Areas › Worry and anxiety › Obsessions and compulsions
If stopping the ritual is out of reach for now, do it differently every time. Different order, different hand, different room, as long as it is never the same twice.
Compulsions take a lot of their grip from exactness, and disturbing the shape loosens that grip while you are still allowed to do the thing. It also leaves you in charge, which matters if you have already said no to stopping outright. Think of it as a way in rather than the place you are heading.
Obsessive thoughts and compulsions respond well to a specific kind of therapy. What is here is for understanding them, not for treating them by yourself.
Qur’an and Sunnah
do not be too loud in your prayer, or too quiet, but seek a middle way (Quran 17:110). A middle way is offered inside the act of worship itself, so exactness was never the measure of a thing done well.
قُلِ ٱدۡعُواْ ٱللَّهَ أَوِ ٱدۡعُواْ ٱلرَّحۡمَٰنَۖ أَيࣰّ ا مَّا تَدۡعُواْ فَلَهُ ٱلۡأَسۡمَآءُ ٱلۡحُسۡنَىٰۚ وَلَا تَجۡهَرۡ بِصَلَاتِكَ وَلَا تُخَافِتۡ بِهَا وَٱبۡتَغِ بَيۡنَ ذَٰلِكَ سَبِيلࣰ ا
Say [to them], ‘Call on God, or on the Lord of Mercy- whatever names you call Him, the best names belong to Him.’ [Prophet], do not be too loud in your prayer, or too quiet, but seek a middle way
Qur’an 17:110read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of experimental work suggests compulsions may be over-learned habits running largely on their own rather than considered attempts to prevent a feared outcome, which would make the obsession something closer to an explanation added afterwards. If the urge is habit, breaking its exact form is a sensible thing to aim at. That is a reading of laboratory studies, not a trial of this particular technique.
Gillan CM, Robbins TW. (2014). Goal-directed learning and obsessive-compulsive disorder.. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A habit that is never performed the same way twice becomes harder to run on automatic.
When not to
This is a step towards stopping, and if the varied version quietly hardens into a new fixed routine it has stopped doing its job.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The thing your obsession keeps circling is usually something you care about a great deal. Contamination worry sits on top of wanting people safe, and harm worry sits on top of never wanting to hurt anyone.
Some worries are perfectly reasonable, and settling them still will not settle you. Someone living where the storms come can build the kit, check the kit, and find the worry has quietly moved on to something else.
Offer choices rather than instructions. With a problem that runs on control, being told what to do gives that control somewhere to dig in.