Numerological obsessions: constantly thinking about numbers

One of the most frequently treated obsessions in psychological consultations.

Counting to a hundred every time I write a word. Always walking around the block three times before I can enter the house. Touching or asking the same question seven times in a row.

Brushing my teeth exactly 35 times before spitting and rinsing my mouth. All of these situations have something in common: for some reason an action is performed a certain number of times. This is a common occurrence for people with numerological obsession, a typical type of obsession.a, a type of obsession typical of subjects with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

To understand the functioning of numerological obsessions, it is first necessary to make a brief synthesis of the disorder in which it appears: obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD is a psychological disorder closely linked to anxiety and characterized by the presence of obsessions, intrusive and recurrent thoughts that are beyond the person's control and cause a high level of anxiety. and characterized by the presence of obsessions, intrusive and recurrent thoughts that escape the person's control and cause a high level of anxiety, even though they are recognized as their own and they try to neutralize them.

Generally, in order to reduce anxiety, the subject ends up starting to perform some kind of action, either physical or mental, an activity that by relieving anxiety is reinforced and repeated every time the thought arises again, establishing itself as a compulsion. This creates a continuous spiral between obsessive thought and anxiety-regulating mechanism, which occupies a large part of the patient's time and plunges him into a state of permanent anxiety from which he can only temporarily escape through compulsions (an escape that in turn reinforces the anxiety), producing continuous discomfort.

Entering a loop of thoughts

The process that this disorder follows is usually as follows: fortuitously, one day a thought appears that the person finds aberrant and unacceptable.. The fact that this idea has crossed his mind generates a high level of discomfort and anxiety, trying at all costs to eliminate the thought and avoid it as much as possible. However, the fact of trying to avoid it provokes a fixation in him, making its reappearance even more probable and generating an even greater anxiety that he will try even harder to avoid. For this purpose, he generally employs the aforementioned compulsions, which produce a temporary relief of the discomfort.

It is a disorder that causes the sufferer a deep vital suffering: The person knows that the thoughts and actions he/she carries out do not make any logical or practical sense and lives them as something absurd, but nevertheless he/she has to carry them out to reduce his/her level of anxiety. The same is true of obsessive thoughts.

The continuous cycle between obsession and compulsion only feeds back on itself and aggravates the subject's state, occupying a large part of his or her life.The continuous cycle between obsession and compulsion only feeds back and aggravates the subject's condition, occupying a large part of his daily time and being an element that greatly inhibits his life in various aspects. In addition, it is not uncommon for variations to appear within the vicious circle, and new anxiety-generating thoughts may be added.

The causes of the appearance of obsessive thoughts and fixation on them are due to multiple causes, there being a certain genetic predisposition in this respect. It has been found that many of these patients have frontal hyperactivity together with problems in the basal ganglia. It is also frequent that they appear in people strongly inhibited at a vital level, restricted in one or several aspects of their person by society or education received.

There is a great variety of obsessions and compulsions that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, such as those of cleaning or checking. One of them are the obsessions that have to do with numbers, or numerological obsession..

Numerological obsession: numbers that settle in the mind.

Counting to ten. This is something that a large majority of the population has done at some time, usually to calm down after something or someone has provoked our anger, anger or anxiety. And is that counting and ordering makes us occupy our mind in something concrete and that demands our attention, being able to be an escape route to avoid doing something that we regret or to leave aside something that disturbs us.

Returning to the obsessive-compulsive disorder, in people who have numerological obsessions, the mechanism used as a calming ritual of anxiety is based precisely on this. But then, why do we speak of numerological obsession and not of numerological rituals or compulsions?

A mechanism to calm anxiety... or the anxiety itself.

This is because people with numerological obsession do not only use numbers as a mechanism to calm anxiety, but in them the numbers themselves are the reason for anxiety. This type of case is of great complexity, since in them the person would be totally blocked, to the point of having already forgotten the motive that led him to use numbers as a way of tranquilization and transforming what was a compulsion into an obsession. This does not mean that the original idea has vanished but that the subject that produces obsession has been masked.

The way in which the numbers are applied is very varied. There are people who have to mentally count up to a certain number, perform an action a certain number of times, dispose of a certain number of objects or avoid contact with anything linked to one or several numbers in question. In fact, it can appear related to other obsessions and compulsions such as cleaning, but in the case of numerological obsession what will prevail will be the number and not the action per se (i.e., if they do not wash X number of times, their anxiety does not decrease).

There are numerous cases of OCD with numerological obsessionsbeing frequent the obsession with concrete numbers or with groupings of them that have common characteristics (for example with the even or odd numbers). A well-known example is the famous inventor Nicholas Tesla, who had an obsession with the number three in multiple aspects of his life.

Treating numerological OCD

The treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder has throughout history been somewhat complex, being a traditionally difficult disorder to treat. Thus, OCD (including numerological obsessions).

One of them comes from pharmacology, which makes it possible to treat and reduce symptoms with a certain level of efficacy. Especially effective are the antidepressants that inhibit serotonin reuptake, the SSRIs.

Generally, from the cognitive-behavioral point of view, obsessive-compulsive disorder is treated through exposure techniques with response prevention, causing the patient to gradually disassociate the obsessive thought and the compulsion. Given that the repetition of the compulsion maintains by negative reinforcement the vicious circle of obsession-compulsion, it is one of the most applied therapies to treat the symptomatology.

In the case of the numerological obsession, this type of treatment encounters the problem that it is more complicated to find the original thought that causes the anxiety and to work with it.. Nevertheless, working on response prevention is possible and can facilitate the reduction of overt behaviors.

Together with this, interventions are applied to make the patient see in a realistic way the level of responsibility of the patient in the events that he/she imagines could occur if he/she does not comply with the rituals, to make visible that trying to deny a thought causes us to relapse in it and that thinking something negative does not imply doing it. Again, in numerological obsession this type of treatment is of great complication because it is not visible what concrete thought produces the problem. It is necessary a deep analysis of the case and the circumstances that surround it in order to discover it.

Other therapies of currents such as psychodynamics show that although the treatment of the symptom is very useful to improve the patient's condition and can lead to success, treatment should focus on modifying the root cause that led to the patient's obsessive structure.. In this aspect reducing inhibition and uncovering and directing the internal energy to what the individual really desires can greatly help to bring about a structural change in the person, which can greatly contribute to the person's recovery.

Bibliographical references:

• American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. Fifth edition. DSM-V. Masson, Barcelona.
• Pickover, C.A. (2002). The wonder of numbers, Ma Non Troppo.

• Ruiz, D. (2014). Free the monkey, rescue the princess. The AFOP method to free yourself from obsessions. RIOCC Editorial: Barcelona.

• Santos, J.L. ; García, L.I. ; Calderón, M.A. ; Sanz, L.J. ; de los Ríos, P. ; Izquierdo, S. ; Román, P. ; Hernangómez, L. ; Navas, E. ; Ladrón, A and Álvarez-Cienfuegos, L. (2012).
• Clinical Psychology. Manual CEDE de Preparación PIR, 02. CEDE. Madrid.
• Vallejo, J. & Leal, C. (2010). Treatise on Psychiatry. Volume II. Ars Médica. Barcelona.