The Gift of Your Compulsions

By Mary O’Malley

We compulsively eat, diet, work, shop, surf the Internet, drink, gamble. All we have to do is get control—right? Wrong! What if you could begin to see your compulsions as a gift?

You might be thinking, “How can she possibly say that compulsions are a gift?” I ask you to suspend your disbelief for a moment and just contemplate the possibility that instead of something that is wrong with your life, your compulsion can become a guide back into a deep love for yourself and a wondrous appreciation for the gift of life.

My life is a testimony to what can happen when you change your relationship to your compulsions. At one time I gained 97 pounds in a year, at the same time I was drinking and using drugs! And I tried every diet, therapy and medical plan that promised to get rid of these so-called obnoxious behaviors. One time I even went without eating for a month, only to overeat again. I thought none of this worked because I wasn’t committed enough. I also thought that everybody could do it but me! I would try even harder only to spiral down into self-hate, confusion, and despair. It was in the depths of my despair when, after 25 years of failure, I finally had to admit that controlling my compulsion didn’t bring me the peace I so desperately longed for. And thankfully so. For as I learned how to cultivate a new type of relationship with my compulsions, I not only healed my compulsions; I also discovered the lasting healing I was longing for.

In order to appreciate the invitation I am giving you, you need to understand that there was a time that you absolutely loved being you! When you were born you were wide open to life, at home inside of yourself, comfortable in your own skin. The river of life flowed through you, sometimes in torrents, sometimes in stillness, full of the peace of being connected to you. You may have no mental memories of this time, but your body does. It remembers when there was no part of you that wasn’t okay and you knew the joy of loving yourself from the inside out. Because you were at home inside yourself, your eyes sparkled and your body tingled with the pure joy of being alive. You hadn’t yet bought into the belief that you needed to be any different than what you were in order to know the deep ‘enoughness’ that you naturally are.

But slowly, as you experienced those moments where life scared you, overwhelmed you and disappointed you, you learned how to pull back, tightening your body, holding your breath and dimming your joy. You began to live in a conversation inside of you that said you needed to be better or different in order to be okay. Rather than accepting yourself as you were, you began to hide all of the unacceptable parts of yourself deep inside, hoping they would just go away and leave you alone. But the feelings that we are afraid of don’t just dissolve when we ignore them. In fact they have a tendency to influence our lives from underneath our everyday awareness, becoming the primary fuel for our compulsions.

For all of us, there came a time in our lives where holding our breath and distracting ourselves wasn’t enough to keep these feelings at bay, so that is when we learned how to take care of ourselves through our compulsions. By compulsion I mean any recurring activity we use to manage our feelings around which we have little or no control. We can get compulsive about almost anything—overspending, overeating, overworking, overplanning, overworrying, overexercising, overdrinking, overcomputerizing, or just “over-overing.” Many people are compulsive without even knowing it. It isn’t until the computer crashes or the credit card is canceled or the doctor says you can’t eat a high-fat diet that it becomes clear just how much a particular activity controls your life.

To make matters worse, our whole story around compulsions is that they are bad—something that must be gotten rid of. So we try to control these urges, only to have them control us. But what we resist persists and this is where many people are caught. Fighting forces actually makes them stronger when we try to dominate them. Then we feel like failures for being unable to control them.

So how do we move beyond this cycle of struggle and know instead the deep healing we long for? We can begin to explore a whole new way to work with our compulsions. In order to open to this new way we need to understand that compulsions are not here because we are doing something wrong. They come from the deepest, wisest part of ourselves, bringing all the experiences we need in order to unravel the web of struggle that we find ourselves caught in. Rather than proof of our defectiveness, they are a survival system that was created in order to manage all of the overwhelming and disappointing experiences of our lives.

The old style of working with our compulsions is to try to manage them but managing just keeps us on the surface of our experience. If we aren’t aware of what is going on inside of ourselves whenever we are compulsive we will live in reaction. Reaction creates contractions in our mind, body and heart and these contractions left unattended, get us into all sorts of trouble, the core trouble being that it fuels our compulsion. It is what we choose not to observe in our lives that controls us.

There is also strong evidence that managing compulsions doesn’t work. Take overeating for example. It has been widely reported that 95-98% of every pound that is lost in the United States is gained back, plus some, within a year and a half. The tricky thing is that management does appear to work initially, but eventually it gives diminishing returns, for compulsions don’t heal the feelings that are fueling them. They just numb us out.

Rather than managing our compulsion, the new way is to engage with it. Engaging with our compulsion is about becoming curious about what is going on. It is a passionate interest in what is happening and a compassionate meeting of what we are experiencing. All lasting healing happens when we can be present for whatever we are experiencing in this moment.

Whenever we are compulsive, instead of turning away, this is the time to turn toward our experience. The more we bring the healing light of attention to our compulsion, we can unravel the ball of struggle that made compulsion interesting in the first place. And we can literally transform the feelings we hid inside of ourselves that are fueling our compulsion. When we meet whatever is there with curiosity and compassion, our old patterns and feelings finally loose their power over us.

It is important to understand that engagement isn’t about getting rid of all of our management tools. It is about adding curiosity and compassion to the process. Over time, managing your compulsion will become less and less interesting as engagement brings you the freedom you long for.

There are two qualities that make up the art of engagement—curiosity and compassion. Curiosity is an alert acceptance coupled with a passionate interest about whatever is happening right now. Curiosity is neither for nor against whatever it focuses on. It is simply interested in what is happening right now.

The beauty of curiosity is that it is so simple. You don’t need to do anything with it except pay attention. If you discover the willingness, the insight, and the courage to really look at what is happening right now in your life, not only to look but to see, you will be healed; for all the clues to your healing are in the experience you are having right now!

The second quality of engagement is compassion. The power of compassion is that it dissolves problems rather than trying to solve them. This dissolving comes from compassion’s ability to meet ourselves as we are. All of the wild hunger for your compulsion is really a hunger for you. It is a hunger for a tender and respect-filled acceptance of you. Compassion understands that no amount of becoming ‘better’ will ever bring us the healing we long for, because it is based on the belief that we are not okay right now. The enoughness that we seek isn’t about changing anything. It is about meeting ourselves in our own hearts and discovering the enoughness that already is!

As you become interested in engaging your compulsions, know that patience is an important ingredient on the journey of healing and being healed by them. It took a long time to weave the web of compulsion. It will take a while to unravel it but the invitation is to begin right now. For just this moment, let go of any judgment you have for being compulsive and instead, respect yourself for taking on the great teacher of compulsion. And know that as you learn how to listen to your compulsions, they will become your guide back into a deep and abiding relationship with yourself and with your life.

Mary O’Malley is a speaker, group facilitator, and counselor in private practice in Kirkland, Washington for over 30 years. This article is based on her book, The Gift of Our Compulsions: A Revolutionary Approach to Self-Acceptance & Healing (New World Library). Visit her website at www.maryomalley.com.