|
|
Self-Help Practice 4:
Add a Consequence to Your Ritual
Sometime you will find that you have just
performed your ritual without any conscious expectation. In
those situations it is impossible for you to postpone or change the
ritual, because it's already done! In other times, you know you
are about to ritualize, but you feel helpless to postpone or change
the pattern.
In these situations, one simple change
that can greatly increase your awareness is to add a consequence every
time you ritualize.
Add a Consequence to Your
Ritual
- Select one ritual that has been
difficult to interrupt through postponing or modifying.
- Commit yourself to performing a
specific consequence after each time you ritualize
- Select a consequence (put $1 in a jar,
walk 30 minutes after work, call a support person, etc.)
- As your awareness increases prior to
the ritual, practice postponing or changing some aspect of the
ritual
- When ready, let go of the ritual
completely and tolerate the distress that follows
With this practice, you need not change
how or when you ritualize. But each time you do ritualize, you must
then perform some additional task.
Choose a task totally unrelated to any of your compulsive tendencies
and also something that requires you to disrupt your normal routine.
Decide to drive to a park and pick up trash for an hour, do some kind
gesture for someone you are angry with, practice the piano for
forty-five minutes, or hand-copy ten poems from book. Ideally, the
consequence you choose will also be one that has some redeeming value.
One we use often is exercise - such as taking a brisk walk for thirty
minutes.
If these sound like disruptive,
time-consuming tasks it's because they are supposed to be!
But don't consider them as punishment; they are simply consequences
you have added to your ritual. To be effective, the consequences must
be costly.
Because they are costly in time and
effort, after some practice you will become aware of the moment you
are about to ritualize, and you will hesitate. You
will pause to think about whether it is best to start ritualizing,
because if you do ritualize, you'll also have to start in on
this not so pleasant consequence. This moment of hesitation gives you
an opportunity to resist the compulsion in order to
avoid that costly consequence.
For example, let's say
you must check the stove every time you leave the
house for work in the morning. You tend to get stuck touching each
knob six times before you walk out the door. Later, when you are on
the front porch, you doubt whether the stove is off, and back you go
for another round of checking. Several weeks ago you began to use the
slow-motion practice every time you checked. This has worked so well
that now you check the stove only once and never touch the knobs. But
each day, standing out on the front porch, you still become doubtful
and must return to the stove for a second quick check "just to be
sure."
This would be a good time to implement
a consequence. Decide that, starting tomorrow, each time you
check the stove again, touch a knob while checking, or even glance at
the knobs again while walking through the kitchen, you must take a
brisk thirty-minute walk as soon as you come home from work. This
means you take a walk before doing anything else: no stopping
at the store on the way home; no having a snack after you get home.
Just put on your walking shoes and go, regardless of whether it's hot
and muggy, raining, or snowing. Soon you will be thinking twice before
stepping back inside from the porch "just to make sure."
This technique will work in the same way
whether you are a washer who wants to stop washing
your hands an second time, a hoarder who wants to
stop collecting meaningless materials, or and orderer
who wants to stop straightening up repeatedly. If the consequence you
choose does not have this intended effect after numerous trials, then
switch to a consequence that seems a little more costly.
|
|
