This is a brilliant piece! Your beautifully detailed and empathic portrayal of the experience of having OCD took my breath away in its accuracy and honesty. Thank you for describing the experience of living with OCD with such clarity and lucidity. There are so many lines that struck a chord with me. As someone who has been there in the thick of it too, your writing made me feel seen and understood. Funny thing, similarly for me it was at age 8 when I had an inexplicable yet overwhelming epiphany that every person I loved so much was haunted by the imminent threat of death. Likewise, at age 8 I grew obsessed with an irrational phobia of the death penalty, and reading your story about this made me feel less alone. The self soothing ritual of picking at the skin on the thumb with a finger nail, yeah me too. Turning off electrical outlets, knocking hands on wood a certain number of times, repetitive motions that are meant to ward off the unshakable sense of doom and fear; your precise descriptions are spot on. I’m sorry that your past therapist was a jerk; I was relieved to hear that you walked away from their dehumanizing criticisms and homophobia. (Cruel, bigoted people should not be licensed in healthcare imo.) I enjoyed the photo of you as a young kid tucked into a small cabinet, because the illuminated image of a young girl in small space seems like a lucid visual metaphor for how it feels to experience OCD. The description of your stuffed animal collection made me smile. Thank you for writing this piece with such profound insight, accuracy, and heart!
oh I’m so glad you related 💗 it’s such an isolating experience growing up with all these strange scary feelings - I wonder how many of us felt like that but never spoke about it. thank you for your kind words.
I was diagnosed with OCD last year after describing my childhood as “trying so badly to be good to prevent my loved ones from dying” to my new therapist. My “compulsion” is obsessive rumination which made it previously trickier to catch. Thank you for so vulnerably sharing your experience! I felt very understood in this piece ❤️
This was so enlightening to read. OCD really is an illness those of us without it have far too little understanding of. It sounds exhausting, but your framing of it as 'love, misfiring' makes so much sense. I really felt the tenderness come through in your writing. Thank you for sharing your experience.
I’m so grateful I found your writing - I’ve been trying for months and months since my OCD diagnosis to put it into words and you do it so wonderfully here. It’s really nice to feel connected to a shared experience instead of alone in it. 🤍
this represents my experience with OCD soo extremely well!! i had (and still have) to make sure one shoe is touching with its other shoe or else the worst thing imaginable would happen, or i would have to knock on wood 5 times and it HAD to be 5 because that’s the amount of people in my family and if i didn’t knock on it 5 times one of them would die (just typing die makes an alarm go off in my brain because i feel like i’m manifesting one of them dying) i never knew anyone else who had to do things like that and it makes me feel incredibly understood, so thank you for writing about your experience!! it makes me feel not so alone <3
As someone with OCD, this resonates. The part that sometimes gets to me is the way OCD messes with our perception of the probability of something happening. As you name, the probability of the bad thing happening is not zero, but our brains tend to assume the probability, because it's not zero, is therefore higher than it actually is. It's cruel how OCD takes something that is actually real and then blows it out of proportion. This was a beautifully-written piece. Thanks for sharing!
I was diagnosed with OCD in 2017. You captured the reality of it so well especially because for me death is a major part of my anxiety and OCD. This is such a vulnerable piece and I thank you for sharing it with us <3
I was so lost in your words, and I wish I didn't have to come back out. Although I don't have OCD, this piece of writing felt so familiar, I'm in love <3
Hey there! I love it so much! I am also diagnosed with OCD and the part about rituals to protect your loved ones hit so hard...I completely relate to what you have written and feel seen and validated. Thankyou so much for writing it.
This is a very incisive piece of writing - thank you for sharing your experiences! It's very interesting reading this essay alongside 'relatability, empathy, and the woman writer', noting where the idea of relatability appears here and how it compares to your other thoughts on the subject. In particular, I think there's a fascinating tension between your desire for extreme specificity in the relatability essay and what I read as your ruing in this essay that OCD hasn't been made relatable - and so broadly culturally understood - on social media. Does that resonate with you? I think it makes sense to want people to understand OCD more, given the isolation of people's ignorance which can make it "far easier to say you are ‘feeling anxious’ than it is to confess you are auditing your entire life for reasons you might have hurt somebody". And I'm curious about what you think about this tension, and whether you have ideas about how we might reach a more tentative approach to understanding, rather than the assumptive kind of understanding fostered by 'relatable' media. (And if any of this doesn't resonate or make sense, and you want to talk about it, please say so!)
This is a brilliant piece! Your beautifully detailed and empathic portrayal of the experience of having OCD took my breath away in its accuracy and honesty. Thank you for describing the experience of living with OCD with such clarity and lucidity. There are so many lines that struck a chord with me. As someone who has been there in the thick of it too, your writing made me feel seen and understood. Funny thing, similarly for me it was at age 8 when I had an inexplicable yet overwhelming epiphany that every person I loved so much was haunted by the imminent threat of death. Likewise, at age 8 I grew obsessed with an irrational phobia of the death penalty, and reading your story about this made me feel less alone. The self soothing ritual of picking at the skin on the thumb with a finger nail, yeah me too. Turning off electrical outlets, knocking hands on wood a certain number of times, repetitive motions that are meant to ward off the unshakable sense of doom and fear; your precise descriptions are spot on. I’m sorry that your past therapist was a jerk; I was relieved to hear that you walked away from their dehumanizing criticisms and homophobia. (Cruel, bigoted people should not be licensed in healthcare imo.) I enjoyed the photo of you as a young kid tucked into a small cabinet, because the illuminated image of a young girl in small space seems like a lucid visual metaphor for how it feels to experience OCD. The description of your stuffed animal collection made me smile. Thank you for writing this piece with such profound insight, accuracy, and heart!
oh I’m so glad you related 💗 it’s such an isolating experience growing up with all these strange scary feelings - I wonder how many of us felt like that but never spoke about it. thank you for your kind words.
I was diagnosed with OCD last year after describing my childhood as “trying so badly to be good to prevent my loved ones from dying” to my new therapist. My “compulsion” is obsessive rumination which made it previously trickier to catch. Thank you for so vulnerably sharing your experience! I felt very understood in this piece ❤️
This was so enlightening to read. OCD really is an illness those of us without it have far too little understanding of. It sounds exhausting, but your framing of it as 'love, misfiring' makes so much sense. I really felt the tenderness come through in your writing. Thank you for sharing your experience.
This is such heart warming feedback - thankyou ❤️
I’m so grateful I found your writing - I’ve been trying for months and months since my OCD diagnosis to put it into words and you do it so wonderfully here. It’s really nice to feel connected to a shared experience instead of alone in it. 🤍
this represents my experience with OCD soo extremely well!! i had (and still have) to make sure one shoe is touching with its other shoe or else the worst thing imaginable would happen, or i would have to knock on wood 5 times and it HAD to be 5 because that’s the amount of people in my family and if i didn’t knock on it 5 times one of them would die (just typing die makes an alarm go off in my brain because i feel like i’m manifesting one of them dying) i never knew anyone else who had to do things like that and it makes me feel incredibly understood, so thank you for writing about your experience!! it makes me feel not so alone <3
oh that bit about manifesting is soo true - I felt extremely anxious publishing this!! I’m glad this resonated w you 💗💗
As someone with OCD, this resonates. The part that sometimes gets to me is the way OCD messes with our perception of the probability of something happening. As you name, the probability of the bad thing happening is not zero, but our brains tend to assume the probability, because it's not zero, is therefore higher than it actually is. It's cruel how OCD takes something that is actually real and then blows it out of proportion. This was a beautifully-written piece. Thanks for sharing!
💗💗💗💗💗💗
this is incredibly well-written and even more relatable, thank you for writing it
Thank you xxx
I was diagnosed with OCD in 2017. You captured the reality of it so well especially because for me death is a major part of my anxiety and OCD. This is such a vulnerable piece and I thank you for sharing it with us <3
thank you so much and solidarity! 💗
I was so lost in your words, and I wish I didn't have to come back out. Although I don't have OCD, this piece of writing felt so familiar, I'm in love <3
💗 thank you
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Incredible. ❤️
💗💗💗 thank you!
Hey there! I love it so much! I am also diagnosed with OCD and the part about rituals to protect your loved ones hit so hard...I completely relate to what you have written and feel seen and validated. Thankyou so much for writing it.
thank you so much -I’m so glad you relate ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
I love this one so much!
Thank you honey 💗
This is a very incisive piece of writing - thank you for sharing your experiences! It's very interesting reading this essay alongside 'relatability, empathy, and the woman writer', noting where the idea of relatability appears here and how it compares to your other thoughts on the subject. In particular, I think there's a fascinating tension between your desire for extreme specificity in the relatability essay and what I read as your ruing in this essay that OCD hasn't been made relatable - and so broadly culturally understood - on social media. Does that resonate with you? I think it makes sense to want people to understand OCD more, given the isolation of people's ignorance which can make it "far easier to say you are ‘feeling anxious’ than it is to confess you are auditing your entire life for reasons you might have hurt somebody". And I'm curious about what you think about this tension, and whether you have ideas about how we might reach a more tentative approach to understanding, rather than the assumptive kind of understanding fostered by 'relatable' media. (And if any of this doesn't resonate or make sense, and you want to talk about it, please say so!)