The past year I’ve been dealing with OCD about free will, consciousness, and instincts. The latter two stem from the free will problem, but basically I’ve been having anxiety and OCD about having no control over my life on a biological basis. It all started because I watched a YouTube video called “Why we Don’t have Free Will and why that’s OK” from a health channel called “What I’ve Learned” about a year ago. After the video, I started panicking and thinking what if I have no control over my life? What I really am just a product of my environment and I have no freedom? I went and scoured the Internet for counters to these questions and actually found some really good stuff, but my search for answers kept leading me to other topics that threatened the idea of free will. This is where consciousness and instincts OCD come into play. From this research, I found out some scientists say that a lot of our actions are unconscious, but luckily however I did more research and found out that a growing number of psychologists don’t think the unconscious mind actually does not even exist. As for instincts, it all started because I saw a Quora questions that asked “Why is human instinct generally considered to be overriden?” I thought I would get more answers about how human have free will, but instead the top answer was the complete opposite. That answer to this question talked about how humans always act on instinct and that the reasons we give ourselves for acting a certain way are always an illusion. He claims to have done 20+ years of research on human instincts to further his business. The guy doesn’t have a bio degree or anything. I want to be suspicious about these thoughts, but I STILL think about the possibility of him being right about how humans might not be as free as we think. All my research and counterpoints to my own existential crises are nice to know, but I still haven’t been able to shake the thoughts “What if all these people are right? What if we really have less control than we think?” One thing I try to still tell myself is that pretty much everything we know is not a certainty. There is so much uncertainty in the world, and we shouldn’t try to find certainty all the time. I want to just live my life without thinking about all these existential things and just enjoy it. Please let me know if any of you have had similar thoughts or experiences. I’d love to hear your tips, tricks, and anything that can help. Thank you, and have a great day, wherever you are.

AceJ

Date posted: 6y

Yeah totally. Thanks so much for sharing, I really appreciate your response. Have a great day!

MichaelK

Date posted: 6y

Yea I know that what I said has flaws in logic (it was for a school assignment lol), just trying to offer another way of viewing things

laurlpn

Date posted: 6y

For me whenever I thought about death and the uncertainty of what happens in the afterlife I would panic and start thinking what if this is all a dream.. thinking of scenarios from the matrix .. it’s ridiculous what the OCD mind will do. I totally understand the need to feel in control and I think OCD has a lot to do with feeling out of control. For example I was OCD free for 3 years (my first scare was obsessions with being sick with any and every disease I would google all day and compare my symptoms- I also had MRIS and saw specialists) I just had a son who’s 2 months- I had high blood pressure and they had to induce me which ultimately made me feel Totally out of control and terrified and my son came 3 weeks early! I ended up having harm thoughts that sent me into full panic mode. I’m on Prozac again and getting better each day but I’m constantly convincing myself that it is ocd and checking my thoughts- I feel you! What works for me is exercise, nature, being around loved ones, Netflix, meditation, Prozac and therapy. Unfortunately I feel ocd you have to face your triggers and keep yourself busy.

MichaelK

Date posted: 6y

I made a poem about free will once, it was called the paradox of choice. It talked about how people are told they can do whatever they want with their life, you choose your job, you pick your poisons, but you don’t pick your desires. Essentially, while it’s true that you don’t have the ability to chose what you like and dislike, you do have the choice in how you will act on your passions. So while you don’t have complete “free will,” you do have it in the sense that you choose how you act, similar to how we get intrusives thoughts that we don’t choose, but we have the ability to decide on how we respond to these thoughts (I wrote the poem before I was diagnosed with ocd, then later found some good parallels)

AceJ

Date posted: 6y

@MichaelK Although I may disagree with the idea that we don’t get to choose what we like and dislike (we definitely have the power to change those things as well), I appreciate you trying to help. Have a great day.

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