october is ocd awareness month and I wanted to shed some light on how this mental illness personally affects ME every single da (very long yap incoming I apologize lol)
when I say I have ocd I do not mean the quirky cleaning type or the one where I have to keep everything in a straight line that you typically see in mainstream media. while these types do exist and are also very debilitating, thereβs also many other forms of ocd.
my ocd impacts me in so many ways. most of us get what we call intrusive thoughts. these thoughts can be very distressing which makes some people with ocd (like me) do compulsions to relieve that stress temporarily, but never permanently. these intrusive thoughts can take the form of suicidal thoughts, thoughts to harm yourself or others, if you donβt do _____ then this bad thing happen, etc.
to make this absolutely clear: these intrusive thoughts do not reflect our real feelings AT ALL!!! itβs the reason an intrusive thought is so distressing because itβs not a reflection of you at all. immoral intrusive thoughts are not a reflection of the person who has them!
for me, during the worst of my intrusive thoughts during COVID, Iβd take pictures of the doorknob to our front door locked each night to force myself to see that it was indeed locked or else Iβd have anxiety attacks that someone was going to break in. Iβd avoid the number 13 because that was bad luck and if I was the 13th like on a post I would genuinely think something bad would happen to me or my family. I used to have to knock on wood exactly 7 times every time I had a thought that something bad was going to happen. I used to avoid stepping on cracks because my brain told me it would indeed break my motherβs back LMAO.
these are just some examples of the intrusive thoughts Iβve had and the compulsions my brain tricked me into thinking I had to do or else the intrusive thought would happen. it may seem very similar to someone on the outside, but when you get these intrusive thoughts regularly your brain feels like it has to do these things to stop them from happening.
to this day I still have these intrusive thoughts, though not as bad. I have suicidal intrusive thoughts, intrusive thoughts of tricking people into thinking Iβm a good person, intrusive thoughts about making people mad/not want to be my friend anymore which causes me to seek reassurance, and more that Iβm uncomfortable to say out loud, much less share.
if you read this far:
thank you so much for reading. this whole tweet was very uncomfortable to write since writing out my intrusive thoughts are hard, but I wanted to give some of my friends here a glimpse of what goes on in my life while living with ocd and how ocd can affect someone beyond the stereotypes portrayed in the media. also friendly reminder that this is how ocd personally affects ME and ocd doesnβt look the same in everyone π©·
(also heβs some graphics I found that help visualize ocd)