Introduction & Disclaimer:
Firstly I will say that I am feeling more out of my depth for this article than for the others I have done so far. As such, I would like you to bear in mind that these are my personal experiences of how I personally understood and used Theory A/Theory B, rather than an expert and/or medical opinion.
I am not convinced that I did it correctly, but it was useful for me nonetheless. I have provided a link to a site where you can find an example of a Theory A/Theory B table. I would recommend checking it out, so you can see a different perspective on it.
I am also specifically talking about Theory A/Theory B in the context of OCD, although it can also be used for other mental health issues. So if you are looking at Theory A/Theory B for a different condition, then this will not be applicable to you.
For more on this site’s disclaimer you can follow this link.
I will also only be talking about applying Theory A/Theory B to my worries about my actions in the past (including the immediate past), as my worries about moral dilemmas in the present/future feel different enough to require a separate article.
Introducing Theory A/Theory B:
Theory A/Theory B is a technique I learnt during therapy, that provides and compares two contrasting ways of reacting to Intrusive Thoughts. In doing so, it provides a structure with which to reframe these thoughts, that helped me to challenge the idea that my default reaction (Theory A) was the only possible way of reacting to them.
As the name suggests, Theory A/Theory B involves two theories of what these thoughts mean. The first one is the instinctive one that my OCD led me towards, which we can call Theory A. The standard Theory A hypothesis, and the one that my therapist suggested, was that the thought is true, and they therefore mean what they claim they mean.
For me though, rightly or wrongly, I felt like my fear was a bit nuanced, and so wanted the hypothesis to reflect this. I did fear that the thought was true. However, by the time I came to therapy, having battled these thoughts for years, I had developed an awareness that they were probably not true, although the fear that this new thought might be different always remained.
Beyond the fear that the thought was true though, I also felt that the mere possibility that a thought could be true meant that I had a moral duty to take them seriously, and to check. If I didn’t do so, I felt like that would make me a bad person who was not holding myself accountable, and was potentially allowing myself to live a lie.
My Theory A hypothesis could therefore be:
I have done (or could have done) something wrong, this thing is awful, is irredeemable and I must check if this is true – if true I may have to end my life or live a life devoid of happiness and any sense of self worth.
Theory B is an alternative hypothesis, describing a different way of viewing these thoughts. This could be as follows:
This is a thought and I don’t have to do anything about it. I have to live with the uncertainty.
Before doing this exercise, I was aware that this other option existed in an abstract sort of way, but I had never actually formulated it into an actual sentence. I was also not following it at all. However, that didn’t mean that I didn’t think it could be true.
Which Theory did I actually believe?
I would not have gone to therapy in the first place if I hadn’t come to think that at least part of my problem was that I had OCD, rather than that I was simply evil. If I believed that all these thoughts and my fears were simply true, then what good would it have done?
Even so, it is a big step to go from this, to believing that none of it is true. Or at least, that while I have done some things wrong, so has everyone, and I am not uniquely evil and irredeemable, and instead I am actually pretty normal morally speaking.
I am still not totally convinced by it even as I write this article now. Maybe I am a bad person. I do at least believe that I am nowhere near as bad as my OCD tells me, and I don’t think that I am monstrous and irredeemable, which used to be part of the rotating list of things I felt towards myself depending on my mood etc.
Sometimes I would feel convinced that a particular thought was true, and that I really was a bad person. At other times I would believe that Theory B was the case. Usually though, I believed that the truth was somewhere between the two, albeit perhaps somewhat closer to Theory B than it was to Theory A.
However, regardless of how I felt, I would always be following Theory A. Even when I felt sure that a particular thought was not true, and so I believed Theory B was true, I was still going through the thought to satisfy my mind that it wasn’t true, in order to then be able to go on with my life. A sort of mental administrative chore if you like, that needed to be crossed off the list.
So why was I always following Theory A?
Now, as I would soon find out, not responding to my thoughts would be a lot harder than I thought it would be. As such, I have learnt that any reason for explaining why I was following Theory A that doesn’t involve the compelling nature of OCD is missing a key factor.
Perhaps then, it is more accurate to ask: what did I think was my reason for following Theory A? Why did I never even try responding in a different way? And why did I think that Theory A was the correct way to respond?
The second reason then, and the one that I would have said was the first reason, was that I felt like I had a moral duty to check these thoughts. This is why I felt that I had to adjust what my Theory A was, because it wasn’t just the fear that the thought might be true that led me to seek reassurance. It is that I felt I had a moral duty to make sure it wasn’t true, because how else could I go about my life if I may in fact unknowingly be evil.
Maybe I could live my life without checking, and I would learn to adjust, and be happy even. But that could well be undeserved. Surely no decent person could feel that they may have done something awful, and then just carry on with their life regardless without checking?
Then there is the third reason. While I was vaguely aware that I could respond differently, I hadn’t actually gone through what that would look like in this way before. In large part, I have to say, because of the second reason. I feared that it was wrong to do so, and I lacked the confidence to do so myself, so I wanted my therapist’s ‘permission’ to enable me to do so.
Do I need to be certain that Theory B is true?
As it turns out, it was my actions that shaped how I felt, not my beliefs. Once I started following Theory B and not reacting to these thoughts, things improved substantially, even if I wasn’t convinced that this was the morally right thing to do, and even if I wasn’t ‘proving’ to myself that I was ‘deserving’ of a better life.
I have to say, a large part of me really doesn’t like this. It believes that these thoughts should be met on their own level, and that they should therefore be responded to with logic and reason. The fact that treating them as just being thoughts can make me feel better, even when I don’t know that this is true, feels almost offensive to my (or perhaps to my OCD’s) strict views on right or wrong.
Nevertheless, when I am following Theory A, I feel bad even when I ‘prove’ to myself that these thoughts are false. When I am following Theory B, I feel far better, even when I don’t know for certain whether they are true or not.
What this demonstrates is that OCD is ultimately not actually based in the complex web of logic it pretends to follow. It doesn’t respond to the rules of its ‘logic’; it isn’t a puzzle that can be solved, or a gauntlet that can be battled through. It is a finger trap. So perhaps from the rules of my OCD’s game, by not ‘proving’ that these thoughts are false, I should feel worse about myself and be overwhelmed by anxiety. Instead, I have actually started to feel better, and to develop a sense of self worth.
What would the future look like if I were to follow Theory A?
Much like how it was before I went to therapy.
My days would be dominated by intrusive thoughts, and my endless battles against them. I would mostly be exhausted, anxious, and frankly miserable. Some days would be better, sure, but the bad days would return soon enough, and I would always be living under the fear that the next thought might be ‘the one’ that I couldn’t recover from.
As much as I had tried to break the cycle, to battle through my OCD until I had convinced myself that all of these thoughts were nonsense and I could move on, or to use the times when I was feeling okay to get to a point where I was feeling good enough to ‘rise above’ my thoughts, I don’t think that this would ever have actually worked.
Like spinning an ever-growing number of plates, it would never actually be possible to maintain a lock on all of these thoughts, and any new ones that came up would need dealing with too. It was just a fundamentally flawed way of dealing with it.
While I have achieved states where these thoughts stop coming as much as I had hoped, I have only achieved that by not responding to (at least some of) my thoughts. Because as I have said before, responding to these thoughts only fuels future ones.
So yes, if I were to follow Theory A for the rest of my life, then the future would look much like the past, which is to say, sub-optimal.
What evidence is there for each Theory?
Evidence has to be unbiased. How I feel about a thought, for instance, is not evidence. OCD feels true, that’s the whole problem, but it doesn’t mean it is true. Assumptions are not evidence either. I am talking about actual evidence, the sort that would be valid in court, or more relevantly to this, a scientific experiment.
By this standard, I would say that there is no actual evidence for Theory A. Despite these thoughts telling me that I am an awful person, there is no evidence to back this up. No one has told me that they think I am an awful person. I have not seen any negative consequences for either me or those around me.
Of course it is still entirely possible that Theory A is correct, and I have simply hidden my ‘sins’. Or perhaps they cannot be proven either way, seeing as concepts like ‘evil’ and ‘irredeemable’ are not objective, but subjective. However, it is still important to note that there is no actual evidence for it.
So is there any evidence for Theory B? I know I wouldn’t have deliberately done anything wrong, knowing that it was wrong, but is that evidence? Not really. I have however seen at least some of my thoughts turn out to be so ridiculous or wrong, that I feel confident stating their wrongness as a fact. I also know that I have OCD, which does cause intrusive thoughts which are not rooted in reality.
Now, this doesn’t prove that all my worries are fake either, but it does suggest that they might be. So overall, while there is no conclusive evidence for either theory, there is more objective evidence for Theory B than there is for Theory A, even if my emotions sometimes tell a different story.
What would each Theory mean about me?
If Theory A is true, then that means:
- I may do awful things without realising it, due to not being a good judge of right and wrong, or not thinking things through.
- If I have made such a mistake, or would/could do so, then that is enough to prove I am a bad person, and that this is something I can never undo, and so will always dictate who I am as a person.
- I therefore have to constantly check my behaviour (both past and present), in order to ensure that I have not been a bad person, and if I have, then I have to punish myself accordingly.
If Theory B is true, then:
- It means nothing about me, other than that I worry about things, which doesn’t actually mean there must be a truth behind these worries.
- I am basically a normal person. I may have made mistakes, and I cannot be certain whether I have or could have done something wrong, or what exactly the consequences of that are. Ultimately though, I am just a person trying to live a life, and so the chances are that I am, morally speaking, just a normal person, not particularly good, but not an awful person either.
What would the future look like if I were to follow Theory B?
If Theory B were true, then that would mean that I could potentially be free of all of this. Rather than living under the weight of taking all these awful thoughts seriously, I could choose not to respond to them, and live my life. I could do the things that I wanted to, and start building a life. I could live my life the way I want to, not as my OCD wants me to live. I could perhaps even be happy.
I know that the future is never certain, and happiness is not guaranteed. But even the opportunity to try feels like more than I could have hoped for before I started therapy.
I had actually set out my goals for therapy clearly to myself beforehand. I wanted to be able to be at peace with myself. To be free of the misery. If I could say ‘well I can’t live a normal life, but at least in myself on my own I can be free of this fear and misery’, then that was all that I could reasonably hope for, and seemed like enough. Anything beyond that would be a complete bonus.
But Theory B would allow me to go far beyond that. It would mean that the problems in my head really were just confined to my head, and that I could live a normal life and have a chance of real happiness and a life fully lived. It would mean that this internalised message that I must have done at least some things that were very wrong, really might just be my OCD.
So what do I think about Theory A/Theory B now?
It still feels like a big leap from saying that my OCD over-exaggerates things, to saying that I am no worse than average, or at least not so bad as to be unworthy of a chance at happiness in life. However, following Theory B still works regardless of how it feels. All I have to do then is to do nothing. I just have to stop doing something I hate.
Now, as I already mentioned, it has turned out to be harder to do this than I had hoped. In fact, it can take quite a lot of effort to do nothing. I have definitely made progress though, even if there are times when it is harder than others.
Ultimately, it is about making a decision. I can either choose to follow Theory B, live my life, and accept that I may be living a life that I don’t ‘deserve’, or I can follow Theory A, respond to all of my thoughts, and accept that the chances are that nothing will ever change. So does my happiness matter?
