I had OCD all my life, but it wasn’t until I was forty years old before I was diagnosed with it. There were many factors that contributed to my late diagnosis, but one of the biggest was how OCD is portrayed in books, film, and television. I always saw people who were incredibly neat and clean. They acted like germophobes. Finally, they had to have very structured lives where everything had to be their way. Those characters were nothing like me. I am an organized person, but I am messy, and I’ve never met a germ that I didn’t like or at least one that scared me. I live with a husband and three dogs, there’s germs and who knows what else all over my house.
When I turned forty, I met a therapist who recognized the OCD traits in me. She gave me a book on OCD that described the disorder and depicted real case studies. As I read the book, I felt like I was reading my life. All the trials and challenges that these people faced were the same ones that I had been facing all my life. I finally discovered that OCD isn’t about being a neat freak who constantly worries about germs, and it isn’t about forcing your sense of organization upon the rest of the world. OCD is living with a constant barrage of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors that can become so overwhelming and intrusive, without help, it can be difficult to function in life. I’d love for more people in media to learn about it so that maybe the next person doesn’t have to wait until they are forty years old to get diagnosed.
