The Power of Maybe

Throughout my life, therapy has been a huge and successful resource for me. I have been given extremely helpful resources and tools for my OCD toolbox over the years. Tools I still use to this very day, but there is one above all else that saves me on a daily basis. 

A couple years ago I went to a therapist who had OCD themselves. They knew exactly what I was going through, what I was feeling, and how to help me. At the time I was experiencing a lot of intrusive thoughts and themes about my moral character, fear of the future, and fear of my past. It was getting so bad to where I would spiral into severe panic attacks frequently. I was at the worst of my OCD symptoms during this point in my life. 

During one of our sessions, after fervently trying to explain to my therapist why I thought I may be a bad person, they stopped me dead in my tracks and said, “Maybe you're a bad person, maybe you're not.” 

I looked at them confused and said, “Okay yeah, but this is important! I need to figure this out! I can’t live without knowing the truth of whether or not I'm a bad person.” 

They sat there looking at me for a while before explaining that there was a possibility I may have made a morally wrong mistake in the past and that I could make a morally wrong mistake in the future. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Morality can be subjective and trying to “figure it out” would lead me to no where but internal conflict. 

At the time, it was so deeply ingrained in my OCD brain that I needed to “figure it out”, that sitting in the gray area felt inconceivable to me. What do you mean I have to just accept that someday I may or may not become a serial killer?! But there was also something so soothing and comforting in their explanation. The word “maybe” neutralized a lot of the anticipatory anxiety for the future, and a lot of anxiety I had about the past. 

Soon, I started finding myself saying it all the time when I would get anxious about anything. If I was obsessing over an application, “Maybe i’ll get in, maybe I won't. I will deal with the outcome when it comes.” Or when I started to worry that I may become a criminal in the future. “Maybe I will become one, maybe I won't." Even when my OCD contamination crept in and I sprayed a bottle of Windex too close to my water bottle. Usually I would start to freak out, take it to the sink, and start violently cleaning it. I started to tell myself, “maybe I did, maybe I didn’t spray it too close to my water bottle.” 

To this day I use the word maybe in most OCD themes that start to creep their way in. OCD can feel like a constant internal fight within your own head, but once I started using “maybe, maybe not”, it started to feel like the internal fight to push against these themes got a little easier. In fact, it's the reason I have been able to almost eliminate a lot of my themes. It has been the best neutralizer for me and I hope it works for you too (just be careful not to ritualize it!)