Tag Archives: uncertainty

Perfectionism & Writing [& OCD Too]

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messyYou’d think being a perfectionist would be beneficial for an artist, but I really don’t think that’s true.

(Neither, apparently, does Google: search “artists are perfectionists” and you’ll get the following:

 

For me, being a perfectionist means that writing a book can be a slow form of torture. You see, it takes a long time for a book to even begin to resemble perfection. You have to spend months, even years, sitting uncomfortably in the middle of a mess, working through sloppy drafts and chasing rabbit trails into very disorganized forests.

Or maybe that’s just me.

In any case, it’s a continual lesson in learning to enjoy the process and not just the product. If I only enjoy the product, I will get to be happy about 24 hours out of every three years. This is a journey of embracing uncertainty, letting myself wait in the cold water till I begin to adjust.

And that’s the story of my life with OCD too. Heck, the story of my life, period.

I– a perfectionist, an OCD survivor– want pretty things in pretty boxes with pretty bows on top. I– an artist, an OCD survivor– know that’s not what life looks like. Life is full of doubt and wrong directions, wasted time and imperfect choices. Life is full of discomfort and years and years and years of tolerating discomfort … with the hope there is a pretty thing in a pretty box with a pretty bow at the end. But it is not guaranteed.

So, is art in general– or writing specifically– a difficult career choice for a perfectionist? Heck yes. But it’s fulfilling, worthwhile, hard, dirty, beautiful work– and it is helping me appreciate this fulfilling, worthwhile, hard, dirty, beautiful world.

 

Thoughts on ERP, Writing, & Uncertainty

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Uncertainty.

For so many years, it was my enemy– or so I perceived it, especially because full-blown clinical obsessive-compulsive disorder made me fear and reject uncertainty even more than the average bear. Everything in my life was about pursuing certainty, answers, black & white.

And, of course, I was miserable.

In 2008, I went through the harrowing but ultimately beautiful process of exposure therapy, which took my OCD out at the knees, giving me the bandwidth to live with uncertainty, questions, and all the shades of gray.

It’s only recently that I’ve recognized exposure therapy as the training ground (or maybe even battle ground) that would let me later pursue my dreams of being an author.

A hard truth: writing is full of uncertainty. 

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Not just writing– but publishing itself too. There is this crazy-making stretch of life in the middle of writing a book that feels both unclear and perpetual. What is this book really about? Who are these characters? Can I do this? Can I finish this? Is this story going to matter to anyone but me? Is this going to even matter to me? Will my writing group like it? Will my agent? My editor? Readers? Will I find success? Will I get another contract?

The writing life is, for many of us (and especially for younger writers), a world in grayscale: a constant state of uncertainty that we have to persist in in order to find any relief or success.

For as many days as I think I’m totally failing at life and writing, I have to remember what it would have been like to be writing and publishing before exposure therapy, back when uncertainty was unbearable. I’m not even sure how it would have been possible to be doing what I’m doing now without exposure therapy laying the groundwork for me to bear the not-knowing, let alone to thrive in it.

“The world doesn’t work that way.” I hear myself and other OCD awareness advocates saying this to sufferers all the time. In context, we mean, “Life inherently is full of uncertainty. You cannot eliminate it.”

The truth of that hits me over and over again in the field of writing.

Exposure therapy was the terrible, grueling practice for the writing life. Uncertainty is rampant; I try to keep my arms open.

 

An Uncertain Framework

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I used to get thrown by anything I couldn’t know FOR SURE.

Is real life real life, or am I just dreaming?

Am I going to heaven?

Are my friends really my friends?

What do people really think of me?

Are people even really people?

I mean, completely thrown.  I had no framework for dealing with uncertainty.  And the truth is that a person just cannot live that way.  It’s not how life works.

Now that ERP has re-wired my mind, I am finally able to say, “I’m just going to have to accept that I can’t know” and carry on with life.  I never thought I’d be able to approach such huge things with that kind of statement.  Never. If you’re reading this and think that that is an impossibility for you, please know that I once thought the same.

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Related posts:
Narnia and Uncertainty
Uncertainty is the Key
Uncertainty
Interview with a Former HOCD Sufferer
No Antidote
Life is Risky Business

Asking the Tough Questions

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confused boyThe Wednesday before Easter, my dear friend Ashley and I went to a performance of “Kingdom Undone,” which was showing at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.  This was a story of days leading up to Christ’s death, but the emphasis … was on Judas Iscariot.

The betrayer.  The traitor.  But in this play, a lover of Christ who misunderstood just what the coming of Christ’s kingdom would truly look like.  A zealous believer who thought he was doing what was right, even what was needed of him.

It was fascinating.  Afterward, Ashley and I could not quit talking about Judas and his role in Christ’s death, both of us eager to return to Scripture to measure our thoughts against Truth.

I want Judas to be redeemed.  So badly.  Mostly because I think that would make for the best story.

That alarmed me for a little bit, made me really uncomfortable.  Was I imagining that I could make an “improvement” on the gospel story (if Judas was not under grace)?  The gospel is my FAVORITE story.  It’s like how I’d feel if someone wanted to change the ending to The Last Battle or something.  (Potentially– I still have not totally landed on what I think was Judas’ fate.  Although scripture does say, “Satan entered into him.”  But we also do know that he regretted his choices– deeply.)

Anyway, it’s good for this obsessive-compulsive to sit with troublesome uncertainty.  Once upon a time, these kinds of questions would have collapsed me, but now I’ve learned to sit with them.

…

Another of my friends emailed me this week with an unrelated faith crisis as she struggles to reconcile the (vengeful, confusing, sometimes bloodthirsty) God of the Old Testament with the (merciful, loving, gracious) Christ of the New Testament.  They are, after all, one and the same.  But she loves Jesus, she told me, and is pissed at the OT God and trying to struggle her way through the dissonance.

I wonder the same thing sometimes too.  The Old Testament and New seem so vastly different.  But I know that the Law was a tutor to lead us to Christ, and I know that the God of the Old Testament orchestrated the whole beautiful gospel from before time began, so they do flow together.  I know that God welcomed Gentiles like me in order to make Israel jealous, and I am forever grateful to be a wild shoot grafted into the natural tree.

This post doesn’t have a lot of answers, and I think that’s okay.  I’m learning to ask the tough questions and to sit without an answer, wait in that uncomfortable silence because God is still holy there.

Uncertainty is the Key

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One of my friends has had her obsessions flare up again (she is worried that her brother will die on his spring break trip), and she emailed me for prayer and advice.  I asked her, “Do you want tough love?”

Her response:  “Yes, okay, just hold on a second I have to prepare myself.”
A minute later: “I am ready.  Go.”

I wrote back:

I’m not going to reassure you about this because LIFE IS FULL OF UNCERTAINTY, and we have to learn to live with it.  I’m not saying this to be mean, but the truth of the matter is that he could slip on the Minnesota ice outside and hurt himself that way just as easily as a trip to California.  We DON’T KNOW.  We CAN’T know.  All we can do is make decisions based on the evidence available.  The evidence available suggests he will be fine.  Whether you worry about him or not won’t change anything except for how YOU cope with his spring break.

The best thing that you can do for yourself to keep from spiraling is to repeat to yourself, “I can’t know if he’ll be okay.  He might be.  He might NOT be.  Either way, he knows God, and I have to just live my life with uncertainty.”

I want to reassure you.  But that would be just silly—who am I (who is any mere human) to reassure you of something like this?  Our lives ARE like a vapor!  We have no way of knowing.

The evidence available suggests that most healthy young people live till their 70s, so that’s what I’m going to plan for.

***

My friend thanked me for the tough love; I think I’m allowed to dole it out because she knows about how cognitive-behavioral therapy changed my life.  CBT is really just a giant act of tough love, isn’t it?  We’re put through torture so that we can barrel through the hell of daily life with OCD.  I know I am so glad to have gone through it myself, and that is why I am not willing to reassure someone of something we can’t know.

Life is full of uncertainty, and each obsessive-compulsive wants to eliminate it– which is just not possible.  Still, we go to great lengths to attempt this impossible feat.  Really, our rescue is in learning to embrace the uncertainty.

If it boggles your mind a little, that’s okay.  It still does mine too, and I’m a success story!

For those of you with OCD, is it hard for you to receive tough love from people?  For those of you who love an OC, is it hard for you to dole it out?

where the music comes from

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Early that next week, with my head still spinning, I sat with the Conner family for Ellen’s first jazz concert of the year—her three younger brothers sandwiched between their parents and me next to Mrs. Conner, feeling guilty that I’d been avoiding her daughter.  It was pretty obvious that, between the six of us, only Mrs. Conner and I actually wanted to be there, but Mr. Conner dutifully tried to keep the boys quiet and entertained.

“Ellen looks gorgeous,” I whispered to Mrs. Conner when the jazz band made its way onto the stage.  Ellen wore a knee-length black dress with long sleeves and a scooped neckline.  Her mom had forced her to take off the leather choker for the evening.

“She’s miserable,” Mrs. Conner whispered back.  “We go through concert dress woes every year.”  She rolled her eyes.  I smiled and looked back to the band members, who were tuning their instruments to Ellen, the lead saxophone.  They began with a few big band arrangements, followed by a swing tune, then a ballad.  “Ellen has a solo in this one,” whispered Mrs. Conner.

When the band fell into the background, Ellen stood up and a giant spotlight shone on her.  She played effortlessly, a beautiful, full tone, with perfect rhythm.  The concert band director had begged Ellen to join their group as well, but she just wasn’t interested.  “In jazz,” she’d told me, “you can actually lean into a wrong note and make it sound right.  It’s not like concert band, where you have to be perfect.”

“She’s got this down,” I commented to Mrs. Conner.

“It’s actually improv,” she offered back.

My eyes widened.  I could hardly believe that this picture-perfect sound being pushed along the ceiling by an alto sax was being invented on the fly.  I imagined myself standing in front of tonight’s crowd, looking not at a sheet of music but letting it flow out of me like rays of sunlight.  I shivered in the audience—not from any chill but from the fear conjured up by the brief imagination.

Dr. Foster is right, I thought.  I am definitely uncomfortable with uncertainty.  It upset me a little to see how far-reaching it went.

“Jazz and fantasy both push the limits,” Ellen had said to me once.  I’d had to think about it for awhile before it sat right with me.  Tonight I could see that Ellen was just a teenager who wanted no boundaries.  She needed improvisation, needed those grace notes.

A dark stage, a young girl in a black dress.  The spotlight’s mouth circling her in a perfect O as she gazed straight ahead.  It reminded me of the stormy night that Matt played his keyboard for me, the way his eyes too had found that particular secret spot where the music comes from.

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uncertainty

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I spent last weekend with my incredible friend Cindy, whom I know from Northwestern.  Cindy went to law school at Georgetown and now lives and works in Washington, DC, and she was kind enough to take the Amtrak to Boston to spend the weekend with me.  So, so good.

We did lots of fun stuff, but to be honest, some of the best parts of the weekend were just all the wonderful conversations.  You have to understand that Cindy is 100% brilliant, and you can talk to her about absolutely anything, and she has all this valuable insight.  One night, we ate a late dinner at the Cactus Club (where, btw, I had the most incredible chicken and avocado quesadillas), and we got to talking about Rene Descartes (since I had begun his book Meditations on the flight out to Boston and because he is playing quite a significant role in my YA book) and about his dream argument and the way he was establishing universal doubt.  It led to a great conversation on uncertainty and how healthy it actually is (in fact, it was the key to my therapy!).

Cindy and I talked about how certain statements and discussions used to jar us in regard to faith, but how as we got older, we both reached a point where we decided, “Look, I am committed to this Christianity thing.  I think it is true, even though I can’t really know that.  But I’m not going to be swayed by every new scientist and fact and detail and argument that arises.  I’ve made a choice and I’m sticking with Christ regardless.”

I’d like to hear what you think about this.  My assumption is that different ages will have different reactions.

Not to go all Narnia-nerd on you (but let’s be honest, I can’t always help it), but I told Cindy it reminded me a lot of Puddleglum the Marshwiggle in The Silver Chair.  Are you familiar?  Let me set the scene for you.

Puddleglum and friends are in the Underworld, and the evil Queen of Underworld is strumming her magical guitar and has tossed some sweet-smelling something-or-another into the fire, and the marshwiggle and his friends are falling under her spell as she tries to convince them that there is no Overworld.

“But we’ve seen the sun!” they argue.  The queen asks what a sun is, and they describe it as very large, very bright lamp.

“You’ve seen my lamp,” she contradicts, “and so you imagine a bigger and better one and call it a sun.”  The same argument is repeated when they bring up Aslan.  “You’ve seen a cat,” she said, “and you imagine a bigger and better one and call it a lion.”

But Puddleglum puts his foot into the fire, shocking him into clarity, and he essentially says, “It’s sad that if you’re right, we’ve still managed to make a play, fake world that licks your real world hollow.”  Then he goes on to say, “I’m going to live like a Narnian, even if there isn’t any Narnia.  I’m going to serve Aslan, even if there isn’t any Aslan.”

Cindy and I feel the same way about Christianity.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I believe Christianity is real, and I believe Christ is real and is alive today and is working in my life.  But I will allow for doubt.  Uncertainty in certain dosages can be very healthy, and I have made a choice to serve Jesus Christ, no matter what.

Thoughts?