Psy-chology · medical hypothesis · P—34
A provisional, person-centred framework for asking what repetition may be regulating before deciding what caused it.
Open the research draft ↓Conceptual hypothesis + targeted narrative review · not peer reviewed · not a diagnostic instrument · not individual treatment advice
Why it belongs here
Capacity–Uncertainty Regulation Loop (CURL) asks whether some checking, reassurance seeking, rumination, ordering or other repetitive behaviour may sometimes function as an attempt to regain safety, orientation or continuity when capacity is reduced or difficult to trust.
The paper keeps multiple routes open: established OCD processes, pain, sleep disruption, stress, medication effects, sensory load and—in selected cases—neurological, inflammatory, metabolic or other medical contributors. No route is assumed to apply to every person.
This follows naturally from the first two Psy-chology publications. Loss Is Not Nothing examines adaptation when a learned relationship changes. Learning Is a Matter of Perspective examines how different bodies, histories and feedback shape a working model. CURL asks what happens when present capacity or confidence in that model becomes constrained.
The proposal and its limit
Describe the function and timing of the loop. Distinguish memory performance from confidence in memory. Review physical, psychological, social, pharmacological and environmental contributors in proportion to evidence and clinical indications.
CURL does not claim that all OCD is memory loss, that every repetitive behaviour has a medical cause, that a suspected exposure occurred, or that established diagnosis and treatment should be abandoned.
The proposed process
The framework is useful only if it can be tested, compared with existing models and discarded or revised when evidence does not support it.
Pain, illness, medication, sleep loss, anxiety, sensory or social stress may reduce—or make it harder to trust—the capacity available in a particular moment.
Confidence may fall about what happened, what is present, what will follow or whether an action is complete. Performance and confidence are treated as related but distinct.
Checking, repetition, ordering, reassurance, rumination or avoidance may attempt to restore safety, continuity or orientation.
The act may briefly create familiarity, control or protection. Calling it regulation describes a possible function; it does not assume the strategy remains effective.
Attention is consumed and memory confidence may fall, making the response easier to repeat. The arrows are hypotheses to test, not a universal causal sequence.
How to read the evidence
The review brings established and emerging findings into one proposed sequence. Research supports relationships among pain and cognition, anxiety and working memory, sleep and emotion, some medication effects, uncertainty in OCD, and repeated checking with reduced memory confidence. Published secondary obsessive-compulsive syndromes show that medical routes can exist.
Those findings do not establish CURL as a validated clinical model, estimate how often a proposed route applies, or prove the cause of one person’s symptoms. Environmental evidence is associative and heterogeneous; individual exposure requires independently verifiable timing, dose, route and comparison data.
Editorial assessment: the paper’s strongest contribution is not a new diagnosis but a falsifiable sequencing question: what capacity is unavailable or mistrusted, what uncertainty follows, what protection does the loop attempt, and what evidence would distinguish the possible causes?
Original paper · preserved unchanged
A person-centred biopsychosocial framework for repetitive checking and OCD-like phenomena under cognitive, physiological and environmental load.
Download the original research draft ↓SHA-256 · 29c181a5e1403451ec192bd5dc5a93ca0fcb5269941d2223bee2abfa96b64b79Clinical boundary
The manuscript is a research draft generated from one lived-experience dialogue and a targeted—not systematic—review. It requires independent bibliographic and substantive verification, clinical and research review, prospective testing and comparison with established OCD models.
It should not delay evidence-based OCD care or encourage indiscriminate testing. Sudden confusion, focal weakness, speech or visual change, seizure, fainting or an unusually severe headache requires urgent medical assessment. Pregabalin should not be stopped abruptly without prescriber guidance.
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