← Get to know OCD
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So have you ever had a fear that felt so real that it completely consumed your thoughts, even though logically, you knew it wasn't likely to happen? I know I have because I have what the TV commercials call moderate to severe ocd. So OCD is incredibly compelling at making your fears seem real and feel real. When I am in the thralls of a thought spiral, I. I feel like my fears are as real as the couch that I am sitting on right now. I cannot distinguish between the fear and reality. It is simply impossible for me. And that can be really debilitating. It can be destabilizing. One of the ways that I used to try to deal with this before I had access to OCD treatment was constant checking, constant googling, Googling symptoms, Googling fears, Googling. Has this ever happened before? Googling. Are you sure that this can't happen? Are you sure that I'm safe? Endless, endless searching. And we're talking about hours and hours that I would lose to OCD every day. I got to a point where I wasn't able to write. I wasn't able to. You know, I wasn't able to read a menu, wasn't able to read a book. I wasn't able to, you know, do any of the things that bring me joy in my life. My kids would be right in front of me, and it would be like they weren't there because I. I would be so lost in my own fear. And it just doesn't have to be that way. And I do think that's a reminder of hope. I do think that's a stark reminder that, you know, recovery is possible. I was staying in a motel, and I just stepped outside to get something at the vending machine, and I was barefoot, and I stepped in someone else's spit. Oh, that's really gross. But my reaction to that. My first thought was, oh, like, you're probably gonna get an std. Okay, from stepping on someone's spit. Like, there's probably a little bit of a cut on the bottom of your foot, and then you're probably gonna get an std, and then your girlfriend is gonna be like, why did you get an std? You know, and it's gonna ruin your life. And that was the chain of thoughts for me. And it became very quickly impossible to manage these thoughts. Like, it went from 0 to 100 very quickly. There's this great Edna St. Vincent Millais poem that I think is more about depression than ocd, but I like it for ocd, too, where she writes, night falls fast Today is in the past three flakes, then four arrive, then many more. And that feeling of there's three snowflakes of these thoughts that are just like percolating down. And then there are many more. And then it is a whiteout, it is a blizzard, it is a blinding white light. And there is no thought, except for this thought that you have given yourself a STD by stepping on this spit and your life is over. That's what a really bad intrusive thought is like. For me, one of the focuses of my obsessive fear is that I'll accidentally plagiarize because of course it attacks something that you love that's important to you, which for me is writing. And so that I'll accidentally plagiarize like an entire section of a novel or something. Now, this can't happen, but I still am very afraid of it. Right? That's why we have editors and all sorts of things. But I could give you 20 reasons to rationalize why you don't need to fear it. And your OCD would go, as long as I can't fully close the loop on the fear, I will have the fear. And so, yeah, that's the nature of. That's the nature of ocd, unfortunately. I remember saying to Sarah once, my wife, who I also really trust with this stuff and like, can bring. Thank God, I can like, bring stuff to her. And. And I was like, I, like, couldn't raise my arm because I had over exercised. And I was like, I can't raise my arm. I'm pretty sure that it's like, you know, musculoskeletal degenerative disorder. And Sarah was like, well, I think that's unlikely. I mean, we're laughing now, but like, to the point, like, it was not funny. And even. And to her credit, she didn't take it as funny, right? Like, she took it as like. She didn't take it as, here we go again. She didn't take it as like, Christ almighty, I can't believe I married this guy. She took it as like, well, you know, here. Here we are again. And like, I think it's unlikely, but it felt as real to me as every other time. And that's eventually what I told her was like, you know, I appreciated you taking it seriously because to me it's serious. Like, it's as serious every time as every other time. I remember once I told my therapist, my psychiatrist, I was like, I have this obsessive fear that I'm going to like, rip off my own arms and he was like, that's not uncommon. And I was like, well, for God's sakes, like, how do I think of something that is uncommon if that's not uncommon? But since I got access to therapy, my life is very different. There is an evidence based therapy for OCD called exposure and response prevention therapy that can truly be transformational in people's lives. I know it's been transformational in my life. I would Google and Google and check and check and people would be like, why don't you just, like, not do that? Why don't you just, like, not have the fear? And believe me, I would have liked to not have the fear, but that simply wasn't an option. Now it can feel easier to do avoidance or reassurance behaviors, but ultimately it doesn't help. It's one of those things that can make you feel better in the short run and makes you feel much worse in the long run. I got a lot of those things in my life, actually. And what does help is exposure and response prevention therapy, which isn't easy. I mean, for me, it meant like, facing my fears, quite literally, having in a safe environment, having to go step by step by step, encountering my fears and understanding over time that they weren't real and didn't need to have the feeling of control over my life that they had. So. So before treatment, I would often have an elevated heart rate. I could barely be on the Internet without feeling like a constant sense of panic. I would feel overwhelmed all the time. I would be consumed by dread. I would feel guilt and shame and fear and anxiety. And after treatment, my life is very, very different. Now. That's not to say I don't have OCD anymore or that those OCD symptoms won't come back. Of course I do, and they will. But my life isn't controlled by OCD the way that it used to be. So for me, confronting my OCD fears has absolutely been worth it. And if there's one message I would share, it's that there is hope. Even when your brain tells you there isn't, Hope is the correct response to consciousness. And it takes a lot of bravery to turn that hope into action, to turn that hope into the action of getting help. But help is available and it can be transformational. So if you're hesitant to face your fears, which God knows I was, please hear this. It's worth it. It really is worth it. And in my own life, it can be hard to apply the lessons I've learned sometimes. Like, I don't want to be uncomfortable and in the moment. Doing exposure and response prevention therapy can make me feel uncomfortable and response prevention can make me feel uncomfortable. But again I believe that it's worth it and if I can remind myself of that that on the other side of this discomfort lies a greater ability to live in the world then I can do it. I know facing OCD fears can feel overwhelming but you don't have to do it alone. That's why NOCD is here. They're here to help. You can visit nocd.com to schedule a free call with their team and get matched with a NOCD trained therapist. They have licensed therapists who are trained at treating OCD with exposure and response prevention therapy. They'll create a plan tailored to your specific needs and guide you every step of the way. Making the call to start treatment was a difficult moment in my life born of true desperation. But gosh is current me grateful to past me for making that call.