Living with OCD

If John Green is your favorite author, you have lots of company. His writing has a way of making you feel like you and only you are his audience. Like

Key Takeaways: Receiving an OCD diagnosis and effective treatment can take 14 to 17 years on average for adults. (NOCD) Around 2 in 3 people with OCD saw

Guilt might be one of the most prominent emotions expressed by people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). While we often hear about guilt being

Having thoughts involuntarily imposed on you that are the utter moral opposite of who you are at the core. These unwanted thoughts seeming to plague every

Sophie May is a 20-something singer-songwriter from the UK with a new song called “Tiny Dictator”—and the central metaphor is that obsessive-compulsive

This story discusses thoughts about self-harm. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the

Every part of someone’s experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is unique, down to the emotions they experience as a result of their OCD. For

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Speaking it out loud takes away its power?” I’ve always really liked this statement, and I believe it to be true.

On a daily basis, your mind is hijacked by intrusive thoughts that seem to go against everything you believe to be true about yourself or the world. You

Do you feel constantly aware of where you’re looking? Are you worried you look at people too often or at inappropriate times? Does staring make you feel

I knew ERP worked, after all, it helped me so much in the past. I knew I just needed to put the difficult work in and keep forging ahead.

I always thought that if I didn’t feel like I wanted to do something, leave the house, or do something that I had maybe previously enjoyed doing, it was me making that choice. Now I can clearly decipher the difference between me wanting or not wanting to do something versus the OCD telling me I shouldn’t do something. I don’t need to let OCD run my life...

Seemingly overnight, these thoughts became more and more intense. I was consumed with guilt over them. It snowballed into experiencing unwanted thoughts about harming my family; the people that I loved the most in the world. I knew I had to tell my wife. I needed to seek help.

My family was surprised when they learned of my OCD diagnosis, I didn’t have the stereotypical signs of OCD. I didn’t wash my hands for countless hours, I wasn’t someone who was super organized. To look at me, you would not suspect all of the turmoil that went on in my mind. This is one of the most frustrating parts of this disorder, people do not often understand the mental compulsions. Many people just see the physical compulsions and don’t really understand the “why” behind the compulsions. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as mental compulsions.

The uncertainty I’d spent my whole life running from now feels exciting and liberating. I don’t need to know “for sure” before I move my feet. I GET TO MAKE MISTAKES. And that’s horrible and amazing all at the same time.

Something that has helped me along the way is no matter the content of the intrusive thought/feeling, I will ask myself “and then what”....you see, the story must go on. Play it out. Play out the worst case scenario. And then what happens… it always comes back to I just don’t like how it feels, and we know that life will go on.

I don’t remember a life before my OCD showed up, as some of my earliest memories involve (what I now know are) obsessions and compulsions. I remember being early school-age and feeling different from everyone else around me.

My life was going great. I was an award-winning college quarterback with a bright future ahead of me. But then OCD came out of nowhere and derailed everything.