"Parenting is a lesson in tolerating uncertainty"

Lauren Salles returns to tell us how cognitive distortions lend us the illusion of control -- and how we might get free

Have you ever been plagued by the thoughts that you’ve been irresponsible in some way — some way that has caused harm to others?

I think this is a common experience.

However, I’ve learned recently that some of us experience elements of "responsibility OCD,” a lesser-understood variant of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, in which people imagine they're on the hook for things that they're really not. Especially vis a vis caregiving or community service.

For example:

• Many of us might stop to pick up a piece of litter as we walk through a public park, even if we weren’t the ones who threw it on the ground. But someone with conscientiousness OCD might be paralyzed with guilt on their way to work if they choose not to pick up every other piece of litter that they see.

• Many of us may be prompted to research a new childrearing approach, especially if we were raised with ones we don’t wish to repeat. But someone with responsibility OCD might spend hours reading articles or books on the same topics to ensure they don’t cause harm. Or memorizing suggestions or scripts offered by popular influencers as if they are airtight “rules. This person might then berate themselves harshly for not doing things “right” if their child still has a minor accident while on their watch, or continues to have developmentally appropriate tantrums anyway.

• Many of us may feel called to do our part to call for peaceful and just resolution to the conflicts we see in our country and overseas, or to call for oppressive structures to be replaced by ones that are not. But someone with this strain of OCD might focus on adherence to “one right way” to protest or frame the issue, rather than considering the validity of a variety of strategies. Their self-care routines or their relationships might suffer, as their self-worth and sense of safety becomes increasingly bound up in pursuing this “one right way.” Some research shows that some people who engage in this thinking pattern may counter-intuitively be at greater risk of causing harm to others as they do so. This research draws a distinction between “functional, proportional behavior, like street demonstrations or defending oneself when needed” and “pathological and unhelpful behavior, like disproportionate retaliation and torture.” But it also shows that the downsides of what researchers call “obsessive passion” arose consistently whether the folks under study were environmental activists, Democrats, Republicans, and Muslims.

Photo by Pablo García Saldaña on Unsplash

I have learned that this variant of OCD is something for which new mothers, unsurprisingly, are especially at risk. What parent of a newborn has not watched the rise and fall of that little chest with some degree of desperate hope and panic? And yet

Amanda Montei

has written at length about how normalized it has become for mothers to completely lose their autonomy in the process of becoming parents, even though this is more a function of our society’s failure to support mothers than it is an inherent job requirement of the role. Melinda Wenner Moyer has written about how the pressure to perform increasingly intensive forms of parenting does not serve children.

Zawn Villines

points out with regularity that this pressure primarily serves the powers that be that would prefer that women remain preoccupied with this performance, rather than with critiquing these societal failures, or the men behind them. (Including a certain misogynistic NFL kicker who will not be named.)

As

Anne Helen Petersen

writes in “A Ring Around the Toilet Is Not a Moral Failing”:

Some of this anxiety, like many previous parenting anxieties, is a reaction to nebulous and often unspeakable fears about the future — the decline of America, for one, but also the gradual death of the planet. You can’t control the icebergs melting, but you can make sure your kid is never kidnapped on a playground because your eyes are on them at all times. But some of these compulsions are also a way to curb women’s growing freedoms and resistance to patriarchal ideals. Oh, you’re more powerful outside of the home? Let’s weigh you down with some absurd new parenting standards, unrooted in scientific fact! You’re more confident in resisting the patriarchy? Too bad, puree this baby food or you’re a bad mom!

Someone who is already vulnerable to the thinking patterns that characterize OCD, I fear, would also be particularly vulnerable to being manipulated and disempowered by this state of affairs.

I also see shades of these kinds of cognitive distortions in my facilitation work with grieving loss parents. I have even experienced them myself. It’s very common for people who lose a pregnancy to blame themselves for a loss outcome they couldn't control, and to wonder for years whether it was this choice or that thought that brought this tragedy upon them. (Per the Mayo Clinic: “Most of the time, miscarriage happens because of a random event that is no one's fault.”) Current U.S. policy and politicians have further muddied the waters for these parents as well, giving all citizens increasingly contradictory messages about the birthing person. We are apparently omnipotent beings, in control of everything that happens inside of our bodies, including the loss of our wanted pregnancies, but also the many unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual violence every year. We are also, however, not to be trusted, whether we are talking about being promoted to a leadership position or simply believed when we are narrating our own pain (even when we are doctors), because our bodies are so out of control.

It takes continued practice in order to embrace this liberating but terrifying both/and: we are all deserving of unconditional respect and autonomy no matter what occurs inside of our bodies, and we live in a reality that is, as any Buddhist or Twelve-Stepper will tell you, inherently unmanageable. Most of us get very little instruction or support with that kind of practice, not to mention time and space, especially if we are busy parents.

Is it any wonder that someone who is already reeling from the paradigm-shifting experience of birth or loss might decide that it is simpler, more efficient, to blame themselves instead for what is going “wrong” inside of themselves, or in the world?

Given that it is Maternal Mental Health Month, I think this is an important topic for us to touch upon in this space, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments. As we recently checked in with Lauren Salles¹, a writer and a mother who lives with OCD, I also wanted to get her thoughts on this.

Below, we talk about how parents can push back on the black-and-white, right-or-wrong thinking that characterizes so much of the discourse in this moment — and also assess whether they or a loved one needs help untangling themselves from it.

I found Lauren’s insights thoughtful and encouraging, and I hope you will too.

Ryan: As a person with OCD, what can you tell us about discerning the difference between “being responsible” in situations we can control as parents, and slipping into the cognitive distortions common to OCD, which can suggest that we as individuals are responsible for everything?

Lauren: This is a really important question, one that definitely warrants professional input on a case-by-case basis. 

However, from what I’ve observed in my time as a mom, we often make parenting — mothering in particular — a lot more difficult than it already is. Our information-obsessed internet culture encourages us to look outward for “answers” rather than inward.

Access to so much material is detrimental for those with mental health and OCD tendencies, who seek to eliminate uncertainty at any cost. We feel compelled to research every aspect of parenting, from breastfeeding to sleep training to childcare. We google and google in an attempt to reassure ourselves that we aren’t messing up our kids or doing the “wrong” thing.

But there’s no way to know for sure how our parenting decisions will impact our kids, despite what the experts and influencers might make you believe. There is no one “right” way to be a parent.  

Online narratives, especially those on social media, often become one-sided and tend to moralize certain parenting choices. For example - if you don’t ascribe to every aspect of “attachment parenting” then you are a “bad” mom. Those with “responsibility OCD” or “conscientiousness OCD” will be extremely vulnerable to these types of claims due to their people-pleasing focus.

We want to be seen as a “good” parent, therefore, we must follow all of the “rules” – even if those rules are unrealistic and come at the expense of our own health and wellbeing. Melinda Wenner Moyer wrote a great article on this topic in

Is My Kid the Asshole?

called “The Fallacy of Maternal Self-Sacrifice.” In it, she addresses the false binary that if parents prioritize their own needs, they do so at the expense of their children’s needs. 

If someone is following a strict parenting regimen and seems to have lost their agency — in other words, they are making decisions based on what they think they should be doing, rather than prioritizing their own values and desires — then it might be time to intervene.

How might we teach parents how to self-assess whether what they are doing is "enough”?

These reminders may be helpful for those who aren’t sure:

There are many ways to be a “good” parent or a “good” mother.

A decision that doesn’t align with a specific doctrine is not a “bad” decision by default.

You’re allowed to make a decision without researching it first.

There’s a healthy balance between striving to be the best parent that you can be and obsessing over minutia.

In the end, you are the judge of your own parenting. Instead of outsourcing your self-confidence, trust that you are doing your best.

Above all, acknowledge that there isn’t one “right” answer to any question – parenting is a lesson in tolerating uncertainty!

---

FURTHER READING:

Doing enough vs. burning out

Meeting the future halfway

1. In Lauren’s interview, I mentioned that she has one living child and another on the way. Her baby, Camille, has since arrived earthside. Congrats Lauren!