Cribphilia The Pathogenesis and Behavioral Root Cause of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Lyfas

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The brain is the best doctor. If brain understands the problem it will solve the problem. Is it even possible for anyone to tell you that you have a problem, or that your health problems are because of your insecurities or your flaws?

Jordon Peterson about why you must start from yourself

And, even if it was possible, wy would anyone else have to tell you about your flaws? All of us have our own flaws. Life is about accepting and improving. Lyfas gives you the confidence that it’s okay to not be perfect. It is okay to not be the greatest. It is okay to fail and to have problems. It is okay to ave anxiety, depression, or diabetes. You can either live with the diseases and insecurities and accept and become aware and improve one step a day.

Chances are that the truth will hurt you, and make you defensive and aggressive. However, if you calm down and accept, and understand the science then you will figure out how to take actions to become better. Because by the time you end up reading the article, you will know that your denial will affect no one but you, and will hurt the very people you care about.

Ready?

Cribbing

In Ethology(science that observes animal behavior), the crib is referred to a certain behavior of horses to bite wooden logs or anything, and while biting, they suck for more wind, known as wind sucking.

In material science, Crib is referred to as the strengthening material for any structure. So, our skeleton acts like the crib for our body, and the rods on which cementing is done act like a crib for any concrete structure. The role of the crib is to hold onto the structure.

Cribbing is a compulsive obsessive disorder of holding onto something. Horse cribbing is used extensively to refer to the obsessive compulsion of the horses to hold onto the wooden log by their teeth.

Cribphillia

Cribphillia is a term coined by the Lyfas clinical team to refer to a behavioral disorder subtype whereby an individual is observed to have been obsessed with something so badly that they want to hold onto that for the rest of their life. The difficulty is that once a horse starts cribbing, it can’t run and move on, and it will constantly be sucking for more wind. It will suffer, and still won’t be able to stop cribbing.

What is interesting is that not everyone who has a cribbing obsession is necessarily clinically diagnosed as having Obsessive Compulssive Disorder(OCD)[ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual DSM-5 code for OCD is 300.3 (F42)].

Any behavioral anomaly or disorder eventually not only affects the one who is suffering from it but also affects the people around the sufferer. Though most people are not aware of a behavioral anomaly, accept such anomalies as just part of individual behaviors, and try hard to adjust to the anomalies, more often or not such anomalies lead to mental, emotional, social, physical, physiological, psychological and even professional distress amongst people.

A Cribphilic person is obsessed with another person, object, or entity and can’t think or accept any possibility of the object of obsession being separated. They would do anything to hold onto the object, often unconscious of their underneath illness.

Besides being ignorant, about their own cribphillia, the Cribphilic resorts to any tricks, tactics, and strategies to not lose the object of possession.

Hallmark Characteristics of Cribphillia(of Yours and others)

Cribiphilia(again remember this is a subtype behavioral disorder identified by Lyfas and is not classified as a disease yet by either DSM-5 or ICD-10) can be diagnosed by:-

1. Cribbing onto Past: The history of failure which they brag too much about to pretend why they were still successful and have the right of cribbing.
2. Diversity Phobia: Cribphilic person wants to sharpen one skill and keep doing better with that skill. When there is the stress of change, and when life demands them to adapt to the new changes, they fail to adapt. Often top corporate bosses of the listed companies become Cribphillic, or Cribphillics become the bosses, who continuously drive the company to financial superiority because of their hyperfocus on one thing. However, at every change, they lead the company to collapse because of this unrecognized, unaddressed behavioral change. Two good examples are the Almost 200-year-old companies Nokia and Kodak collapsing when the Smartphone and digital camera came into existence respectively.
3. Growthphobia: Growth is often multidimensional. When a child grows, the brain grows, knowledge grows, intellect grows, emotion grows, the social circle grows, activities grow, and thinking grows. It is not only the length of the child that grows. Such growth is only seen in the Creepers. The creepers grow in length very fast, without growing their stem and roots, and therefore have a short lifespan.
   Cribphilic individuals are growthphobic, and often see creeping as growth. When their subject of obsession starts growing(either creeping or real multi-dimensional growth), they become insecure about losing their obsession and do everything to tame the subject of obsession and control them.

4. Creeping: Cribbing comes with Creeping comorbidity. Creeping plants are invasive plants, which are extremely selfish. They literally suck all the micronutrients from the ground and no other species of plants can grow where the creepers are growing(creeping). In the corporate environment, creepers succeed by crushing any other individuals whom they remotely consider as a competitor and a threat to their own growth. They often starve the ecosystem and kill the diversity, creating an environment where it is hard for anyone else to survive.
   A classic example of modern-day Creeper startups(called the unicorns) who creeps so fast, and makes creeping the fashion, and the entire financial instrument gets diverted to the creepers, starving any other innovation to death.
5. Passive Aggression: Passive aggression is a hallmark of many neurotic disorders that have not blossomed into psychosis. Individuals whose growth was tamed by a Cribphillic would eventually become a cribphillic, as his/her world has been limited to a small area, where he/she has to survive, as well as grow just in length would have to become obsessed with that small environment itself. Limited operating area, disproportionate creeping growth, and underneath cribbing lead to not enough energy and resources for aggression. The way creepers silently kill the other plants around them, the Cribphilic becomes passive-aggressive, and through their verbal aggression and remarks, distorts the mind of everyone around them.
6. Victimhood: Victimhood is a classic characteristic trait of Cribphilic. It is just like the horse who while cribbing, constantly sucks for air and feels that the world is unfair and denying it the amount of Oxygen it needs. Same way, a cribphillic individual manages to always find something to complain about and is never content with whatever he/she has. They are always the victim.
7. Cat-string: Victimhood psychosis is always accompanied by envy of “I want what others have.” It is like a cat that will try hard to get when you hang a toy away from them, and the moment you give it to them, they are not interested in that anymore. Now they need something different. However, if you try to take the toy again, they again aggressively pursue the toy or the string. This is a hallmark of an underdeveloped brain, which has an absolute undergrown child at the core, which is being protected by a “tough persona” that pursues more and more, just for the inner validation that the child is growing. Because of this distance of the persona from the core, they are disconnected from the self.
8. Classism: Cribphics are defined as extremely class-centric, and racist(knowingly or often unknowingly), who hates everyone different from them, and everything they don’t have. For instance, if they have a Honda City car, they will resent anyone with a Maruti Alto as a worthless individual.
   Same way when they see anyone with Mercedez, they resent them as scammers. Because every individual ever born is different, Cribphilia leads one to eventually hate everyone other than themselves. This leads to Malignant individualism.
   Malignant individualism leads to pathological loneliness. So, even though they appear socially cool and heartthrob at parties, soon people start distancing themselves from the Cribphillic person, leaving behind a lonely miserable undergrown child at the core. Eventually, they start hating themselves.
9. Opinionated: Because of the disconnection to the core, Cribphillic does not feel alive, and does not know the way a normal mentally healthy individual knows life. They like anyone and everyone who agrees with them, and anyone and everyone who does not. That is specifically “Agree” becomes a popular word in the corporate.
10. Parroting: Parroting is the process by means of which the Cribphillics keep repeating statements to give confirmation to themselves. Often such statements are around self-boasting and hailing their own contribution towards the work and society.
    

How Cribbing Slowly Becomes Pathological?

Cribphillia is Neuroticism

Cribiphilia is a Neurotism, where the limbic brain gets a constant supply of negative energy through hate, envy, greed, and jealousy. As any neurotic disorder creates anxiety, the Cribphillics are anxious. Anxiety disorder, is a hallmark of insecurity and disconnection from the core, and an insecure core creates fear and worries all the time, and fear always leads to paranoia, and frustration is expressed as irritation, which is then released as anger, all mentioned characteristics are embedded into the psychology of the individual.

Why it seems that we are dealing with a wall while in a relationship with OCD?

Compensatory Persona

Those who are insecure always worry about being seen as vulnerable by people. Thus, they conceal their vulnerabilities. They conceal opinions as silly stitistics driven facts, insecurities as confidence, inner loneliness as extrovertism, hate as niceness, anger as empathy, jealousy as care, racism as identity, crushing others as taking care, passive-aggressiveness as a sense of humor, Cribbing as focus.

Mental Model:- Self-talk of a Cribphillic

Interestingly, Cribphillics think that they know more than the Cribbed object/person about anything and everything.

Here are other mental stories:-

1. Saviour:- I just want to help the object, but the object is a fool, doesn’t deserve my help, and will suffer.
2. Denier:– I have nothing to do with the object, and yet keep cribbing. (Nothing to do is a concealing statement for inner OCD).
3. I am right because he is right:- Cribbers can hear, bear, and comprehend nothing contradictory or remote than their object. They reach out to everyone they know to get validation for their cribbing. Then they propagate their belief as universal truth, because their world is a world of a well of a wall, with other Cribbers, cribbing about the same.
4. I Know it All:– I am a winner, so obviously I know more than the others. Everyone must listen to me. I have spent decades learning and winning. I want to see others winning(no, if others follow what I say, it simply means that I am right)
5. Without me he/she will die: No one can love him or her more than me(again, mistaking the obsession with love). They secretly desire, pray, hope, feel, believe, and wish that the object of their cribbing will be crushed, and eventually come back to them.

Now let us understand what are the other progress and consequence of the Cribphillia.

Why the all so energetic OCDs seem to loose all their energy?

Physiological Distress

Cribbing as you might have already understood is an outcome of thousands of stories that are kept alive in the brain. Due to such massive clusters of temporary memory being managed in the lateral cortex of the brain rather than the cerebellum, an extraordinary amount of energy is used by the brain to keep these stories alive and overthinking, ruminating, planning, scheming, scamming, hating. So the rest of the body is deprived of energy, and slowly, they start feeling tired and fatigued.

Because of excess energy to the midbrain, gut microbiomes are deprived of the energy they need. Furthermore, the gut-brain axis, along with the HPA axis handles stress, and goes down due to microbiome dysbiosis, leaving behind only the HPA axis to handle stress. Thus any small stressors amplify in Cribbers as pathological stress, and they do not seem to get out of the stress, eventually leading to Cortisol deficiency, and adrenaline fatigue.

Because of excessive energy demand to handle the stress, most often either Cribber’s body becomes Catabolic, where the body starts breaking its own muscles and tissues to get the extra energy or slows down the metabolic process completely.

Excess energy transport then leads to inflammation in the organs and the systems, leading to more requirements of water, dehydrating the body. This is then manifested as dry skin, dry mouth, and eventually constipation.

What is Autonomic Neuropathy? Why OCDs have Autonomic Neuropathy?

All our major organs are connected through the autonomic nervous system, with two major branches namely the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system. Together, they are also called the sympathovagal system. The definition of good health is homeostasis in this nervous system which ensures that all the organs are functioning the way they are expected to function.

Because one of the cores of any form of OCD is excessive stress and the autonomic system handles the stress by more sympathetic activity(called sympathetic dominance), the parasympathetic or the rest and recovery system gets impaired. thus, the image becomes self-explanatory of the symptomatic expression of the disorder.

• Lack of sleep
• Indigestion.
• Lack of sexual desire.
• Hyperurination and frequent urination.
• Dry eyes and impaired vision.
• Insulin resistance.
• Constipation.
• Strain in the eyes.

A Lyfas Case Study of Autonomic Neuropathy of an OCD with Allergy, Sleep Disorder, Constipation, Indigestion

Why OCDs have Hypertension?

Cardio-Renal Axis Impairment and Renal Hypertension

The above diagram clearly explains how any chronic or acute kidney disease causes sympathetic dominance. In the same way, the prolonged sympathetic dominance causes Cardio-renal axis hypertension. An increase of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone axis, stimulated by sympathetic activation further results in vasoconstriction, resulting in hypertension.

The results are:

• Autoimmunity, due to hyperactivation of Histamine, leads to 5-HT Serotonin receptor inhibition, and hyper-immunity response, leading to cytokinin storm against any pathogen.
• Atrial Fibrillation.

Why OCDs Develop Drinking and Gambling Habits?

Our Serotonin is produced in the deep REM sleep in the night. Therefore insomnia in the night is a leading condition in both OCD as well as in psychopathy. In the same way, not sleeping in the night shifts one more towards Cribphillic behavior and finally progressing towards towards OCD.

Serotonin is also a hormone that drives our satisfaction pathways. lack of Serotonin then pushes the brain towards the pursuit of pleasure and brain parts with more dopamine receptors(which are high in the limbic brain). Because dopamine is also addictive hormone, more and more dopamine synthesis increase the desire for dopamine.

Dopamine is addictive, and addiction gives dopamine to brain. Therefore Cribbing leads to desire for dopamine, which then slowly gets converted into an addiction.

Loss of Concentration, Attention, and Focus Due to Serotonin-Histamine Imbalance

Are OCDs not hyperfocus, then why Attention Deficiency and Loss of Consciousness?

Because our prefrontal part of the brain is responsible for our attention, patience, focus, and such executive functions, and because the prefrontal cortex is rich in Serotonin pathways and receptors, the Histamine-Serotonin imbalance and Histamine overdrive leads to slow but steady death of our prefrontal cortex.

Why OCDs become impulsive?

Because Serotonin plays an all-important role in inhibiting the limbic brain response to stressors, low Serotonin, and increased Histamine shift the stress response towards the limbic brain. This is why impulsivity is often psychological comorbidity to compulsive obsessive disorder.

Why OCD causes Allergy and Irritation?

The way an allergen causes IgE-meditated histamine overdrive, histamine overdrive also causes an IgE-meditated hyperallergic reaction, increasing allergic reaction. Hence allergy too becomes comorbidity of obsessive-compulsive behavior.

OCD in Females and Correlation with Estradiol

First, brain tryptophan is converted to 5-hydroxytryptophan by the tryptophan hydroxylase enzyme (the rate-limiting step of serotonin synthesis). Second, 5-hydroxytryptophan is converted to serotonin by the aromatic amino acid decarboxylase enzyme. Therefore females with postpartum low Estrogen(after child delivery) stress develops OCD traits, and if not addressed with purpose, they become cribphillic, and then later progress towards allergic disorder, and later close to their perimenopausal age, develops autoimmunity.

Why men with OCD develops Non-emotional Sex?

It is very interesting to know here that even males have Estrogen, the way females have testosterone.

Because OCD individuals have less amount of Estrogen, they need sex to produce the whatever little Estrogen and therefore Serotonin they can produce. Intimacy in men is modulated by Estrogen-Serotonin pathway, and not a function of Testosterone as Youtube and Whatsapp university may want you to believe.

Horses with Low Estrogen Develops OCD

In Hormone Replacement Therapy in the females, the Estrogen patches are created from the hormone from the horses. Horses are the animals with perhaps one of the highest Estrogen density. In the ancient times, when men used to fight wars on the horses, often it is observed that after the death of the warrior, his mare or the horse would die and vice versa.

Alexender died within a year after becoming depressed when his horse Bucephalus died in the conquest of India.

Why Love Failure Leads to OCD?

It is also important to know that estrogen markedly increases oxytocin binding in the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus and infusion of oxytocin in this brain area increases female sexual behavior. Because Oxytocin also modulates male social behavior and is responsible for the mirror neuron activation, that enables us to physiologically couple with another individual, creating the human bond, loss of a human bond reduces Oxytocin, which further reduces Estrogen pathways, which increases OCD.

Because love is one of the strongest human bonds, detachment with the lover lowers Oxytocin, which in turn lowers Estrogen production, which in turn lowers Serotonin synthesis and reception, which in turn creates a tremendous stress, which is life-threatning, and because of this stress, individuals become cribphillic as a defense mechanism and thereafter progress towards OCD.