When we are little and we are learning numbers, our innate curiosity and desire to grow quickly leads us to repeat actions related to them. For example, we count all the trees on our street, or we add up the apples in our fruit bowl.
However, there are those who continue doing it even when they are older. It may be due to a simple habit, or a “mania”, as they say. But it is not always a simple hobby, sometimes people continue counting the trees or adding the apples because not doing so causes discomfort.
When these actions are repeated very often and cause discomfort, they can even become disabling and make a functional life difficult. To know exactly what I mean, keep reading this article, in which I describe to you what OCD is, what arithmomania is and how we can treat it.
Before defining what arithmomania is, it may be better to specify what OCD is, so that you can understand it better. This disorder is characterized by presenting one or both of the following symptoms: obsessions and compulsions.
Obsessions are recurring invasive thoughts or images that cause anxiety (generally you think that something very bad is going to happen), and you try to avoid or suppress them.. For their part, compulsions are repetitive intentional actions or thoughts that are carried out to free oneself from the obsession and anxiety they cause, without actually serving to avoid the feared situation or turning out to be an excessive response.
Obsessions, and especially compulsions, change a lot from one person to another, and it is even said that they “mutate” in the same person, because their compulsion changes. Depending on the presence and characteristics of the compulsions, different types of OCD can be distinguished: cleaning, order, accumulation, checking, repetition…
What they have in common is that They are time-consuming and cause long-term discomfort or impairment in important areas of life.. I think you will better understand how OCDs work when I describe the main topic of the article: arithmomania.
What is arithmomania?
Well, arithmomania is another type of OCD. It is characterized by the compulsion to repeatedly count something or do different actions related to numbers. That is why it is also called numerological OCD or arithmetic mania.
Like all OCDs, symptoms usually occur in a specific order. Let’s see it with an example. First, an obsession appears, such as “My parents are going to die.” This thought causes a lot of discomfort and anxiety to the person, they feel like an intruder and they are not able to get the idea out of their head.
That’s when the idea of compulsion appears: “If I count all the chairs in this room, my parents won’t die.” Under this premise, he counts the chairs in the room, so that he considers the feared situation solved and his parents will no longer die. With this belief, the anxiety disappears and the obsession can be resolved and it ends up leaving.
However, sometimes it is not enough, and the obsession is still present. That is why OCDs mutate, because another compulsion appears as an idea to avoid the feared situation, or the repetitions of the compulsion have to be increased. In this case, you may decide to count another object in the room or go to other places to find more chairs until the anxiety disappears.
Consequently, arithmomania is not a simple joke, since it requires a lot of time and attention to reduce anxiety. This can lead to losing a job, deteriorating relationships, or suffering from other psychological disorders, such as depression. OCD is one of the most limiting psychological disorders that causes the most discomfort.
Manifestations of arithmomania
Just as there are different types of OCD, there are also different types of arithmomania. Arithmomania is not limited to counting objects, but can also mutate to other actions related to numbers. These actions are not incompatible with each other, but rather the same person can perform several of them as a compulsion of their arithmomania.. Below I indicate some of them:
What to do if I have arithmomania?
It is very difficult for you to treat your arithmomania alone; it is most likely that you will need help from both your environment and a mental health professional. If you have developed this OCD it is because you have not been able to manage the unpleasant intrusive thoughts that your obsessions represent in any other way. However, compulsions only serve to relieve immediate discomfort, but not in the long term.
They limit functional life by involving so much time and attention, and also favor the belief that the compulsion serves to avoid the feared situation, feeding the veracity and appearance of the obsession. Therefore, It is very important that you go to therapy, since you need to learn another way to deal with them and reduce your discomfort without using arithmetic.. The sooner you do it, the better, because your obsessions and compulsions will be less established (which does not mean that they are treatable if you have been with her for years).
Currently, there are different treatments for it, common with the rest of the OCDs, including at a medical level when the symptoms are severe. The most prescribed psychotropic drugs for OCD are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are actually antidepressants. Serotonin is commonly known as the hormone of happiness or well-being. Regulating its levels with psychotropic drugs allows reducing the anxiety and discomfort present in OCD..
However, I recommend trying psychological therapy first, because antidepressants may have their contraindications even though they may be effective in treatment. The psychotherapy identified as the most effective, and therefore the most common, for treating OCD is exposure therapy with response prevention, a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment.
Its purpose is to encourage the person who suffers from OCD to overcome their fear of the feared situation that reflects the obsession occurring if they do not perform the compulsion, thus breaking that loop. Coping with fear is progressive and is accompanied at all times by the support and help of the therapist. In this way, a person with arithmomania will be able to get rid of their habits related to numbers, recover the time they spend on them and not have to suffer so much anxiety. That is, you can recover your life or live a new one.
