S3C10. The Acceptance Trap: Debunking the “Law of Attraction” in OCD

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When you mention acceptance to people, sometimes the skepticism is almost tangible. The apprehension often is, ‘What if my acceptance of my thoughts makes them manifest due to the law of attraction? What if I make my thoughts real by accepting them?’ You may feel that even thinking of an action increases the possibility of committing it, a belief observed in people with OCD (Butchler et al., 2013). I am going to try and address that ‘what if’ in this chapter.

First and foremost, this thought itself is a Meta OCD thought. It starts with a ‘what-if,’ and it causes anxiety. If you try to accept your OCD thoughts, this worry about the law of attraction becomes dominant and sticky. You may feel an urgent need to do something about it and dispel it. Therefore, it is an OCD thought like any other obsessive thought.

Second, the law of attraction is not a scientific law but rather a belief. If it works, it is because the dream is followed up with the right action. Consider this example. Let us say you want to attract career success. When you DESIRE to succeed and ACT to succeed, everything you do becomes goal-directed. If you DESIRE to succeed but do not ACT accordingly, you won’t succeed. Since the element of goal-directed action is missing, success becomes elusive. However, if you put both of them in the right measure, success is inevitable.

So, the law of attraction is not magic. It is goal-directed effort. Our objective needs to be clear, and our efforts should be goal-directed. If, despite wanting success, I play Candy Crush all day, I will not succeed. You will not attract a million dollars out of nowhere. Similarly, you will not attract your catastrophes simply by accepting them. On the contrary, you will attract recovery if you both desire and expect to recover through acceptance. With this understanding, the law of attraction can be actively used to support recovery through complete acceptance.

One of the common questions on acceptance is, “Does that mean I should accept my suffering?” The answer is a loud no. As the Dalai Lama has said, ‘Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.’ The pain needs to be accepted. Your non-acceptance of pain will not make it go away. So, you have to accept that the pain is present, at least for the time being. Your response to the pain, however, needs to change. If you are suffering and you sulk, cry, and lament that your OCD is bad, you are accepting the suffering without doing anything to change it. If you decide to work on your OCD, despite the pain, you will learn to accept the pain and actively work to reduce the suffering. This leaves you feeling more empowered. So, acceptance means accepting the pain while working to change the suffering.

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