On obsessive worries and persistent preoccupying thoughts

What should one do about an obsessive worry, or a preoccupative thought that bogs the will of an individual, to the extent that he finds himself quite unable to function in any other manner in life. I guess one method of resort is to pray. It beats worrying silly and putting one’s thoughts obsessively on the issue. But of course, one could argue that it is just as unhelpful to pray in an obsessive manner to God about an issue. But I believe that there may very well be a difference, in the sense that if you believe in God, and accept the teachings of the church that one can and should correspond with God in a manner that is personal to oneself, then it might be considered virtue to talk to God about a worry. The usual teaching that I have hear from my church is that God cares about the things that affects you, and nothing is too small as to be insignificant in his eyes.

I know that in the world of psychology, there are methods employed by a psychiatrist to treat conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder. I get my impression about psychologists mainly from the media, and from television dramas. One of my favourite US sitcom is the detective show Monk, which features a male detective who suffers from what is palpably the condition of obsessive compulsive disorder. While the psychosis in one sense debilitating to his social life, it is also on the other hand the underlying trait responsible for his genius in his feat of detective sleuthing with his attention to details. Now, one recurrent side archetypal character in that sitcom are the psychologists that Monk, the eponymous protagonist, attends to help him with his obsessive compulsive disorder, which had gotten worse after the death of his wife. The meetings with the psychologist typically features a room with two chairs placed facing each other where the psychologist sits on one of the chair whilst his patient sits on the other. And the dialogue that proceeds follows a certain stereotype where the psychologist sits by the chair with a pencil and a notebook in hand, and scribbles points of notes as his patient rattles details according to the questions prodded by the psychologist. Thereafter, the psychologist makes comments based on his observations, articulating the unspoken thoughts that lies within the recesses of what they call the “region of unconsciousness” that exists in the individual. Traumatic childhood experiences and repressed sensualities are the common lingos of the psychiatrist in explaining the world of the unconscious.

In some ways, praying is quite akin to visiting a psychiatrist, with God as the psychiatrist, and you as the patient. And I do feel that there is something quite therapeutic in the process of simply rumbling on about one’s worries to God, in manners that may be considered incoherent or irrational by others. Does prayer work? Perhaps as much as how psychotherapy may work. The ability to articulate one’s worries and to believe them heard has a calming cathartic effect. But whether prayer works further than that, I do not know. If one expects too much of prayer as a way of obtaining subsistence to his petition, I am afraid that he may go away sorely disappointed, or that he might become disillusioned at the apparent absence of response. That is my experience. And I have found myself railing at God for his seeming lack of response. I thread on the lines of committing grievous sins such as blasphemy in my rancor. Perhaps, if I were more rational or even-headed about how prayer works, I would not have found myself so perturbed and could have avoided the excess of emotions. But perhaps, there may some significance to which anger over disappointment works in one’s correspondence with God. It is like a stage of maturation, in passing, to which its ends lies in some repose obtained from a transcendent enlightenment to the state of affairs, or simply from resignation and acceptance of circumstances. A psychologist appealing to more secular paradigms would probably reference the Kübler-Ross model, also commonly referred to as the five stages of grief. And such stages are quite manifestly expressed in the prayer process. Ranting at God fits in somewhere between the stage of anger and bargaining.

There is another paradigm which is quite beautifully expressed in a show named Joan of Arcadia, and it is called Desolation and Consolation. See this post by James Bradford for an excellent write-up about this paradigm. It’s like what Solomon, or Qoheleth, writes about in Ecclesiastes – A time for everything. There is a time for desolation, or to feel aggrieved and have misgiving towards God, and there is a time for consolation, where things seems to make sense, there is a sense of inner peace, and God seems loving and kind.