I Am Not Ashamed

When we talk about stigma and stereotypes among mental illness OCD is one illness that is very often incorrectly portrayed both in the media and daily conversations. Obsessive Compulsive disorder can take many forms and is not just color coding books or washing your hands a lot.

OCD “is [a] disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions), and behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over,” and it affects about 1% of the population each year. (www.nimh.nih.gov)

I was diagnosed with OCD at 14 but symptoms actually began when I was around 7 years old. My obsessions and compulsions have changed over the years, and often times it feels like a game of whack-a-mole. You knock down one compulsion only for another to pop up somewhere else. The common theme throughout my OCD has always been Emetophobia or the fear of throwing up, over the years this has created many contamination based rituals as well as straightening and ordering rituals that somehow my brain also links back to the same fear. As a child I remember asking my mom every single day if I was going to get sick that night. Others times I had to confess to my parents every time I did something “wrong” for example simply bumping the stool into the wall while playing even when it didn’t leave a mark. The obsession in these cases is the fear of getting sick and fear of getting in trouble. The compulsions were the reassurance seeking behaviors.

The thing with OCD is that I am fully aware the behavior is irrational but the need to complete the compulsion is still there. So although yes I know the setting on my fan doesn’t determine whether or not I get sick it doesn’t make it any easier to change that setting. Often people don’t understand why I can’t ‘just stop.’ OCD obsessions and compulsions reach beyond the natural range of emotions people feel. People are more accepting of things they understand so when someone says they have an anxiety disorder or depression people can relate to that even if they have never experienced it at a clinical level, they know what it feels like to have a moment where they feel anxious or depressed about something. But when a disorder says that your fan has to be on medium every night or you and your family will get sick, they are no longer able to comprehend that as a familiar emotion. This is where stigma develops—the reactions a person gets when they share their experiences with a disorder that is so irrational are more likely to come from a place of ignorance, this then leads to people choosing not to share their experiences and the cycle of stigma continues.

So today we are talking about some of the more unknown and “scarier” forms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. These types are rarely discussed as these sub-types often bring a feeling of shame.

Harm OCD is a common form of the disorder and it typically has to do with causing harm to oneself or another person, this can be the fear of purposely causing harm or accidentally causing harm. For me it is often both—I will have images of myself swerving my car or bike into oncoming traffic or falling down jagged rocks. My fear is that I will accidentally or purposely injure myself even though I don’t want that to happen. The violent images are in repeat in my head until I perform the compulsion, at times, repeatedly. In this stain the compulsion to get rid of the images were often tapping something a certain number of times.

I would also experience similar images in relation to my family members. The fear with my family was often that they would trip and fall, or fall off of their bike, down a hill, etc. and be seriously injured, these thoughts were naturally extremely distressing and I would once again perform the tapping rituals. A slightly different form of Harm OCD that I also experienced was a fear that I would stab someone or purposely injure someone (or myself) with an item, this could have been scissors, a knife, fork etc. and for me the compulsion was avoidance. I would actively avoid washing the knives after dinner because when I picked them up I would see images of myself injuring someone repeatedly. These are called intrusive thoughts and go against a person’s morals, so although yes I may have experienced those images and been afraid I was going to stab someone I’m not actually going to and people with OCD just like others with mental illness are more likely to be a victim of violence than the perpetrator. Despite the violent obsessive thoughts OCD does not make someone a threat to others.

Another form of OCD I have experienced in the past and is once again fairly common is unwanted sexual thoughts. This category covers many different sub-sets, but the key word is ‘unwanted’ these are intrusive thoughts that cause extreme distress and in no way reflect the person’s feelings or morals. One form of this type of OCD that I have experienced in the past is sexual orientation OCD, this often boils down to the fear that you are unsure of your sexual orientation. A person experiencing this is not questioning their sexual orientation but rather afraid they are questioning their sexual orientation. This could be someone who knows they are straight afraid they actually gay and are subconsciously denying their identity. Or someone who is gay afraid they are actually straight and denying their identity in that way. For me this sub-type involved a lot of mental rumination and mental compulsions. Mental compulsions were often picturing certain images or statements repeatedly.

Unwanted sexual thoughts can also include inappropriate thoughts about family members, teachers, friends, etc. as well as a subset called pedophilia based OCD. A person with pedophilia OCD is not a pedophile, but rather has a fear that they are or will be a pedophile.

I rarely share my experiences with these sub-types of OCD out of fear of judgment but with it being mental health awareness month I decided it was time to share some of my experiences to break the cycle of stigma. I am not ashamed of my mental illness.