I didn’t really realize that I had OCD until later in my life. Even then, I didn’t ever feel like it was a disability or something holding me back. Instead, I felt like the knowledge gave me understanding and power because once I knew I had OCD, I finally understood my own behavior and thought patterns better.
Yesterday, I wrote to a friend who seemed to be having trouble reliving the same event over and over again in her mind. Although she doesn’t have OCD, I explained to her what it is like for me and how I deal with situations when a moment keeps going through my mind over and over again. She wrote back to me today and said she thought it might help her. It never occurred to me that I could ever share my thoughts with anyone and it would help.
Then today I also saw a video. It was sort of surreal. It was about a podcast with two celebrities who both had OCD. Apparently one of the celebrities acted badly toward the other one because the host of the show wanted to have a discussion about OCD and the one who acted badly didn’t want to talk about OCD and kept making dry jokes and curt answers about it. The interesting part is that the one who acted badly is older than me and I understood his point of view and the host was younger than me and I also understood his point of view.
I saw the issue from both sides. In the end the person narrating the video said that it was a bad idea to ever get two people with contamination OCD to do a podcast together. I think he might be right, unless the two people decide that they want to do a podcast about contamination OCD.
For my part, I don’t have contamination OCD. I thank God I don’t have it. It is a very difficult form of OCD to have because the person is obsessed by germs and cleanliness. The reason I truly feel for people with contamination OCD is there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be clean. I wish my husband and I were better about being clean. Most people care about cleanliness. During the pandemic all of us were cleaning everything. In hospitals, everyone takes extra steps to be clean. It is very much a good thing to be clean. The only problem is that for these people that get obsessed with the thought of being clean and it consumes them.
The host really just wanted some advice, but he didn’t understand that the person he was interviewing didn’t want to talk about his OCD. He didn’t understand that for some people with OCD if you talk about it, then for days afterward that’s all you think about. I can understand wanting advice, but I can also understand not wanting to open up your mind to all those obsessive thoughts.
The worst part is that the video I watched was narrated by someone who doesn’t have OCD. They didn’t understand what it is like. So, they explained the whole incident through the eyes of someone who doesn’t have obsessive thoughts.
For the narrator and also the two celebrities, the biggest problem I saw was that everyone sees OCD as a problem. It is some disorder that makes the person somehow disabled. Except that isn’t how I see it. Yes, it is called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. However, that’s just a label for explaining that my brain works a little differently than other people. There are some people with OCD that need help to figure out how to live their life with OCD because it is a challenge. However, God made me this way. He had a plan for me. Having OCD is part of that plan. I’m not going to ever believe that my brain is broken because it doesn’t work as well as other people’s brains. My brain just works differently and maybe because I interpret the world a little differently through this OCD brain, I understand the world differently. Maybe that was God’s plan all along.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
