Back when I started thebeanandseed.com, I promised to talk about my mental health journey. Up to this point I’ve only touched upon it briefly. I suppose I’ve been hesitant to get into the subject; not because it’s hard for me to write about, but because of the potential for judgement. You see, I have come to learn that, for the most part, only those who have experienced similar hardships look at you from a fully sympathetic perspective. Sometimes, even those who have gone through similar situations will still criticise you because they believe you’re not approaching your issues in the appropriate manner. Well, I’ve decided I’m not going to worry about those opinions anymore; the potential for my experience to help someone else is more important than what a misinformed individual may or may not approach me with; maybe I can even provide some clarity for those who would judge. With that said, I believe we were given beautiful minds. We are capable of wonderful thought, creation, and an aptness for empathy beyond that which we can imagine. But the world is a harsh place. We are sometimes put against seemingly impossible odds. Survival instincts kick in. How, then, can we find balance and get the most out of the minds we were given? I look forward to sharing about my attempts to find balance in the future, but as someone suffering with anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), I want to start this series on my mental health journey by talking about our mental preferences and how they can be incorrectly labeled as compulsions. You may not be dealing with the exact issues, but I hope you will be able to glean valuable insight from what I have to share.
As always, please know that I have no medical or psychological training. I am just a person on the internet sharing their experience in hopes that someone will find my content relatable and helpful. If you are suffering with mental health issues, you should always seek professional help in addition to finding solace amongst those who’ve had to deal with similar circumstances.
I have always been particular. As a child, I loved Legos. While I remember having them spread across the floor and searching through them to find the parts I needed, I also remember having had had enough. I acquired small parts containers from the hardware store and sorted my entire collection by color, size, part type, etc. I then labeled all of the little drawers. Was this an early sign of future obsessive compulsive behaviors? Or was it just being neat and efficient? To be clear, being neat and tidy is not the same as suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In my experience, however, those on the outside often do not see the difference between preference and compulsion.
A mental preference can be defined as a behavior or way of living that makes you comfortable. The sum of your mental preferences can be looked at as your comfort zone. For example, I am an introvert by nature and would prefer to stay in rather than go out. If I must go out, I would prefer a small gathering where one on one conversation is calm and relaxed. I want to avoid crowds whenever possible. These examples are all preferences. Another simple example that is more easily related to OCD is how I keep my desk. My desk is very clean and tidy. This is not OCD. This is a preference. For something to be an obsessive compulsion, it must intrusively enter your thoughts, and then cause anxiety that requires you to neutralize the offense through repetitive actions. Keeping my desk the way I want it becomes an OCD issue when I feel like it has been contaminated in some way and I must contain the contamination before it spreads to other surfaces through repetitive cleaning. I moved into a new apartment 2 1/2 years ago. It has essentially taken me that entire time to get my office and my mind to the point that I am comfortable enough to sit here and type this right now; I’ll share more on this in a later post.
As an orderly person since childhood, I have a preference for structure, having a plan, efficiency, and open spaces… When I played with Legos, I didn’t build haphazard figures of my imagination. I focused on creations that paralleled real life; namely houses and automobiles. My constructing valued symmetry, structural integrity, and aesthetics that mirrored those found in the world around me.
During my schooling, I once took a test that measured proficiency in a number of subjects. I did well enough across the board, but there was one subject that stood out above the rest… spatial relations. In spatial relations, I scored in the 99th percentile. This means that I scored better than 99% of the individuals who took the same test. It seems that all of my time spent playing with Legos, video games, and helping my parents remodel houses accentuated this ability in me. I’m sharing this as I believe it speaks to my desire for order and structure.
In the professional world, I’ve taken multiple personality tests during my career to see how I fit into the office environment. I’ve been labeled a “classic perfectionist” and as conscientious, analytical, detail-oriented, and cautious. These are valuable traits in an office environment. Outside of the office, some individuals see these traits as off-putting in their exacting nature. From my perspective, I think these traits get in the way of the agendas of others. Sometimes others seek to assign certain behaviors to OCD and then cast a negative light on what is actually a perfectly natural and acceptable preference and approach to life. This leads to the amplification of what the other individual calls OCD when what they’re really at odds with is a mental preference that differs from their own. I’m pointing this out because this sometimes leads to a lack of empathy and then accusation from the other individual. By not accepting your preferences and mislabelling them, the other individual is inadvertently saying there is something wrong with you as a person. In my experience, this issue is one of the main causes of anxiety and obsessive compulsive behaviors that the accusatory individual never sees and can’t fathom. These types of accusations eat away at our capacities to manage our lives and make it easier to fall into patterns of OCD; I will talk more about mental bandwidth in a future post.
Counting, following strict paths through the house, taking 5 showers in a single day, looking forward to Black Friday in order to buy hand soap refills due to excessive hand washing, giving up hobbies because of the cleaning rituals and anguish they cause… This is OCD. This shouldn’t be confused with my preference for order. This shouldn’t be confused with me declining events that are outside of my comfort zone.
What is the point I am trying to make? As I’ve indicated, this post is meant to be the opening of a series that discusses my mental health journey. Right out of the gate, I want you to know that your mind is beautiful and that it is natural for you to have your own unique abilities and mental preferences. Don’t let others talk down to you or act like your preferences are somehow an issue. Don’t let someone tell you that what are actually mental strengths are somehow negatives. Our mental preferences are what make us who we are. Others need to understand that there is a difference between who we are and what we are dealing with. My exacting nature, my ability to analyze… these qualities have served me well in life. These are not OCD. These traits have essentially propelled any advancement I have ever made. These are abilities and mindsets that are good to have. They are worth protecting and standing up for.
In closing, getting back to Legos. The picture at the top of this post was generated by artificial intelligence (AI). I specifically asked the AI for a picture of blue blocks in a container surrounded by a variety of other colors of blocks. This was after asking for the blocks to be sorted by color in a small parts container. AI couldn’t give me this. Life doesn’t give you this. Even when I asked specifically, AI still included some other colors of blocks in with the blues. There are even blues outside of the container. This is hard for me to accept. How is the technology so inept? And yet, this is a perfect example of how we must deal with the hand we’re dealt; how we must deal with everything life throws at us. Our mental preferences are very important to recognize, establish, and protect in order to find balance in our lives. But what happens when life ignores your preferences? What happens when you lose your balance? My next post in this series will discuss the day OCD became an issue for me; the day that balance was categorically lost.
Thanks for reading, Matt
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The Bean & Seed 
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