When your values turn against you

Anxiety, OCD, and mood symptoms can take what you value and turn it against you.

Take the example of harm OCD. The person with harm OCD may drive down the street, have the thought, what if I hit someone?, feel anxious, and have the urge to go back and check. The same person might text with a friend and think, what if I offended her?, get anxious, and have the desire to get reassurance about the state of the relationship.

If this person checked in with her values, she might say, I care about being kind, loyal, conscientious, and I don’t want to hurt anyone. Using these values, her OCD would say, anytime you have the thought that you might hurt someone in some way, you should check to make sure you didn’t. Better to be safe than sorry.

This logic – that if you think it, it is or could be true – is called thought-action fusion and it is one of the main thinking patterns that maintains OCD and other anxiety disorders. In this example, the person is clear about her values, but her OCD has taken them and used them against her.

Knowing your values can be one of your best defenses against anxiety, OCD, and depression.

If you know that you care deeply about relationships, you can expect that your anxiety and mood disorder are going to go after your relationships. If you tend towards worry, you might worry about what you said or did, why someone else said or did something, if your loved ones will be safe traveling, and other catastrophic possibilities that could occur in everyday life. If you experience OCD, you might replay certain scenarios or possible scenarios and seek to alleviate your anxiety through checking or reassurance. If you have a biological vulnerability making you prone to depression, you’ll start to think no one cares about you when your symptoms are triggered. Either way, when you notice anxious thoughts and the desire to alleviate or neutralize your anxiety in some way, you can think,

I’m anxious or depressed about this, because I care deeply about relationships. I want to be a person that can manage the uncertainties in my relationships without avoidances. If I tolerate my anxiety now, it will dissipate over time.

If you care deeply about being a good person, you can expect that your anxiety, OCD, and depression will go after any possibility that you’ve done something wrong. Your anxiety or mood-based thinking will differ depending on what your definition is of a good person, whether it focuses on being a good friend, partner, parent, or person in general. If you tend to get stuck on whether or not you are good enough, try defining what good enough would mean in the context of what you are self-critical or anxious about. Your self-talk could be something like,

I’m anxious and depressed because I care deeply about being this type of person well. My perfectionistic mind will continue to tell me ways in which I could be living out my values better. The best thing I can do is get in touch with the feelings behind my self-criticism and allow myself to experience those feelings, rather than managing them with anxiety-driven behaviors or self-criticism.