How has OCD affected you? Feel free to comment below (anonymously if you want!) about your battles. I am in a really good place right now. Let's fight this battle!
Let's talk about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Now I am not necessarily talking about the type that immediately comes to mind or is parodied in countless TV and movies. I do not obsess over germs or the order of things; my OCD is more in line with intrusive thoughts (https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/obsessive-compulsive-disorder). Now these thoughts can be super disconcerting. I will get more into this as my blogs move on but I believe it is important to know that OCD lends itself to variety of types and symptoms. It took countless therapists and almost 20 years before I was finally diagnosed with OCD and was prescribed medicine. Between the medecine and talk therapy, I am now thriving but before that, things got dark. Before I delve into my experiences, a resource that I found so important and mirrored my experiences was an article written by ex NHL goalie Corey Hirsch (https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/corey-hirsch-dark-dark-dark). This article let me know that I was not alone in the types of thoughts I was having and that I could live a better life.
Now to get into a bit of my battle with OCD we need to start at the beginning. I tend to have a very good memory which can be a blessing, but also a curse. I vividly remember being in second grade and during a spelling test looking up from my test to think. Why do I remember such a mundane action? I remember because that small action sent me into a spiral and had me convinced that I had cheated on my spelling test because I glimpsed the test of the kid sitting next to me while I looked up. I went home and told my mom "I know I didn't cheat but I feel like I did". That feeling lasted for a long time and made me feel like an awful person. Things like this would continue to happen for years. For example, after I got my drivers license I struggled thinking that I ran over various things. Deep down and rationally I knew I had not run over anything at all. However, my mind was telling me that I did and I had to turn around or obsessively look in the rearview mirror to convince myself that I didn't hit the person walking on the side of the road or the person walking back to their car in the parking lot. This would go on and on. My mind convincing me that I am a terrible person capable of doing terrible things. This in turn led to a deep depression which completely buried me; I had trouble getting out of bed because I was convinced that I was going to commit some terrible act.
I was able to will myself to continue to try living my life, while still fighting these thoughts everyday. Some of my thoughts got so disturbing that I thought I was the absolute worst person in the world. My favorite therapist would later say that this is what made OCD such a debilitating disease. OCD focuses on things you find abhorrent and makes you ask yourself "What if I did that", "Did I do that?", "Am I capable of doing that?". Rationally you know that you would never do those terrible things but the OCD just continues to flash those questions in your brain like a never ending strobe.
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