What is compulsion? Compulsion is an intention with an edge: when you try not to do it, you experience difficulty. It is a key factor in your bad habits: in the moment when you are about to do the bad habit, perhaps you have second thoughts, but there is an urge pulling you. That's where we find compulsion. It is always a constraint on your freedom, but you can be compelled towards helpful or unhelpful actions.

Examples: craving junk food; seeing an attractive person and having the urge to get their attention; when angry, feeling the urge to yell; wanting to scroll through your phone; ruminating over an argument.

Compulsion can be obvious, but it comes in a continuum of intensity and it’s quite easy to ignore the mild compulsions that rule our everyday lives. Everyone is subject to it. It strikes the mightiest in the form of temptation, and the weakest in the form of addiction. Not even the wealthy are free from this form of slavery to urges.

There is a common structure to compulsion. Take a craving for junk food, ie. chips.

  1. There is a potential/trigger (eg. hunger).
  2. Then a mental image appears (an image of your favorite chips), often by habit, and the mind fixates on it.
  3. The fixation generates thoughts around an object (the chips), such as their taste and the last time you had them.
  4. An urge to acquire the object coalesces, and projects various plans of how you’re going to get it ( "get in the car", "which store is open now").
  5. These finally lead to an action. You get up and go to the store.

This process can happen really quickly, and compulsion is very often wrapped in illusions. Let’s go through them.

First illusion: I am not compelled. There's only one way to know if you are being compelled: try not doing it and see what happens. If you find no trouble doing something else, then you really are free from compulsion. On the other hand, if you experience resistance, conflict, repeated urges, stress, or unpleasant feelings as a result of restraining yourself, then you have your proof–compulsion is present.

Second illusion: compulsion is pleasant. Actually, the feelings of compulsion are two: a pleasant anticipation, and a painful lack/want. It is the pain which helps compulsion to overcome your resistance. This illusion persists as long as you are wrapped up in the object, instead of noticing what's going on inside you. An extremely mild unpleasant feeling can be really compelling if you don’t notice it.

Third illusion: the object is desirable. Actually, you are never motivated by the object, but rather by the feelings that compulsion produces. The object provokes feelings in you due to your associations with it, rather than anything intrinsic about it.

Fourth illusion: I do it because my will is weak. Actually, most often, you never even notice the compulsion that gets you–it’s so fast, subtle, or habitual. Otherwise, when you notice, you don’t come up with any concrete countermeasures.

Fifth illusion: I want this. We often identify the urge as “ours”, when the urge has really just appeared in our minds on its own. In particular, our conditioning around what is considered valuable causes us to identify with certain compulsions and chase them. Once again, to test whether it's compulsion, try not doing it and see what happens.

Sixth illusion: all of a sudden I changed my mind. In reality, it’s rarely the first appearance of an urge that gets you. It is persistent, repeated urging that compels you to act. The compulsion has been working on you.

Seventh illusion: I need compulsion to act. To be without compulsion is not to be inactive. It is having options without being bothered by them, feeling free to choose.

Eighth illusion: without wanting, I won’t get any enjoyment. Liking is not the same as wanting. There’s nothing better than liking something while you have it without missing it when you don’t. It’s all the pleasure with none of the pain.

Simply noticing where a compulsion is coming from can help to loosen it. What are the causes of compulsion? Internal lack, habit, idealization, fixation, fear, self-narrative, social expectation.

Internal lack is an emptiness within. This happens when the mind is scattered or lacks happiness. It is produced by the habit of looking for happiness externally instead of generating it internally and sharing it. This creates the conditions for compulsion to stick.

The reinforcement of habit can take something which was first enjoyable, and invest its urge with an edge that ultimately makes it a painful pull. Habit also means particular urges tend to be associated with triggers you can learn to anticipate. This can happen with an activity that provides either pleasure or relief, but some activities tend to be more compulsive than others.

Reinforcement leads to associations which provide all kinds of triggers for urges. These associations can be stacked together to strengthen a compulsion, or cleared out to weaken it. Certain habits are associated with certain places, for example.

Idealization of the object happens when the mind sees something as desirable beyond what it can really provide. It obsesses over the object, or invests it with a halo. This can produce the feeling of needing the object that compels us. It produces a warped sense of the value of the object.

Fixation happens when the mind has gotten tied up around a particular object. Even if another object is just as good, a sense of frustration and loss arises from disengaging with this specific object. (eg. “I only want that one!”) It closes the sense of other options.

Just as we chase a desirable object, we can be compelled by fear of an undesirable situation, scared into action.

Self-narratives create holes that we seek to fill with objects. Your self-esteem is bound up with narratives about achieving the object of the compulsion (eg. a particular sort of job).

Social expectations are a particularly strong source of compulsion for many people. A promise made or a meeting approaching can compel us more effectively than anything we tell ourselves.

How does compulsion get you? Speed, discomfort, persistence.

The first, and most common, issue is that an urge takes hold without you even catching it. It is too fast and you are not alert enough. Compulsion would prefer not to fight, and instead to sneak around.

If you do catch yourself and decide not to do it, the second issue is the discomfort of resistance. It takes an effort to continually stop the habitual urge. There might be tempting thoughts and counter-arguments. There's stress, and one is tempted to be relieved by giving up.

Finally, if you refuse it, an urge will continually re-arise, looking for a weak moment. This sheer persistence is the most difficult hurdle. It requires a real consistency of mind on your part to overcome.

Getting into the habit of being compelled has a powerful effect on the mind. Your compulsive habits create a scattered internal environment, full of urges. These are constantly poking you. Whenever you do something non-compulsive (eg. meditating, going for a walk) this urging can ruin the experience. For relief, you look to sufficiently stimulating & compelling activities (eg. social media videos) that will suppress the internal chaos. These activities generate their own urges, and lead into a cycle of compulsion which produces and reinforces bad habits. Within this cycle, you become unable to do anything that isn't compulsive.

What can we do about compulsion? Here are some tricks.

Exercise: Pick some bad habit and spend a preset period of time not doing it at all. Notice and neutralize even the smallest urge to do it. If you can’t think of a habit, try not lying at all (not even a little), or not speaking even one unfriendly word. Notice the edge of compulsion, and how fast and subtle it can be. If you fail, make the time smaller and try again.

While you obviously don’t want to be compelled to act badly, why be compelled at all? Consider a state of beautiful flow, or great concentration. You are active, immersed in the flow of intentions and urges, but somehow free from being prodded and pinched. Free to do, free to not do, you inhabit a delightful point of balance, choosing without stress. It is possible to develop the mind in this direction permanently. How? In fact, it is the very ordinary practice of restraint in daily life.