Much Ado About Something (Or Nothing)
Updated: 4 days ago
A Tragicomedy in Two Acts About OCD, Anxiety, and the Search for Certainty
Act II: The Fellow Who Wouldn't Leave
Exposure, Uncertainty, Love, and Learning to Live Without a Warranty
The following week, Judy arrived at the therapist's office ten minutes early. Jack was already sitting in the waiting room, reading a magazine whose cover promised seven secrets to a happier life.
“Find anything useful?” Judy asked.
“Apparently I should drink more water and move to Tuscany.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“Unfortunately, I think my wife would prefer to be consulted.”
Judy sat down, placed her phone on the chair beside her, picked it up again, and checked the screen.
Jack watched without comment.
“I've been thinking about what you said last week,” she began.
“Which part?”
“The fellow in the back seat.”
“Ah. How's he doing?”
“Terrible. He's furious.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Means you may have stopped taking some of his advice.”
Judy explained that she'd begun noticing how often her mind demanded reassurance, analysis, or some other attempt to eliminate uncertainty. What surprised her was how uncomfortable she felt when she resisted.
“I thought recognizing OCD would make me feel better.”
Jack folded his magazine.
“That's the first misunderstanding nearly everybody has about treatment.”
The Unreasonable Demands of the Ocean
Jack said that when he first learned about Exposure and Response Prevention, or ERP, he thought he'd finally discovered a reliable method for getting rid of anxiety.
The arrangement seemed straightforward. He would deliberately approach something that frightened him, refrain from his usual compulsion, and wait for the anxiety to disappear.
It sounded unpleasant but manageable. A temporary investment in discomfort in exchange for a future without it.
Unfortunately, Jack had misunderstood the contract.
“I thought the whole point was to make anxiety go down,” he explained. “So naturally, I started checking.”
He would rate his anxiety on a scale from zero to ten.
Eight.
Still eight.
Perhaps seven?
No, probably eight.
Why wasn't it going down?
Was he doing the exposure incorrectly?
Was this proof that therapy wasn't working?
Perhaps it was seven and a half.
“I'd turned exposure into meteorology.”
Judy laughed.
“My therapist finally asked whether I was willing to stop checking the weather and learn to surf.”
“That sounds like something a therapist would say.”
“Annoyingly, it was useful.”
Anxiety behaved rather like a wave. It rose, changed, crested, sometimes subsided, and occasionally hung around longer than anybody had invited it to. But the surfer's job wasn't to flatten the ocean.
The surfer learned to remain on the board.
ERP gradually became less about forcing anxiety to disappear and more about learning that he could experience uncertainty, distress, and intrusive thoughts without performing the compulsions that had always rescued him.
Judy considered this.
“So the goal isn't necessarily to feel better?”
“Not immediately.”
“Then how do you know you're improving?”
Jack thought for a moment.
“When you can do something that matters even while feeling uncomfortable.”
“Like going to work?”
“Sure.”
“Having a difficult conversation?”
“Absolutely.”
“Or sitting in a waiting room without checking my phone every thirty seconds?”
Jack glanced at the phone beside her.
“I wouldn't dream of interfering with your personal growth.”
She turned the phone facedown.
The World's Most Persistent Safety Inspector
Jack explained that OCD had always presented itself as a safety inspector.
The fellow arrived wearing an imaginary hard hat, carrying a clipboard, and announcing that something required immediate attention.
He had concerns about the stove, the locks, Jack's health, his marriage, his morality, and the possibility that a decision made in 2009 had been catastrophically wrong.
The inspector was never entirely satisfied.
Jack could check the stove once, but why not twice? He could review a conversation, but what if he'd overlooked a word? He could reassure himself that a troubling thought didn't reflect his values, but how could he be absolutely certain?
“The inspector was very good at identifying possible hazards,” Jack said. “Unfortunately, he couldn't distinguish a smoke alarm from a house fire.”
Judy nodded.
“Mine has a clipboard too. But she wears sensible shoes and seems very disappointed in me.”
“Same organization. Different department.”
The problem wasn't that safety precautions were unnecessary. People locked doors, attended medical appointments, apologized when they hurt someone, and talked through relationship problems.
The problem was the demand for impossible certainty.
Jack had learned to ask what function a behavior served.
Was he checking because something reasonably needed checking, or because he couldn't tolerate the feeling of doubt?
Was he asking a question to obtain useful information, or because he desperately needed reassurance?
Was he solving a problem, or trying to make an uncomfortable feeling disappear?
Judy thought about that.
“So sometimes the question isn't whether something is safe. It's whether I'm trying to feel perfectly safe.”
Jack nodded.
“That's a better way of putting it.”
She smiled.
“I'll send you a bill.”
A Thought Is Not a Confession
Judy lowered her voice.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Sometimes I have thoughts that are so unlike me that I wonder what kind of person would even think them.”
Jack nodded.
That was familiar territory.
He explained that intrusive thoughts could be disturbing precisely because they conflicted with what mattered most to someone. A person who cared deeply about morality might become preoccupied with the possibility of being immoral. Someone who valued a relationship might become consumed with doubts about love. Someone who feared harming others might become frightened by the presence of an unwanted thought about harm.
The mind produced all kinds of material, much of it uninvited. Unfortunately, OCD treated certain thoughts as evidence requiring an investigation.
Why did I think that?
Could I secretly want it?
What does it say about me?
Would a good person have that thought?
Before long, one odd mental event had acquired an investigative staff.
“A thought isn't a confession,” Jack said. “And your mind isn't required to produce only material that meets with your approval.”
Judy considered that.
“It's funny. If somebody else told me they had a strange thought, I wouldn't automatically assume it meant something terrible about them.”
“But when it's yours?”
“Apparently I need a congressional investigation.”
Jack laughed.
Judy was beginning to recognize that mindfulness and acceptance weren't ways of approving of disturbing thoughts. They were ways of allowing thoughts to exist without automatically demanding an explanation.
A thought could be unpleasant, strange, frightening, offensive, or ridiculous.
And unfinished.
The Trouble With Doing the Opposite
Judy said her therapist had also been encouraging her to do the opposite of what anxiety wanted.
“Doesn't that seem reckless?”
“Sometimes it feels that way,” Jack said. “Especially when you've spent years believing anxiety is the most responsible person in the room.”
Jack explained that emotions were real experiences, but they weren't necessarily reliable instructions.
Fear might encourage avoidance. Shame might encourage hiding. Doubt might encourage checking. Anxiety might insist that everything stop until certainty had been restored.
Mindfulness helped him notice those impulses. Opposite action, when appropriate, helped him choose a different response.
If OCD wanted him to avoid an ordinary situation, he might approach it. If it wanted another hour of analysis, he might return to his work. If it insisted that a question had to be answered immediately, he might allow it to remain unanswered.
Judy looked thoughtful.
“So I'm not supposed to do the opposite of everything anxiety tells me?”
“No. That would be another way of letting anxiety run your life.”
“Right. If I'm anxious about crossing a busy street, I probably shouldn't close my eyes and run.”
“I'd discourage that.”
The question wasn't whether anxiety was present. It was whether the action being considered was reasonable, responsible, and consistent with what mattered.
Sometimes courage looked less like a dramatic confrontation with fear and more like leaving the house without returning to check something for the fourth time.
Not especially cinematic.
But rather important.
The Marriage Department
Judy looked thoughtful.
“Mine gets especially bad with relationships.”
Jack nodded.
“Ah. The Marriage Department.”
“You have one too?”
“Fully staffed. Terrible management.”
Jack explained that relationship OCD had been particularly difficult because relationships really did contain uncertainty.
People changed. Feelings fluctuated. Couples misunderstood each other, disappointed each other, and occasionally said things they wished they hadn't.
Love didn't come with a laboratory test proving that somebody had chosen the correct partner. There was no scan measuring whether affection was sufficiently genuine, no certificate guaranteeing the future, and no reliable method for determining whether every passing doubt meant something important.
For years, Jack had tried to obtain that certainty anyway.
He analyzed his feelings, compared his marriage with other marriages, reviewed memories of happier times, and examined moments when he felt less affectionate than he believed a loving husband should feel.
Sometimes he asked his wife for reassurance.
Sometimes he avoided difficult conversations because they might create additional doubt.
Eventually, he realized that his efforts to guarantee the marriage were interfering with his ability to participate in it.
“I was so busy checking whether I loved my wife correctly that I occasionally forgot to love her.”
Judy smiled.
“That sounds familiar. I've caught myself wondering whether I'm happy enough in a relationship instead of noticing whether I'm actually enjoying being with the person.”
“Exactly.”
“And the more I check my feelings, the less natural they become.”
“Now you're getting somewhere.”
Judy had noticed something else. Sometimes she could be irritated with someone she loved and then become anxious about what the irritation meant.
“If I love somebody, shouldn't I feel loving?”
Jack laughed.
“If that's the standard, my wife and I have been divorced several thousand times.”
He explained that love was larger than the constant measurement of feeling. It involved attention, kindness, repair, commitment, affection, boundaries, honesty, and the willingness to know another person who remained inconveniently different from oneself.
He'd also discovered that acceptance might be one of the important synonyms for love.
Not resignation. Not tolerating mistreatment. Not surrendering legitimate needs.
Acceptance meant recognizing that another person was actually another person: separate, imperfect, changing, occasionally baffling, and incapable of providing certainty on demand.
“I finally decided I'd rather have a real marriage without a warranty than spend my marriage trying to obtain one.”
But What If Something Really Is Wrong?
Judy wasn't entirely convinced.
“What if there's an actual problem?”
“Then you address it.”
“But how do you know?”
“I don't always.”
She looked disappointed.
“You were hoping for a chart?” Jack asked.
“A little.”
Jack explained that OCD treatment and healthy relationship work could coexist. Resisting reassurance seeking didn't mean refusing to communicate. Accepting uncertainty didn't mean overlooking genuine problems. Learning not to compulsively analyze every feeling didn't require pretending that all feelings were meaningless.
Sometimes a couple really did need to discuss money, sex, children, relatives, boundaries, or the division of responsibilities.
The question was whether they were trying to understand and solve a problem or eliminate anxiety through repeated investigation.
Jack had developed a useful rule.
“Most real relationship problems can survive until tomorrow.”
“OCD doesn't like tomorrow?”
“OCD thinks 11:47 tonight is the ideal time to determine the future of your marriage.”
Judy laughed, then thought for a moment.
“Maybe the difference is that healthy problem-solving eventually leads somewhere. You identify the problem, consider options, make a decision, and see what happens.”
“Exactly.”
“But OCD just keeps reopening the case.”
“And charging you for the investigation.”
Judy was beginning to see that two things could be true at once. She could experience OCD and still address legitimate relationship concerns. She could tolerate uncertainty and still have boundaries. She could accept another person and still complain about something that hurt.
OCD considered this extremely poor management.
The Perfection Department Is Closing
Jack said one of his favorite discoveries was the difference between perfection and quality.
For years, OCD had offered him two choices: do something perfectly or be irresponsible.
Perfect certainty or reckless uncertainty.
Perfect morality or moral failure.
Perfect love or proof that the relationship was wrong.
Perfect decisions or disastrous ones.
Treatment had helped him discover a middle word.
Quality.
Quality meant caring, taking reasonable precautions, making thoughtful decisions, correcting mistakes, keeping commitments, and trying to love people well.
It also meant accepting that none of those things came with guarantees.
“The opposite of perfection isn't failure,” Jack explained. “And it isn't not caring. It's doing something well enough to live with the fact that you're human.”
Judy considered that.
“That might be harder than perfection.”
“Much. Perfection is impossible, but at least it gives you something to obsess about.”
She smiled.
“Quality means I have to use judgment.”
“Unfortunately.”
“And accept that I might be wrong.”
“Even worse.”
“And then move on?”
“Now you're just showing off.”
Don't Build a House Inside the Toolbox
The therapist's door opened, but this time it wasn't Judy's appointment. Another client emerged, thanked the therapist, and disappeared down the hallway.
Jack glanced at the clock.
“You know,” he said, “there's one more thing I wish somebody had told me earlier.”
“What's that?”
“Don't become the world's greatest OCD patient.”
Judy laughed.
Jack explained that when he first began treatment, OCD had occupied nearly everything. Then, for a while, treatment occupied nearly everything.
He read about OCD, talked about OCD, monitored OCD, practiced skills for OCD, evaluated his progress with OCD, and occasionally worried about whether he was recovering from OCD correctly.
He'd developed an impressive psychological toolbox.
HALT. BRAVE. Mindfulness. Exposure and Response Prevention. Label and Abandon. Opposite action. Functional analysis. Acceptance. Distress tolerance. Psychological flexibility.
He knew enough acronyms to operate a small federal agency.
But he'd begun to realize that he was spending so much time inspecting his tools that he was forgetting why he'd bought them.
“Nobody buys a hammer because he hopes to spend the rest of his life hammering,” Jack said. “You buy a hammer because occasionally something needs fixing.”
The same should eventually become true of therapy skills.
Learn them. Practice them. Keep them where you can find them.
Then close the toolbox.
Go love somebody. Work. Play. Read. Fish. Make dinner. Raise children. Walk the dog. Worship. Travel. Make something. Learn something. Laugh at something completely inappropriate at precisely the wrong moment.
Sit beside water and accomplish nothing whatsoever.
Whatever makes up a life worth returning to.
“The point isn't to become extraordinarily good at having OCD,” Jack said. “It's to get more of your life back.”
Judy looked at him.
“So if I spend all my time trying to recover from OCD, I might miss the life I'm recovering for?”
Jack smiled.
“I wish I'd thought of saying it that way.”
The Fellow Finally Loses His Job
The therapist appeared in the doorway.
“Judy?”
She stood, but hesitated.
“So what happens to the fellow in the back seat?” she asked.
Jack thought about that.
“He may never leave completely.”
“That's disappointing.”
“Only if you think getting rid of him is the whole point.”
Jack explained that the fellow still occasionally offered advice. Sometimes he was persuasive. Sometimes Jack found himself checking, reviewing, analyzing, or seeking reassurance before he recognized what was happening.
But something important had changed.
The fellow no longer held the same position in the company.
He'd once been chief executive officer, head of security, legal counsel, medical director, marriage consultant, and chairman of the board.
Now he was an occasionally noisy passenger whose recommendations could be considered without being followed.
“Does he still knock on the door?” Judy asked.
“Of course.”
“And you don't answer?”
“Oh, sometimes I answer. I'm human.”
“What then?”
“I notice I'm standing at the door talking to him again.”
“And?”
“Eventually I go do something better.”
Judy smiled and started toward the office.
Then she turned around.
“You know, Jack, I've been thinking about something.”
“What's that?”
“You keep talking about this fellow in the back seat as though he's a terrible person.”
“He's certainly not somebody I'd invite to dinner.”
“But he's really just part of your mind trying very hard to protect you, isn't he?”
Jack considered that.
“I suppose so.”
“He's just not very good at it.”
Jack laughed.
“No. He's really not.”
“So maybe you don't have to hate him or fight him or even get rid of him. Maybe you just have to stop giving him jobs he's not qualified to do.”
Jack looked at her for a moment.
“Have you considered becoming a therapist?”
“Good heavens, no. I'm trying to reduce my anxiety.”
She disappeared into the office.
Jack sat alone for another minute, looking at the magazine beside him. The cover still promised seven secrets to a happier life, although he was beginning to suspect that Tuscany and hydration might not be the entire answer.
He noticed that it wasn't quite straight, picked it up, and put it down again.
Then he stood, collected his coat, and walked out into the afternoon.
The fellow in the back seat had several concerns and said, “turn left.”
Jack listened politely, and turned right!
© 2026 Thomas Kurtz. All rights reserved.
Published by Thomas Kurtz Counseling, LLC.
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