Numerological obsessions: causes, symptoms and treatment

Count to one hundred each time I write a word. Always go around the block three times before being able to enter the house. Touch or ask the same thing seven times in a row.

Brush your teeth exactly 35 times before spitting and rinsing your mouth. All these situations have something in common: for some reason an action is performed a certain number of times. This is something frequent for people with numerological obsessiona, a type of obsessions typical of subjects with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

obsessive-compulsive disorder

To understand how numerological obsessions work, it is first necessary to make a brief summary of the disorder in which it appears: obsessive-compulsive disorder.

He obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD is a psychological disorder closely linked to anxiety and characterized by the presence of obsessions, intrusive and recurring thoughts that escape the control of the person and cause a high level of anxiety, despite the fact that they are recognized as their own and that they are attempted neutralize.

Generally, in order to reduce anxiety, the subject ends up starting to perform some type of action, be it physical or mental, an activity that at relieve anxiety it is reinforced and repeated each time the thought arises again, establishing itself as a compulsion. This creates a continuous spiral between obsessive thinking and the anxiety regulatory mechanism, which occupies a large part of the patient's time and plunges him into a state of permanent anxiety from which he can only temporarily escape through compulsions (an escape that in turn reinforces the anxiety), producing discomfort continuous.

Getting into a thought loop

The process that this disorder follows is usually the following: by chance, one day a thought appears that the person finds aberrational and unacceptable. The fact that this idea has crossed his mind generates a high level of discomfort and anxiety, trying at all costs to eliminate the thought and avoid it as much as possible. However, the fact of trying to avoid it causes a fixation in him, making his reappearance even more likely and generating even greater anxiety that he will try to avoid with greater zeal. To do this, he generally uses the aforementioned compulsions, which produce temporary relief from discomfort.

It is a disorder that causes the person who suffers from it a deep vital suffering: The person knows that the thoughts and actions that he carries out they do not make any logical or practical sense and he experiences them as something absurd, but nevertheless he has to carry them out to reduce his level of anxiety. The same goes for the obsessive thoughts.

The continuous cycle between obsession and compulsion does nothing but feed back and aggravate the state of the subject, occupying a large part of her daily time and being an element that greatly inhibits her life in various aspects. In addition, it is not uncommon for variations to appear within the vicious circle, and new thoughts that generate anxiety can be added.

The causes of the appearance of obsessive thoughts and fixation on them is due to multiple causes, having a certain genetic predisposition in this regard. Many of these patients have been found to have frontal hyperactivity along with basal ganglia problems. It is also frequent that they appear in people who are strongly inhibited at a vital level, restricted in one or several aspects of their person by society or education received.

There is a wide variety of obsessions and compulsions that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder have, such as cleaning or checking. One of them is the obsessions that have to do with numbers, or numerological obsession..

Numerological obsession: numbers that settle in the mind

Count to ten. That is something that a large majority of the population has done at some time, generally to calm down after something or someone has caused our anger, anger or anxiety. And it is that counting and ordering makes us occupy our minds with something specific and that demands our attention, It can be an escape route to avoid doing something that we regret or putting aside something that hurts us. alter.

Returning to obsessive-compulsive disorder, in people who have numerological obsessions, the mechanism used as a calming ritual for anxiety is based precisely on this. But then, Why do we talk about numerological obsession and not numerological rituals or compulsions?

A mechanism to calm anxiety... or anxiety itself

This is because people with a numerology obsession do not only use numbers as mechanism to calm anxiety, but in them the numbers themselves are the reason for anxiety. This type of case is highly complex, since in them the person would find himself completely blocked, to the point of having already forgotten the reason that led him to use numbers as a way of calming down and transforming what was compulsion into obsession. This does not mean that the original idea has vanished, but rather that the theme that produces obsession has been masked.

The way in which numbers are applied is very varied. There are people who have to mentally count to a certain number, perform an action a certain number of occasions, have a specific amount of objects or avoid contact with anything linked to one or more numbers in question. In fact, it may appear related to other obsessions and compulsions such as cleaning, but in the case of the obsession numerological, what will prevail will be the number and not the action per se (that is, if they do not wash X number of times, their anxiety will not decreases).

There are numerous cases of OCD with numerological obsessions, being frequent the obsession with specific numbers or with groups of them that have common characteristics (for example, with even or odd numbers). A well-known example is the famous inventor Nicholas Tesla, who had an obsession with the number three in many aspects of his life.

Treating numerology OCD

The treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder has been somewhat complex throughout history, being a disorder traditionally difficult to treat. Thus, OCD (including numerological obsessions).

One of them comes from pharmacology, which allows treating and reducing symptoms with a certain level of effectiveness. Especially effective are antidepressants that inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, the SSRIs.

Generally, from the cognitive-behavioral perspective, obsessive-compulsive disorder is treated through techniques of exposure with prevention of response, causing the patient little by little to disassociate the obsessive thought and the compulsion. Since the repetition of the compulsion maintains the vicious circle of obsession-compulsion through negative reinforcement, it is one of the most applied therapies to treat the symptoms.

In the case of numerological obsession, this type of treatment encounters the problem that it is more difficult to find the source thought that causes anxiety and work with it. Despite this, working on response prevention is possible and can help reduce overt behaviors.

Along with this, interventions are applied to realistically show the level of responsibility of the patient in the events that are imagined could occur. non-compliance with rituals, making it visible that trying to deny a thought causes us to relapse into it and that thinking something negative does not imply do it. Once again, in numerological obsession this type of treatment results in great complication since it is not visible what concrete thought produces the problem. A thorough analysis of the case and the circumstances surrounding it is necessary in order to discover it.

Other current therapies such as psychodynamics show that although the treatment of the symptom is very useful to improve the patient's condition and can lead to success, treatment should focus on modifying the first cause that caused the obsessive structure of the patient. In this regard, reducing inhibition and uncovering and directing internal energy to what the individual really wants can help in greatly to cause a structural change in the person, which can greatly contribute to the person's recovery.

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fifth edition. DSM-V. Massón, Barcelona.
• Pickover, C.A. (2002). The wonder of numbers, Ma Non Troppo.

• Ruiz, d. (2014). Free the monkey, rescue the princess. The AFOP method to free yourself from obsessions. RIOCC Editorial: Barcelona.

• Santos, J.L.; Garcia, L.I.; Calderón, M.A.; Sanz, L.J.; de los Rios, P.; Left, S.; Roman, P.; Hernangomez, L.; Navas, E.; Ladrón, A and Álvarez-Cienfuegos, L. (2012).
• Clinical psychology. CEDE PIR Preparation Manual, 02. YIELD. Madrid.
• Vallejo, J. & Leal, C. (2010). Treaty of Psychiatry. Volume II. Medical Ars. Barcelona.