Living with OCD

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I had just wrapped up the completion of my Ph.D. in history, a subject that I loved. I crammed what should have been 7 years of work into 4. It was a time of high stress in my life. I wasn’t eating or sleeping well. I started to have dark thoughts. I thought about hurting myself and others. I knew I didn’t actually “want” to do these things and yet I was tormented by the thoughts. 

I call what I experience,  the darkness, like a superhero who has a dark reflection of himself that everyone is ashamed of. It’s something that manifests into shame. It is everything you don’t want. It is something that compels you that you want to expel.

A friend of mine mentioned Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I didn’t know what OCD was. When I was feeling at rock bottom, I decided to research it online. I typed in the words OCD and Christianity.  For the first time in my life, I felt like something clicked. This felt just like what I experienced. I felt heard and seen at last. I knew I had OCD.

I still retained a stereotypical mindset of what OCD looked like and it couldn’t have been farther from what I struggled with. OCD was about being clean and about contamination, symmetry, and order, things that had never brought much distress to me. At least that is what I thought. I had a very narrow view of what OCD actually was. 

I realized I had been consumed with perfectionism my entire life. I had always had tendencies toward obsessive thinking but I never thought that it caused me to suffer. If anything, I thought it may have been helpful. 

I was spending an excess of time on homework, striving to be the best, to be “perfect”. I made excuses to work on math and to go ahead in the textbook. The idea of a black-and-white world drew me in. Math felt straightforward. It was comfortable to have a correct answer because there was no guesswork involved. It was straightforward and I felt at ease. Other subjects did not afford me this comfort. There

I had always had what I will call low-grade anxiety. I was a bit of an overthinker. I had a lot of superstition beliefs. I struggled with what I now know to be “magical thinking” OCD themes. However it was never something that negatively impacted my life, it was just something I incorporated into my life. Little did I know that OCD was there, lurking in the shadows.

The stigma surrounding mental health is still an issue that needs to be addressed. I struggled in silence for so long before sharing my story. I was not the typical “face” of someone who had a mental illness. Over time and through my experience I have learned that there is no typical “face” of mental illness. It is me, it is you, it is your neighbor, your brother, your friend, your pastor, your teacher…it can happen to anyone. Mental illness doesn’t discriminate.

OCD is a jerk of a disorder that goes after the things you value most: family, work, kids, safety, and responsibility. That is my list, but the list is different for everyone. I have learned that it attacks the things you value and hold dear to your heart.

In spite of all the progress I have made throughout treatment, I still love to hate ERP. I still see ERP as scary. Even after all of these years, I do not like it. I look at it as if the rewards are worth it. I refuse to let any mental illness stop me from my future. I hope to continue to be an advocate and a voice in my community and field for anyone who experiences any form of mental health issues. The more I speak up and raise awareness, my hope is that more people will feel safe getting the help they need.