A new book called Can’t. Just. Stop. An Investigation of Compulsions by Sharon Begley helps to explain OCD behaviour and show you ways in which you can understand its cause and therefore work to help free yourself from the feelings of stress and anxiety that it can cause.

There are many motivations for human behaviour, these include the basic drives for food, shelter and sex which we are all most aware of. They also include more complicated ones, such as compassion, envy and anger.

Compulsion is something that some people suffer from more than others. Many may have a mild symptom of wondering if the door really was locked or if the oven is left on, but for some these fleeting thoughts can become more intense and cause great distress.

As Sharon Begley explains..Compulsions come from a need that is desperate and tortured. They may bring a relief, but they bring little enjoyment, and while one part of our brain desperately wishes to stop them, another is afraid of stopping.

We describe as “compulsive” someone who reads, tweets, steals, cleans, watches birds, lies, blogs, shops, checks Facebook, eats or Snapchats etc not only frequently but with the urgency of one who is not fully in control of their behaviour.

Much research has been undertaken into what causes these compulsions and the effects that they have and a growing body of scientific evidence shows that they are often a response to anxiety.

Because we are not in control in part of our life we grab hold of any behaviour that offers a short term relief by giving us an illusion of control. We try to take control by using something else to focus on.

Writing in The Guardian Sharon explained her own thoughts...

“I used to view life-altering compulsions as foreign and almost frightening. But in the course of my research, two things happened. First, when I got to know people who were compulsive, their behaviour didn’t seem unreasonable at all. It seemed like an understandable response to angst that would otherwise eat them alive. Second, I realised that although people with the most extreme compulsions seem like outliers, the anxiety that drives them to those extremes is universal – and underlies milder compulsions, too. Actively behaving to allay anxiety is a deep and ancient impulse.”

It is estimated that about 1% of the population suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, known to most as OCD.  

Why do we feel that compulsion?

Compulsions are all about avoiding unpleasant outcomes. They are repetitive behaviours we engage in to alleviate the angst brought on by the possibility of negative consequences. But the actual behaviour is often unpleasant – or at least not particularly rewarding, especially after umpteen rounds of it. At its simplest, the anxiety takes the form of the thought: “If I don’t do this, something terrible will happen.” If I do not check my fiancé’s web history, I will not know whether he is cheating. If I do not religiously organise my cupboards, my home will be engulfed in chaos.

You can find out more about the book here : Just click the link to find it on Amazon....

Can’t. Just. Stop. An Investigation of Compulsions by Sharon Begley is published by Robinson Books at £14.99

Hypnotist posters from around 1900

These fascinating posters give some insight into how hypnosis was used as entertainment over 100 years ago. They also show that people were more open thinking than you may give them credit for!

This set of amusing turn-of-the-century hypnotism posters show hypnotised people up to various strange shenanigans: a group of men wield brooms and umbrellas as though musical instruments; women ride men like horses; and (remembering that it is more than a century ago) a man dresses in women’s clothes, and two men canoodle. With its roots in “mesmerism”, the phenomena of hypnotism began to gain momentum with the work of Scottish surgeon James Braid (1795–1860), an early pioneer of the practise, paving the way for it to hit the mainstream toward the end of the 19th century.

There is not much information available about these five images below only that they were the product of The Donaldson Lithographing Co. based in Newport, Kentucky and seem to be from around 1900. They were discovered by The Public Domain Review

You can see that the top has a blank strip which would have been used to write up the name of the performer and venue when they were posted up around the city where the show was to play.

This first one is fascinating because apart from showing a man who thinks he is fishing, there is also another man who is dressed in ladies formal wear, with a dress and a hat that is covered in feathers. For an image over one hundred years old it's quite remarkable that the cross dressing man would be used for publicity. We may think that years back this may put people off, but clearly it may also attract and even bigger audience. You can also see that there is someone riding some chairs as if they are a horse. This seems to be a theme to these pictures.

This second picture also has the popular image of someone riding a horse. This time the lady is actually riding a gentleman who has a bit between his teeth and she even has a whip in her hand. In the foreground we see another gentleman who is playing a broom like an instrument. This may be somethign we think of from the 70's and a cliche of hypnosis stage shows, but this shows that the idea came about a lot earlier than that.

This next one has yet more horse riding antics. In fact the gentleman riding this chair is not unlike the ex racing commentator John McCririck, with his busy moustache and hat. The old favorite of instrument playing also takes place here.

As you may be noticing there are certain themes that run through, and so we have more musicians playing, although this time the lady riding a man seems to be floating in the air, so perhaps levitation is also playing its part.

This final one seems to be suggesting that perhaps there is also some sort of mentalist act happening. Maybe the blindfold is part of the act and the man with the blackboard will write down what the angles speak to his assistant. 

It is surprising that the act of stage hypnosis and magic may not have seemed to move on as much as you would have imagined.

If you want to watch me speaking about the latest version of hypnosis in entertainment on Television with TV shows like "You're Back in the Room" or the US version called "Hypnotize Me" you can take a look at the youtube video below....