OBSESSED
Back in the 1930s, housewives would typically turn on their radios during the day to listen to the programming while doing their household chores. Many of the daytime radio dramas they favored were sponsored by companies that manufactured soap products. Thus, the term “soap operas” came into being.
In time, television came along and supplanted radio as the primary source of household entertainment, but the soap opera endured. Women would become so engrossed in the story line of their favorite serial that they structured their entire afternoons around it. I once saw two women meeting in public place. The first thing one of them said was, “Did you see yesterday’s episode?” She and her friend went on to analyze each character in the show, along with every nuance of the most recent plot twist. After agreeing that they couldn’t wait for the next day’s episode to see what happened next, the first speaker sighed, “I’m obsessed!”
You don’t have to watch soap operas to feel that way. Plenty of people react in a similar fashion to serialized novels, for example. Others enjoy the excitement of sports championships. The point is that, having tasted something they like, they want more. And they want it now.
Craving something is an addiction. Letting something dominate your every waking thought is an obsession.
I don’t believe that people who enjoy such things are necessarily obsessed. Most of them probably hold down responsible jobs, maintain normal relationships and spend at least some of their time thinking about other things. Perhaps some individuals are addicted to serials, sports and the like. They crave the rush that comes with mounting suspense and burn with curiosity to know the outcome. But their minds are not constantly churning, chewing and re-chewing over the same material until it becomes threadbare. They are addicted, but not obsessed.
What does obsession look like?
If you’ve ever known someone who has one favorite topic that precludes all others… who feels compelled to dissect every single aspect of the beloved topic and can talk for hours about it, despite obvious signs of boredom from their captive audience… who relegates all other aspects of life to a lesser category so they can focus almost exclusively on the thing uppermost in their minds… you may have met someone who’s obsessed.
We tend to think of obsession as something unhealthy. And, often, it is. But obsessive thinking can be positive at the right time and place. For example, a mother can be obsessed with her newborn child. She feels a longing to keep the baby close to her as much as possible. She finds herself preoccupied with every aspect of the child’s care and welfare. Each step in the baby’s development is greeted with fascination and joy. It’s the loving obsession that a mother feels during the first few months of her baby’s life that helps her care for it so well. It also helps to create a lifelong bond between them.
After the first year or two, however, the child needs to start moving outward, to socialize with peers, to develop interpersonal skills with people who do not place them in the center of the universe. That’s when Mom needs to step back and give the youngster room to grow.
Most of the time, if she’s healthy, she does just that. But sometimes, she finds it difficult or even impossible to stop smothering her baby with the excessive care and attention that she dubs “love.” When appropriate “obsession” turns inappropriate, that’s when trouble starts.
The Operative Principle
There are obsessions that can lead to great things. An artist may retreat from the world to paint or write or sculpt obsessively and eventually emerge with a masterpiece. I must admit that I felt a pang of envy when reading about an author who holed up in a room for weeks at a time when producing a novel, all other responsibilities on hold while they indulged their creativity. Their meals were provided for and interruptions kept at a minimum. Of course, only bestselling authors can afford that kind of lifestyle. And those whose families are very understanding!
The chance to live obsessively for the sake of one’s art is admittedly alluring, but only in limited doses, and with the proper backup to keep every other part of life functioning smoothly. Anyone who has a proclivity toward obsessive thinking knows how hard it is to keep such thoughts in check. To keep it healthy and positive instead of dysfunctional. When you sail on the ship of obsession, it’s so easy to fall overboard…
Which brings us to the operative principle for maintaining a healthy relationship with those things which beckon us toward obsession. Balance.
Many of us may have experienced a short-term period of obsessive thinking about, say, an upcoming change or challenge in our lives. The way to tell a healthily “obsessed” individual from an unhealthy one is by the amount of balance and harmony that characterizes their lives.
A mother who is overly preoccupied with her growing child, a teenager who forms one unhealthy infatuation after another, a creative person who neglects other areas of her life because can’t tear herself away from her latest project… all of these obsessions border on dysfunction, because they block out other, important considerations. If you allow one thing to dominate your thoughts to the exclusion of all else, there’s a problem.
There’s something about obsessive thinking that draws some people like a magnet. I’m talking about the attraction of diving so deeply into an area that interests us that coming back to the surface requires real effort. As long as the attraction is to something positive or at least neutral, and as long as it’s temporary and under control, we can give into it for a while. The problem with obsessions is that they tend to run amok and out of our control. That’s when we have to pull on the reins and shout “Whoa!”
That’s when we need to step back and figure out where we’ve lost our balance.
