#what ocd is

[hum-tittle]

I have OCD, and I don’t think there are a lot of great media examples. So, I am going to post examples as I find them! Also, if you find any examples, please share!!

First it is important to understand what exactly OCD is. OCD is an anxiety disorder with a cycle. It starts with consistent intrusive/unwanted thoughts. (Everyone experiences intrusive thoughts but people with OCD it is much more intense and frequent. I personally have multiple a day.) Now intrusive thoughts are anxiety inducing thoughts. These thoughts are things you do not want to do/happen. People confuse intrusive thoughts with impulsive thoughts Impulsive thoughts are things you may have some desire to do and do not trigger anxiety. Both kinda “pop” in your head but are very different. Wanting to flip someone off for cutting you off is impulsive while running your car off a cliff is an intrusive thought.

Intrusive thoughts aren’t always a specific action either, it can sometimes just be a feeling or a memory. I deal with “impending doom” now and again, it is awful.

The next part is the fear and anxiety being too much from the intrusive thought and they keep thinking about it, or the obsession.

This is where we get to the visible part of the cycle, the compulsion. Compulsion can look so different and sometimes you can’t even tell. (Also everyone can have compulsions!). Someone double checking the door is locked seems totally normal to the outside, but in their mind if they don’t double check it someone will break in and kidnap their family and it will be all their fault because they didn’t double check the lock, even if they know they locked it, what if someone unlocked it, or the lock is broken, or they’re crazy and never locked it.

The compulsion does help self soothe but is usually temporary. If the obsession is still there, this can cause the compulsions to become more extreme. Getting really sick> intrusive thoughts of getting sick again> excessive hand washing (cleaning them to the point of bleeding)> relief> compulsion is no longer helping> agoraphobia (fear of leaving their home)

Here are some graphics to help understand!

Anyways I am also writing a musical about this and will share about it when it's closer to being done!

Graphic sources

https://www.ocddoodles.com/shop/p/the-ocd-cycle-digital-print-clinic-use

https://calocd.com/pure-o-ocd-2/

[vegetabletaxi]

this is just a bunch of text and barely a comic sorry, but i really wanted to talk about this stuff even if i don't have the energy to properly draw

[inkskinned]

even 2 years ago people still said autism with a whisper. it was also how people sometimes whisper lesbian, like they're afraid of uttering a slur. autistic was either an insult or it was something terrible, a horrible burden only select people endure. "select people" were usually 9 year old boys and skinny white men.

they are not hispanic young adults with a dog and a life and friends. i can make (sustained, calculated, painful) eye contact. with certain people, i don't even have to count how many seconds i am holding their vision - i can just look at them. i can wear clothes that bother me, i will just have a worse day than usual. i might cry about any changes to my schedule - but change is scary! this is normal!

when i was 16 it was OCD. i mean that was the thing everyone said. i totally have ocd. they would arrange 6 colors of gel pen in rainbow order (no worry for indigo feeling left out) and they'd be "so ocd" about it.

if you struggle with intrusive thoughts, be careful at this next paragraph, but. at 16 i developed a compulsion that involved self-harm. my ocd was convinced i was simply forgetting that i'd hurt someone terribly - a thought that persisted for no clear or delineated reason.

at some point i will probably write about how the idea of "morally pure thoughts" was hell for me and others with ocd, but this was the odd dichotomy for many of us: they liked our "aesthetic", but were genuinely repulsed by our lived experience. "intrusive thoughts" now means "cutting your hair in the sink" instead of talking yourself down from believing horrible things. "so ocd" is a label without any true understanding.

it's something i've talked about before - in multiplicity - but i firmly believe in the veracity and necessity of self-diagnosis. i think it saves lives and it saves tragedies from occurring. as someone raised in a house that wasn't safe, self-diagnosis was, for many years, the only viable option. 15 and honestly googling: am i depressed or there demons affecting my behavior.

but it is not genuine self-diagnosis anymore, most of the time. it is a strange, blanched version of that whispered word autism. now certain traits are constantly seen as "autistic" - any passing intense interest. any flubbed social interaction. people say it while laughing - a touch of the 'tism.

and i like the acceptance! i do. i like that people are talking about it. i like that if i self-identify, more people speak up and say me too, bitch. but there is something-else quietly happening, the way it happened to OCD. the quirky, "fun" parts have been washed and sanitized and removed of all suffering. now it is just something that makes you "a little bit silly."

it took me 27 years on this planet before i learned to make friends. something about me just seems incredibly odd, i guess, some kind of radiation monitoring. someone once (in a way that was almost friendly) told me i am doing the right things, but in a way that's off-putting. i have scoured myself raw attempting to be charming.

someone on tiktok does a deep dive into their particular passion. the top comment says "what kind of autism is this lol". like we are a breed of animal. like it has no influence on our experience. like our life is a fresh breeze, an open meadow.

more often for me, life was a drowning.

[gophergal]

Guilt tripping people does nothing but cause vulnerable folks to spiral and make folks who dont live with moral OCD feel negatively toward your cause

[lucabyte]

A belief in Nominative Determinsim

[evilesbiautism]

The most common argument you'll hear against self diagnosis is that people will fake being [X] for attention. But every disabled person, physical or otherwise, knows this could only work in online spaces - the world was not made for us, and brandishing your disability as a badge of honor that gives you ~special privileges~ is such a funny idea.

Like, honey - that doesn't happen. No one gets anything from being disabled. Maybe extra accommodations if you're lucky - but nothing else. And the internet isn't as important as you seem to think - eventually it just feels hollow.

Ask disabled people how often they had to fight to get diagnosed so their medical needs could be met and their complaints would be heard. Doctors are just hardwired to delay this as much as possible.

I knew I was autistic since late 2018 - I got an official diagnosis 4 months ago. Knowing yourself and how you can make your own life easier is a lifesaver.

And this isn't even going into how many *cons* there are to a professional diagnosis, like being met with disdain at best and denied services at worst.

I don't care if a 16 year old who self diagnosed after taking 1 online quiz about autism is wrong. And honestly I think it's weird people treat this 'issue' with so much hatred.

[criticalamityz]

can't wash you off

[madrevolting]

[lazylittledragon]

Not trying to be rude or anything but you shouldn't use the word 'manic' or 'manic period' etc. unless you actually have manic/depressive episodes because it downplays how severe those disorders can actually be. They're just words but unlearning harmful terminology like that can help destigmatise mental illness and I would hope youi would want to do that.

yeah it's almost like i used those words specifically because i DO understand how severe they are

[sklnnylittlebitch]

I’m going to sleep now

[charon-cries]

when OTHER people try to distract or comfort themselves, they call it "coping" and "self-soothing," but when i do it, it's a "mental compulsion" and "you have OCD"

[ghosts-and-glory]

Is Narinder Ok?

Idk the file says he’s okay and my file names would never lie

Ignore how incredibly messy these doodles are, I drew these for me and me alone a few weeks ago. I felt like they applied.

He’s fine, look at how okay my document says he is. Could a mentally ill person have a list of ailments this long. (Blurred so I can keep my secrets.)

[danielsarmand]

DANGEROUS ROMANCE (2023)

[morsobaby]

People with delusions. People with intrusive thoughts. People with compulsions. People whose symptoms are only ever seen with how big of a nuisance they are to everyone around you. People who are labeled irrational and fussy. People who have to "come out" to others about their "Weird" parts.

You're worth so much more. You're worth living and accommodation. You can and will have a good future with people who respect you and your boundaries. I promise. Keep on going

[cosmossystem]

personally i think you should be legally required to have discovered your plurality and learned to function as a system for at least three full calendar years before being allowed a voice in syscourse. because when you don't, we end up with newbies regurgitating the same dumb fucking takes over and over such as "children can never have alters" or "endogenic systems were invented last year" or "your trauma wasn't bad enough to cause xyz" or even my personal favorite "there is never any overlap between DID/OSDD and MADD/BPD/literally any disorder"

[butchspace]

I guess I kind of just use this account for PSAs now, and this has been on my mind a lot lately.

I figured out that I have OCD a few years ago, and recently I’ve seen a lot of bad advice around dealing with intrusive thoughts and obsessions.

There’s that post that goes around occasionally about “taking pictures of your oven knobs before you leave” or other things I’ve seen that say to “make a weird face when you lock your door.” THESE ARE COMPULSIONS. If you have/suspect you have OCD or you often struggle with things like that, please do not follow this advice. Instead, try to accept your intrusive thoughts and move on, not argue with them. Over time, they will get easier and easier to deal with. Ruminating, stressing, or arguing with them just makes them worse in the long run.

If you think you might have OCD and want to seek a specialist, the IOCDF’s home page has a lot of resources under the “find help” tab, including a locator.

I’m going to put the rest under a read-more because I’m going to talk a bit more in depth about intrusive thoughts and compulsions. This mostly because good OCD info is so sparse on line, and I’ve spent many hours compulsively researching OCD lmao.

Content warning:

discussion of unreality/doubting one’s own perception

discussion of specific compulsions

I’m not going to push this point too hard or shame anyone who doesn’t want to follow it, because OCD doesn’t really just go away. It’s a constant struggle. I give in to compulsions regularly, even though I am medicated and have seen a specialist to learn actual coping skills. It’s hard to resist sometimes and you don’t always have the energy, the awareness, or the power to ignore them. You do what you have to do to get through your day. The main difference is that the right medication and the right therapist make it easier to stay out of the spiral and to leave a spiral when you’re in one. They still happen. You still kind of have to play everything by ear.

Similarly, it is super fucking hard to get help or even get diagnosed. No regular therapist actually knows what the fuck it looks like, and specialists are few and far between and often don’t take insurance. It’s not fair or easy or necessarily productive to try and do exposure response prevention on yourself. Your “good coping skills” can even turn into an obsession or compulsion, where you’re constantly worried about what is an intrusive thought and what is not, or if you’re responding to them properly.

What I want to do is try to give at least some useful advice to people who are struggling with intrusive thoughts.

The best way to respond to them is not at all. This is especially true with OCD, because the response to them is sort of the root of this disorder. Sometimes, it’s recommended that with depression or anxiety you challenge your thoughts. In OCD, it’s the opposite. Challenging them can so easily lead you down a compulsion spiral. (More about that cycle from a professional.)

Compulsions can be entirely mental, but I’ll use a common behavioral one to look at how engaging with compulsions can go:

You start by taking a picture of the your stove knobs to make sure they’re all off. That works for a few hours or days, but then you start wondering if the knob is ever-so-slightly in the “on” position. You wonder if the picture proves they’re off enough. You forget to take the picture at all, and have to go back in to check anyways. You check your phone a few times before leaving to ensure that the picture is still there. You take several pictures because you can’t tell if you actually took any at all. You start to wonder if you can even trust what you see before your very eyes. What if you’re just imagining that the knobs are set to off? What if you’re just imagining the whole picture to begin with? The picture allows you to engage with your checking compulsion throughout the day, strengthening the connection between the intrusive thought and the urgency to do something about it. That means it gets worse. That means you find new ways to doubt your perception or your memory or whatever.

It can eventually get really bad. It’s hard and awful to try and deal with this on your own, but sometimes you have to.

It’s so shit. It’s so fucking shit how long many people suffer with mental illness without even knowing what’s going on. I didn’t know that my constant, overwhelming guilt over almost everything I’d ever thought or said or done or maybe did and couldn’t remember was the result of a disorder. It was so freeing to realize there was actually something that might help me, and I could learn to just live with myself and my weird ass thoughts that don’t necessarily mean anything at all. It’s so shit that OCD-awareness is so low among therapists. I was never going to get diagnosed until I found an OCD SPECIALIST (bold, italicized, all caps. Don’t trust people on psychology today who just put OCD in the list of what they treat.) and went over the Y-BOCS with her. It’s all so shit that several therapists I came to with textbook examples of OCD either ignored me or didn’t have the tools to help. I told one of them I “didn’t feel connected to reality” and he kind just went 🤷.

I just want everyone who is in that/a similar situation to at least have this information available to them.

If you want to learn more, these blogs from Sheppard Pratt were the best discussion of OCD I found online that really described what I was going through. They’re written by licensed therapists, several (all?) of whom live with OCD. They’re very healing to read if this is something you’re struggling with, or something you think you might be struggling with, and great in general if you want to learn more about OCD.

Whatever’s going on, OCD or not, have some grace with yourself. Take a few minutes today and do something kind for yourself, even just think one nice thing about yourself. You’re doing the best you can.