Rising Defense Mechanisms: Excessive Anxiety and OCD behaviors in John Green The Fault in Our Stars

Abstract

People with Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience very regular intrusive thoughts that can cause anxiety and interfere with everyday life. The powerful association between intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors leads to a marked anxiety. Individuals may carry out repetitive behaviors or rituals and become more anxious if they cannot complete them. OCD, thus, was categorized as an anxiety disorder. For this, the present paper will trace the mutual relation between anxiety as a trigger of OCD behaviors in John Green’s cancer narrative,  The Fault in Our Stars.  Green provides background context on illness narratives in order to highlight important issues such as the accurate and realistic portrayal of cancer, particularly in the lived experience of adolescents. As this study found, the main characters of the novel, Hazel,  Augustus and Isaac experience feelings of excessive  anxiety   and try to    neutralize their anxieties . They use many defense mechanisms such as fixation, rationalization, denial and acting out to calm down their anxieties