruptive OCE. Bringing a piece of wood to bed might seem relatively benign but worrying about my child being harmed when I was postpartum was not. Whenever we have intrusive thoughts enter that are disturbing it is really challenging to live with them. I would also like to comment on the possible benefits of mindfulness-based strategies for working with OCD and OCE. In my experience, having a strong background in mindfulness training is helpful in relatively normal circumstances but when circumstances become too grandiose (e.g., significant sleep deprivation and possibly in combination with hormonal fluctuations), it feels too much for my mindfulness practice to circumvent. Therefore, like many things, it becomes a multifaceted approach that might also include the self-awareness offered through neuropsychoidiology.