Mental Health: My OCD Story

I was that little kid in first grade that sat right next to the teacher’s desk.  Upon drop-off in the morning, I’d fight and kick and scream until the yard monitor finally tore me from my mother’s arms.  She quickly became my best buddy, a familiar face I could retreat to when a playground full of dozens of kids seemed overwhelming.

I showed all the signs of budding social phobia even at age six, and it carried all the way through my teenage years.  In high school I flaked on friends’ birthday parties, struck with terror at the thought of entering a room with more than one or two peers.  All eyes would be on me.  So, their gifts sat in my room and collected dust.

Before presentations for school, I’d snap an elastic band against my wrist until red welts bubbled up over my skin, sending panic signals through my brain and making my body react in the same way I would if I were in great physical danger.  I swore I’d never go to college or get a job if it meant I had to speak in front of people.

I always felt like kind of a loser at school.  I was a wimp, terrified of confrontation, and scared to put myself out there and make friends.  At home, I played a completely different role, taking out my pent-up control issues on my younger siblings and family friends.

My mother recalls times when I acted “weird” as a very young child (think four or five years old).  When I suffered from boredom, or felt overwhelmed, she’d find me hiding in my cosy closet, or sleeping in the bathtub.  In hindsight I know this was a response to overstimulating, racing thoughts.  Small, dark places made me feel safe.

Four-year-old me, already developing signs of anxiety, phobias, and compulsive behavior in early childhood.

As I aged, other phobias began to surface.  From the time I was eight or nine years old, I developed a strange fear of getting sick-- especially of feeling nauseous or throwing up.  It was a sensation that went against everything that felt comfortable to me, something I had no control over whatsoever.  

In turn, and as I developed more autonomy in my teenage years, I began to find catharsis in exercising any and all control I had to prevent myself from getting sick.  I would shun friends and family members with or without symptoms, costing me friendships (which, at the time, I felt was justifiable since I was just so scared that they could be contagious).  Almost every day I’d hyper-analyze any sensations in my body, convincing myself that the slightest hunger pang or period cramp was the start of a horrible bout of a virus.

I dreaded the holidays and all of the cold and flu season.  Each Christmas party and Thanksgiving dinner became just one more opportunity for me to be contaminated with microorganisms that could make me sick, and the more people that were there, the more vigilant I would be.

And, God forbid someone else in my household contract an illness.  I have vivid memories of my elementary-aged brothers getting sick, and me locking myself in my bedroom for weeks, refusing to consume food, in efforts to dull the effects of any illness that I could potentially succumb to.

My first round of therapy began when I was fifteen, a Sophomore in high school.  I struggled with negative coping mechanisms, as many teenagers do, and was diagnosed with social phobia and OCD.

Some of the hardest years for me, in terms of coping with my OCD, erupted during high school around the time I took this photo.

Into adulthood, I shed my fear of socializing.  I met several great friends in school (whom I am still close with into my mid-twenties) and learned to cope with giving presentations and talking to people through exposure therapy-- more on that later.

Over the years, after getting my first job, it became routine to talk to strangers face-to-face and over the phone, and I can say confidently that while I’m no fan of public speaking, I’ve become quite skilled at it and have a handle on my phobia in a way I never thought possible at fifteen.

My emetophobia and contamination OCD-- not so much.  This mental illness has followed me into adulthood and has manifested in new ways that I never imagined before.  My OCD has transcended the confines of just contamination alone, and I experience compulsive thoughts about a multitude of different (often morbid) obsessions.

I find myself deeply empathetic and emotional about things that do not affect me, which has been exacerbated by my newfound status of “mom.”  Any tragedy involving parents or children draws my attention in a way that feels uncontrollable, like a black hole sucking me in.

I also went through a phase of “enjoying” true crime content, which I have since retired (and now actively avoid) because it turned into non-stop thoughts about every possible way in which I could die.

Much of my OCD surrounds death and health anxiety.  Often my compulsive thoughts are accompanied by vivid, horrifying mental imagery of terrible things happening.  My brain sometimes forces me to bear witness to film-like manifestations of loved ones being hurt or killed, reacting to finding out someone has been killed, or imagining and empathizing with a person in their final moments.  This has been amplified by recent real-life tragedies resulting in the untimely passings of friends and family for various reasons.

The holidays still prove to be a challenging time of year for me, which has been exacerbated by maternal instincts to protect my family from germs.

My new therapist, whom I began seeing just a couple of months postpartum, uses the Psychodynamic approach to healing.  Her belief is that knowledge is what truly increases our capabilities to interrupt negative thought and behavior patterns, and to break cycles before they can influence our children.

Through the psychodynamic strategy, we’ve explored my family of origin and past events that may influence my mental health.  I’ve been asked to recall things like the tragic passing of a childhood friend, who suffered from cancer at just nine years old.  I’ve recounted lapses in my sense of autonomy and control when I was shamed by my father for disrupting his sleep when sick as a kid, amongst other things.  And then, even thinking about a perfectly young and healthy friend of mine drowning at age eighteen, the fiance of a family friend succumbing to cancer in his mid-thirties, my husband at twelve years old getting the news of his mother’s passing from an undetected heart condition…

Suddenly it makes sense.

I’m not crazy.  While yes, I suffer from OCD (a very real and disruptive mental illness), it’s no wonder my brain has manifested this method of helping me feel like I’m in control.  The reality is that life is incredibly unfair, and scary, bad things happen to people all the time.  They have happened to many people in my life, making this fear seem warranted and reasonable to me.

Instead of trying to push away my thoughts, I have learned to accept them.  I practice gently telling my brain, “Thank you for the reminder and for keeping me safe,” acknowledging that the compulsive thoughts are my body’s way of trying to protect me.  My instincts simply want me to be aware and vigilant about potential threats to me and my family’s safety.

When I look at it this way, instead of rejecting my thoughts and shaming myself for experiencing them, it becomes easier to move forward.

Of course, the experience with OCD is unique to each individual person that lives with it.  The way I’m putting it here, it sounds like OCD can be managed with self-acceptance and a positive attitude.  While this is a component to living a happy life with OCD, it definitely is not a cure-all.  

It sure would be nice if it was in fact that simple!  The truth is, I am still struggling though.

Some more concrete steps I’ve taken to managing my mental health have become known to be through psychodynamic therapy with my counselor.  To reiterate, the main gist of this is that knowledge empowers us to change behavior.

I talked about knowledge of my past, personal trauma, and events in my life that may have kickstarted my descent into the world of OCD, but this is not the only knowledge that matters.  It’s important to focus attention on all of the things that influence our behavior.

Knowledge and understanding of my triggers has also proven to be important, and helps me to avoid falling into a downward spiral.  For example, I’m often triggered by seeing true crime or illness/death related content pop up in my feed on social media.  My OCD latches onto this content and I feel compelled to dive deeper into it, reading every comment, doing further research on the internet and imagining the gruesome details of other people’s tragedies.

Then, the thought-compulsions kick in and I find myself, days or weeks later, thinking of truly unpleasant imagery during super inappropriate moments-- like when I’m playing with my kid or being intimate with my husband.

Having knowledge of my triggers can be extremely helpful because it gives me the power to avoid ever opening that door in the first place.  Since social media seems to be a place filled with common triggers, I frequently take breaks from Facebook and Instagram by deleting the apps and only revisiting them if I really need to find something there.

It really works!

Now, this wouldn’t be an adequate blog post about OCD if I didn’t at least mention the tried-and-true treatment method recommended by most professionals:  Exposure Therapy.  If you aren’t familiar, exposure therapy entails identifying a person’s trigger and forcing them to experience it, without following up by giving into compulsions.

For me, this might look like spending time with someone who is sick (and potentially contagious) without going into full decontamination mode afterwards.  

Each time you let an obsession dictate your next move (by giving into a compulsion), you positively reinforce your brain’s poor coping skills.  By instead consistently resisting the urge to complete a compulsive ritual or behavior, you send your brain the message that the compulsion no longer needs to be performed in order to cope with the obsession or trigger.

In turn, you teach yourself not to freak out about things anymore, until the urge dwindles and dwindles away.

I definitely have not gotten to this point yet.  I still go into fight or flight mode when I’m met with certain triggers.  Embarking on the journey of exposure therapy is a brave move that reaps positive results, but is scary nonetheless.  For people with OCD and phobias, facing a trigger without responding with a compulsive behavior can seem daunting if not impossible.  The thought of being in a room with a sick person and then not going above and beyond to protect myself from getting sick feels counterintuitive and like a betrayal to my own body.

So, maybe I’m not quite ready to commit to all of that quite yet.  That is okay, so long as my condition is not so out of control that it prevents me from getting through my day-to-day life.

I am a work in progress.  Each day as a mother, I am met with new challenges to my OCD, which can be difficult to cope with.  Self-acceptance and knowledge of my triggers has been crucial for my ability to continue doing my job as a parent, preventing compulsive thoughts from becoming all-consuming.

I have learned to feel grateful to my mind for caring so deeply about the safety and preservation of my loved ones, which is the root of many of my obsessions.  At its core, OCD is the mind’s attempt at exercising control and protecting oneself (although the phobias it latches onto may not always warrant it).  My takeaway is that punishing myself for having the thoughts in the first place is counterintuitive, an added layer of pain that doesn’t make the thoughts go away, and is rather unhelpful in the grand scheme.

Me in early adulthood, still navigating mental health issues but knowledge and power to alter thought and behavior patterns.

I know OCD is a common diagnosis for moms, whether it is a weight they’ve carried since childhood (like me) or is a new experience born in the postpartum period.  

Even though I don’t have myself totally figured out, and I can’t impart any wisdom on any of those other moms, I do hope that this lets people know that they are not alone.  Please find peace in the fact that many of us are in the same boat.

OCD can be a lonely experience at times, and when friends and family do not understand the experience firsthand, it can be challenging to find support and empathy.  My husband, arguably my main support person, has not always been perceptive of my experience, but we have collaborated to find common ground and identify ways he can be helpful.  I’d love to dive further into what that process looked like, in hopes that others can model that story to find support in their own partners.

Please be reminded that mental health is a never-ending voyage that ebbs and flows as life passes by.  Entering into motherhood is no exception, and brings on a new set of challenges to our mental health that should be embraced as an opportunity for personal growth.  At best, we can better ourselves to improve our mood and function, and at worst, we should aim not to let our mental health issues harm our children’s development.  Regardless of where you are at in your journey, know that you are in good company, and that any level of attention you are giving to this facet of life is an accomplishment.