How to build a bad obsession in just one week

The name of this blog is not a clever, off-the-cuff choice. It was very deliberately chosen to illustrate the way I tend to operate. I've worked over the years to be very disciplined in my thought processes and especially in my emotional reactivity. What that means in plain English is that I spend no small number of years being controlled by my temper and anxiety and that I've employed various techniques to corral my impulses and break those stallions.

At the root of the desire to do this was a need to end the suffering I endured as a result of my propensity for anxiety and anger. I don't know if I congenitally was like this, but I am certain that my upbringing created or exacerbated a lot of it. My mother's emotional abuse and my father's alcoholism and the chaos and uncertainty surrounding these problems made me prone to a lot of psychological issues including compulsive eating, depression, and anxiety. To varying degrees, I have managed to distance myself from all of these things. However, in times of stress and difficulty, they move closer to me and I am at risk of falling deep into these wells.

Recently, the issues with my noisy neighbors (detailed perhaps a bit too often in this blog's short life) have brought back an anxiety-based tendency that I experienced more in the distant past. One of the good things about having a disciplined mind and experience managing your thoughts and emotions is that you can change over time with great effort. One of the not so good things is that you can also change back to your destructive ways, often with less effort and more rapidly.

In the span of a week, I've grown nearly obsessed with the noise my neighbors are making. Any hint of overhearing their T.V., even at what I would have considered before to be reasonable background levels, sends me into a state of anger and tension. I'll sit around fearing this reaction. I've managed to whip myself into a frenzy about this and have been having intrusive thoughts about it and am ruminating on it. I have had to overtly and consciously derail myself from this destructive sequence time and again over the past week and it has been exhausting.

How did I manage to become so overwhelmed by this in a short span of time? There are a lot of possible reasons. One is that this situation is a microcosm for my entire experience in America since returning from 23 years of living in Japan. It has all of the elements that have frustrated me so deeply. The neighbors are rude, selfish, careless, entitled, and take it as their right to do what they want at my expense. What is more, they are actually breaking a rule of our rent contract - no noise that disturbs other tenants - and still refuse to stop. I think part of what I'm so wrapped up in this is that I'm fighting the bigger battle of my frustration and anger at everything about America that has let me down. If I were winning, it would probably not be something I'd get so worked up about. The best I can say at present is that we're at a stalemate and I have every expectation that I'll start "losing" again as they'll slowly return to form.

Another reason for this is that my life here is so much "smaller" than my life was in Japan. I spend a lot of time in my apartment pursuing my own interests and dealing with household responsibilities (all of which I take care of since my husband is working super hard as an intern at present). I've tried to branch out in many ways, but have found it difficult and frustrating for a variety of reasons, no small number of them linked to the aforementioned American character issues in the previous paragraph.

My sister-in-law once told me about an experience with my father-in-law that she had in which he saw a paint blister on the side of his RV and a variation in the color of the paint job after he removed a retractable awning from the side. He was worked up beyond reason about these matters and she just couldn't see what the big deal was since her father is hardly someone who is preoccupied with appearances. The way he keeps his house both internally and externally reflects his lax habits and overall laziness. I told her that the reason was likely that he didn't have enough to keep him busy and that he focused more on tiny things because his world was small. I think there is an element of that in my being so engrossed in the noise situation with my neighbors.

Into all of this mix, we can add the fact that one's state of being influences perception. In a study that I read recently, researchers found that thirsty people saw water glasses as being further away than people who were not thirsty. We more commonly experience this when we feel that the first mile is shorter than the last one when we walk a long, long way. How we feel at present affects how we perceive stimuli. That means that the more upset I am about the noise, the more likely it is that I feel it is louder.

It's also likely that the lifestyle my husband and I lead make this issue more remarkable for us. We live quietly. That is, it is rare for us to turn on the T.V. or music. There is no constantly babbling technological brook to obscure the booming bass sounds emanating from below us. If we were similarly trying to drown out the world, we could blot out some of their aural waterfall with a babbling brook of our own. Though I could choose to start listening to something to help with this, it is unfortunate that the very act of changing your lifestyle to not notice something will make you notice it more. You'll know you're only doing it because of a problem and not because you enjoy it. It only serves as a reminder of the problem you want to get away from.

I realize part of the problem with the neighbors is them. Their behavior has been inconsiderate and rude to the point of overt hostility; they once turned the T.V. up even louder after I asked them to turn it down. My sense of powerlessness in this situation is also playing a part. People who fear no consequences (which they apparently did not and may not still) and have no concern for others will not change their behavior. However, part of the problem is also me and what I'm making this into and I need to stop and readjust my thinking.

Unfortunately, part of the reason I'm so fast at building up a frenzy about this is that the time is ripe for it based on my experiences in the U.S., but also that I'm actually pretty damn good at training my mind. Since this was a slippery slope for me in terms of a propensity to be anxious or angry, it was a fast trip down there once I started wiring my brain for this sort of obsessiveness. Getting back up that mountain is a long, hard slog with slippery patches. I'm struggling to climb up and out, but I frequently slip back.

I have an entire list of cognitive techniques to help me work through this and it helps. I'm actually very good at structuring self-induced CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). I'm less good at follow-through and implementation, but I'm working at it. One thing that helped was that, for some time yesterday, I spent some time mentally where I want to be. That is, in a non-obsessed state in which I had the proper perspective on how out of character this all is for me (at least in my present state) and how out of proportion my reactions are getting. I spent some time "sane" as it were and I could use that as a reference point.

Yesterday, I told my husband that this was like I was in a space with two adjoining rooms. In one room, I was "Sane Orderly Mind" (SOM) and, in the other, I was "Crazy Orderly Mind" (COM). It felt like COM was constantly dragging SOM into that room and trying to keep her there. Every time I've felt the pull of obsession, it has helped me to visualize this and refuse to be pulled in. My list of coping strategies will be the weapons I use against COM in order to fight her and empower SOM.

My husband has also been instrumental in my coping with this. He couldn't stop me from rapidly weaving an anxiety web as I descended into a sort of madness, but he can hold my hand and encourage me while I try to climb back out again. I need this more than I can say because I've been through a lot emotionally since returning to America and my capacity to tolerate has been tapped out for years now. I'm constantly running on fumes in this regard and he's the difference between my giving up in a crying heap of feeling overwhelmed and continuing to fight back is his support and understanding.

It has also helped to blog about the process. I've found that it helps to have this outlet as a focus for the energy generated by these experiences as well as a focus. I banged out three posts in a row because I needed something to do other than obsess. That helped as well (and it's on my CBT list). Watch this space to see how successful I am. I'm sure it'll all play out here.