The initial questions I set out to answer was inspired by the diagnoses I received from professionals. Most of these professionals believed I was either bipolar, or had Obsessive Compulsive Disorde (OCD); and of the two, majority believed my condition was better described by OCD than bipolarity. This is why the initial task I set for myself was to understand OCD and its roots. In my search, I found that OCD is defined as an anxiety disorder, where a coping mechanism, often in the form of behavioural rituals, is taken up to reduce the anxiety. This is essentially the same mechanism that keeps us clear of dangers; in face of real threats, our brain shifts into either fight or flight mode based on its analysis of the situation. However, people with OCD manifest the same biological and physiological characteristics in the absence of a real threat. In response to their perceived threat, people with OCD often devise a coping mechanism, which they believe, can mitigate the problem.

When it comes to the root of the problem, there are two parallel and often complementary explanations. Some believe OCD is due to childhood experiences, while some have even gone further to suggest there are genetic components to it. I have to adm it here that, like many others, I have always had a tendency to find genetics to provide a compelling and indisputable explanations for biological events. This is partly becuase it gives me a sense of solidity. If a condition is genetic, I can close the case with a single, clean and conclusive explanation for the problem. I can then move on to detect environmental stimuli, which further activate, or defuse the condition, knowing full well that the best I can do is to tone the genes down and nothing more. In other words, genetics as a sicentific explanation gives me a satisfaction attributed to a sense of completion, a feeling that cannot be attributed to environmental factors. Take anxiety as an example. From an environmental perspective, anxiety can be a condition with a genetic component, as well as a condition developed after traumatic experiences. It can be learned through modelling, or the symptom of religious beliefs. I can continue to list triggers of anxiety and never feel I have covered all of them. However, if I could prove genes were responsible for anxiety, a sense of conclusion would soon ensue. Last but not least, the nuature-nurture debate is at the heart of every debate when it comes to ailments, personality types, characteristics, abilities and everything else which can be studied about humans.

This is why I initially started by following the trend and trying to figure out whether my condition was genetic or acquired. However, I later came to the conclusion that this was an unhelpful endeavour, for two main reason. The first is that my research led me to believe that OCD in general, and my OCD in particular, seemed to come from both genes and environment. I did have traumatic childhood experiences, but could also vividly remember myself manifesting OCD symptoms when I was as young as four. So, it is impossible to disentangle the effect of upbringing and genetics in the formation of OCD at such an early phase in life. Even if it was possible to do this, one should ask oneself, why such an inclination exists, which brings me to the second reason I think this debate is not pragmatic. So long as we do not have the technology to modify people’s genetic make up, finding a genetic component to behaviours is basically a reason for giving up, or an incentive for victimization. Soon after we discover some trait is genetic, we give up our attempts, or loose hope to correct it. But we do not hold the same attitude towards environmentally imposed behaviour patterns; although these behaviours are also the result of a natural event at some point in our lives, and can hence be as deep rooted. In fact, the only difference between the two, as far as my understanding goes, is that behaviours with genetic components carry within them, the experiences of other humans at other points in time.

Formally, a behaviour is genetic if it is heritable, has variability among those who use or have it, and has some more adaptive versions, which become more commonplace in time, and is hence passed down to future generations. To me, these definitive conditions only make sense in isolation. When I compare genetic behaviour to non-genetic ones, the conditions are no longer clear. Take heritability as an instance. A behaviour is heritable if it is passable to other generations. But such a transfer can happen both at the biological and environmental levels. Any behaviour can be passed onto other, especially younger, people provided the right time and context are present. This is especially likely when the behaviour in question has been internalized by the carrier who cannot imagine an alternate view. It is not difficult to imagine the children of such a person to inherit the internalized behaviour even if it has no genetic components. For example, trauma of loosing loved ones early in life can be one of those instances. I have a friend who lost his sister in a car accident when he was 18. In four years, he lost his mother in another car accident. Following these events, he become edgy, depressed, fatigued and hopeless. The question is whether such tendencies are less prominent than those found in a person who has inherited them from a parent. I think they are not. They are as omnipresent in my friend’s life as they would have been if he had inherited them from his parents. They are also transferrable to future generations. With my friend being unable to isolate himself from those experiences, he constantly finds himself under their influence when he interacts with his daughters. It is therefore likely that his daughters will internalize a thing or two of a depressed father figure, which they may in turn pass on to her children.

A similar argument can be made about adaptiveness. Behaviours are either living or dying. If a behaviour is still relevant, meaning, if the context which gave to its rise are still paramount, it continues to last. And this is irrelevant to whether the trait in question is genetic or acquired. When under threat, the survival of the trait does not bear strong relevance to its roots either. A trait can be environmentally-induced and survive extinction, just the same way a trait can be genetic, and go extinct. The survivability of genetic and acquired traits can be guaged only by studying the frequency with which they have survived. However, since there are no traits, which we can, with all certainty, claim to be either genetic or acquired, this test is a fantasy, and the arguments around it lack pragmatic value. Even if this was possible in a fictitious world, I am sure acquired traits would lag behind by a small margin, which would indicate they are not decisively less remarkable.

In my opinion, one way to avoid all these arguments is to start by defining a heritable behaviour as a behaviour born in response to a significant event in a human’s life. In face of such a significant event, the experience is documented psychologically, biologically or both. And it is such documentation that plays the key role in biological heritability or persistence of a behaviour. If an event is significant, it leaves a mental or physical mark, and will likely last so long as the context for its existence still persists. If the mark is no longer relevant in time, the mark will loose colour, or its carriers go extinct. Now, there are two advantages to such a definition.

The first advantage is that a heritable behaviour is not limited to those, which have been biologically documented. All significant events leaving a mark can lead to heritable behaviours; either through genes or through internalization and communication. The second advantage of such a definition is that it makes comparison of genetic and non-genetic behaviours more sensible, with their difference being in the nature of the mark, and not in their heritability or intensity. In fact, with such a definition, it is equally likely that a psychological mark can outlive a physical one. To be more precise, there are two main differences between acquired and genetic behaviours. The first is that the genetic behaviours are probably older than acquired behaviours. Assuming a behaviour is genetic, it is with you from the moment you come to being in your mother’s womb, whereas acquired behaviours need some level of exposure with the environment to be formed. The second difference between the two is that genetic behaviours are documented in the form of genes, whereas acquired behaviours may or may not have been. The question to ask is whether a behaviour is more prominent and stickier if its characteristics are biologically documented, and has an older origin. As people, we all have the tendency to think what is documented is more tangible, visible and harder to ignore. We also have a strong tendency to give more value to events and characteristics with longer history. We do this about money, nationality and objects. The question remains whether the longer relevance of an attribute guarantees its future relevance. The answer is no. An attribute remains relevant as long as the factors involved in its birth are present and of primary importance. As soon as those factors change, the attribute in question is no longer relevant. Besides, even if we decide to give credence to history and biological documentation, it is not hard to find rivals which do not have such characteristics but have lasted generations. Previously I gave the example of trauma; faith, culture and values are other heritable and old phenomena behaving much like genetic traits. All that said, the biggest advantage of this definition is that it downplays the tendency to categorize traits into two distinct fabrics based on their origins, which could add pragmatic value when it comes to appreciation for, or modification of the trait. My conclusion from these thoughts was that it was not helpful for me to know whether my condition is genetic or acquired. I came to this conclusion because I was convinced that environment can have as strong an impact on one's life, as genes.

At the same time that I was looking for the roots of my problem, I was also trying to find which treatment options I had. I was desparate and down all the time. So, my methodology there was to throw myself in the arms of various therapists, do what they tell me, and analyze which one is most effective in making me feel better. However, the journey was not smooth, as is never the case when it comes to mental health problems. The first requirement for finding a solution to a mental problem is to be able to describe the problem. However, given the overlapping nature of psychological problems, it is often difficult to describe a given problem without resorting to its underlying cause. For example, depending on the nature of OCD, it can be a problem in itself, or it can be a symptom of bipolar disorder, autism or a commorbid occurrence of anxiety and other conditions such as bipolar disorder. Although there seems to be a universally accepted definition for OCD, the OC behaviour patterns seen among these different groups are not easily discernible. For example, people with autism often engage in repetitive behaviours and feel at home when engaging in routines. On the other hands, people with bipolar disorder often have impulse control issues, which could manifest itself in the form of gambling, compulsive sexual, buying and eating behaviours. On face value, all of these behaviours are repetitive, compulsive and reactive. However, they manifest themselves as responses to very different states.

Inspired by recent scientific developments in the field of psychology, I was initially compelled to just ignore which category my OC behaviour fell under. My intention was to detect my ritualistic or compulsive behaviours, and deal with them at the behavioural level using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT uses the dual nature of compulsive behaviour in order to eliminate the stimulus by eliminating the response. By definition, every OCD has two sides to it; the stimulus and the response. The stimulus can be anything which triggers a sense of discomfort or anxiety. In many cases the stimulus is some sort of phobia. Fear of dying, illness, poverty and missing out, are instances of such triggers. On the response side, there is often a ritualistic behaviour pattern executed in hope of preventing the undesirable and dreaded outcome. The crux of argument is that the underlying mechanism regulating OCD is the fight or flight tendency in face of perceived dangers. Although the mechanism is the same, there are no clear threats in case of OC behaviours. Regardless of this, the person with OCD engages in ritualistic behaviour to reduce the unpleasant feeling caused by the perceived, but non-existent stimulus. By eliminating the ritualistic response, the person with OCD initially experiences intense discomfort and stress due to his/her inactivity in presence of the perceived stressor. However, the absence of real damage associated with inactivity, is believed to rewire the brain circuitry and break the associations between the stimulus and response, hence eliminating the compulsive behaviour.

All of this makes perfect sense with two major caveats. The first is that the treatment works only if the condition in question is actually OCD. In case of compulsive behaviour seen in autistic individuals, removal of response behaviours do not lead to elimination of the stimuli. In face of receiving unmanageable number of environmental stimuli, autistic people often engage in repetitive behaviours to reduce the number of inputs, and to make their interaction with environment more manageable. As a result, autistic people often have more than one behaviour patterns, which are not necessarily connected together via a common stem, the way fear connects OC behaviours. This is why elimination of a behaviour is often replaced by other patterns in autistic people. The story is the same among bipolar people. In hypomanic states, bipolar people seek sensations and hence engage in stimulating behaviours such as gambling, shopping, eating etc. And because their mania is a recursive state, bipolar people often find themselves returning to these behaviour repeatedly. To make the matter worse, most of these behaviours have an addictive component to them as they follow a reward system. Similar to the case of autism, and unlike OC behaviours, these behaviours cannot be eliminated by removing the response. The reason is that the underlying mechanism at play is not necessarily conditioning. In other words, hypomania is not necessarily an unpleasant state, and is not associated with an underlying fear. The need for excitement is just a consequence of a manic episode, which comes back every now and then regardless of whether you respond to it or not.

The second caveat is that the CBT treatment must be applied to every aspect of a person's life where OCD manifests itself. This is the tricky part, because OCD is not only about compulsive washing or checking; it can take many other forms, which are beginning to attract the attention of scientists. For example, compulsive shopping and eating are two of these examples. And due to their structures, the treatment proves ineffective if the compulsive behaviour is not correctly detected. For CBT to work, it is essential to detect the obsessive and compulsive components of the OCD. In other words, in order to treat the condition, we need to know what triggers the anxiety, and what we do to overcome the anxiety. Some argue that that this is sufficient to break the cycle, and that detection of the underlying fear is not necessary. Their rationale is that regardless of the underlying fear, the absence of behavioural response to the mind's perception of a fear, is a sufficient incentive for the mind to recognise it being fake. I argue otherwise. Not only do I argue it is essential to detect the underlying fear, I think it is important to zoom out even further and look at the environmental triggers that may be involved in creation of the underlying fear. In the absence of awareness of the environmental triggers, no devised solution can be sustainable, because the source of anxiety can be, and often is, in constant supply, hence generating new ways to create the fear among those suffering from it. On the other hand, the number of people suffering from anxiety and depression is more than it should have been, if it was meant to be an exception than a rule. In addition to those who have received formal diagnoses, and whose characteristics can be explained by an anxiety disorder or depression, it is extremely easy to find people not being clinically ill, and yet complain about the same problems. In other words, I think mental health problems, and especially anxiety, depression and addiction, must be studied at a scale larger than that of the individual. This is how I found myself interested in studying economics and sociology, and the reason why this website was born.