I-CBT Topics: Mushroom Hunting in the Bubble

This is an old article I wrote back in 2022, and my understanding of I-CBT has deepened and I no longer fall into the OCD bubble. But I'll leave it the way it is!

I want to share with all of the new folks a beginning-to-end obsessional sequence to illustrate the use of I-CBT. I'm going to use myself as a case study, because after all - what's a better way to learn than yourself?

While I consider myself to be mostly unaffected by OCD (on good days!), some days are loud. If I miss a meal, or don't sleep well, I will probably have a tough day. Normally, I dismiss the doubt and choose to trust that I know what I know. But today, I had an obsessional doubt that I decided to indulge in for the purpose of illustrating I-CBT.

Like all folks with OCD, I have many facets of myself that are affected by the disorder, and it frequently attacks the things I enjoy the most. I am an accomplished forager, and while I enjoy scrounging for greens, bulbs, berries and nuts, one of the most wonderful - and riskiest - treasures of any forager is mushrooms!

It has been a beautiful season for foraging in general, and like many foragers, I am constantly scanning my environment for edible plants and fungi. On a drive today, I spotted some gorgeous, off-white shelves clustered neatly on a dead-but-standing tree, sparkling with raindrops; a stark contrast to the dark woods beyond. I pulled over immediately and worked on identifying. I had a hunch when I saw them from the road, they’re probably oyster mushrooms. They looked like oyster mushrooms. It is the appropriate season, location, shape, smell, gill structure, color, arrangement, and host species for oyster mushrooms. And importantly, there are no poisonous look-alikes to this species. 

I know they're oyster mushrooms, but here comes the doubt. What if they’re not? The orchestra of my brain is tuning up.

I find a mushroom (trigger). I could misidentify this species (obsessional doubt). And if that’s true, then I might accidentally poison my family (consequence of the doubt). And if that’s the case, I will have harmed someone through my negligence (anxiety), so I better check to make sure (compulsion). 

Acting as if this is true, I check. I check again. I use a third resource, which confirms. I make sure there are no poisonous look-alikes. I am outsourcing my trust, because I do not trust that I know what I know. I am not trusting the evidence of my eyes, or my common sense. Here I am, staring at this mushroom that I know is an oyster mushroom. But am I really sure? Can I know for sure that this is the mushroom that I think it is? The OCD is not convinced. It counters with many additional what-if's, and stories of possibilities, each using facts out of context. OCD is telling me a story.

What if I misidentify this species, and I poison my family? Many mushrooms are toxic to eat, and many species are deadly (abstract facts). You shouldn't eat mushrooms without knowing exactly what they are (general rules). Paul Stamets, a renowned mycologist, once ate a mushroom that was so poisonous, he had seizures (hearsay). A few weeks ago, I misidentified a weed that I ate, and it was extremely bitter (personal experiences). It's possible that this is a poisonous species of mushroom that I don't know about that looks just like an oyster mushroom (it's possible.)

This plays out in exactly the same way as other OCD themes that I am not vulnerable to: what if that red mark on the sink is blood, and it gets me sick? Then I'll infect my spouse, and they'll leave me for being so careless. I'll be all alone. I should wash my hands again.

Notice that this is happening within a context. I have just picked a mushroom and am planning to cook with it and feed my family. I don't worry about the toxicity of mushrooms that I buy from the store. I don't worry about things I cook from non-forages foods, foods from farm stands, even foods I grow in my garden. The doubt is irrelevant, and the doubt is very selective. I do not use OCD logic to operate in those situations. Though this one feels different…

Why? Because of the vulnerable self-theme. I am afraid I could be responsible for hurting someone through my own failure to prepare. And from there spawns myriad obsessions, like the fruiting bodies of mushrooms indicating rotting material beneath the ground: natural disasters, nuclear events, car accidents, illness, cancer, abuse, gunmen, stabbings, home invasions, assaults, and death itself, all of which I have felt responsible for preventing in the past. And compulsions, of course: research, ruminating, planning, hoarding, checking, locking, avoiding, thought stopping, praying, and so many other rituals. All of these things to prevent becoming the feared possible self: being someone who fails to protect people, some bumbling fool who is totally clueless.

Now I am anxious. I am in the OCD bubble, where the rules are made up and facts don’t matter. I left reality the moment I started doubting that I knew what I knew. There is a feeling associated with this that is not just anxiety. I truly leave reality, and slingshot into a dissociative state. My eyes glaze over. I'm staring at this mushroom but I'm not seeing it, I'm seeing my mom getting graphically ill at the dinner table, and ending up in the hospital, where her kidneys shut down and she dies a very painful death. I'm seeing my husband vomit blood. I'm seeing myself on trial for negligent homicide, responsible for killing the people I love, all because I didn't listen to OCD.

I'm typically very good at disengaging before this even happens, it's actually gotten very boring to pay attention to OCD because I've seen it so many times, but for the sake of the exercise I let myself go there. It happens very, very quickly and the experience is vivid and lived-in. In a matter of seconds, I am no longer in my kitchen, I have both feet in my imagination. My imagination is co-authored by Stephen King, don't you know?

Now that I'm in the OCD bubble, I have a choice. Cross the bridge back into known reality, or continue to persist in my own imagination. Any solution I try to apply within the OCD bubble is compulsive and reinforces the cycle. I choose to unhook from the OCD story with the gentle shift of attention to the here-and-now. This is a practiced response, and I find it pretty easy nowadays. It's like swinging from monkey bar to monkey bar, you have to let go of one to swing to the other. In this case, I have to let go of the OCD story and drop myself back into reality.  I understand the tricks. I know what this is, and I'm not going to engage any further. 

I'm dysregulated by the content of the story, and the very vivid and appalling imagery of the people I love dying in grotesque ways. In the same way I am dysregulated by the content of a horror movie, I am made anxious by my own personal horror movie, where I am perpetually the accidental villain, or the inevitable victim. YAWN! Seen that a thousand times. Boring! What a played out trope! It's got a 5% on Rotten Tomatoes. The writer sucks. Certified stinker. 

Any arguments OCD presents after I choose to disengage are equally ridiculous, out of context, and attempts to get me to cross over the bridge. The generic discomfort I feel after disengaging from the OCD story used to get me pulled back in. After all, if I feel this dysregulated, it must mean this is worth paying attention to, right? Wrong. OCD is weaponizing my imagination against me, and has been for 25 years. It's my choice now whether or not I fall for it.