Opening Up Thanks to OCD

The following story is about how I improved my relationship with my family and friends (through the OCD therapy and recovery process) by personally shifting from an insular nature to a more open one. Also this story was published on the International OCD Foundation Blog, which was pretty nifty.

I always preferred being alone.  I was not a social recluse by any means, but I was certainly not entirely comfortable in group situations.  My most common activities at parties were checking my phone in the bathroom even though I had just done so two minutes ago and standing by the snacks stress-eating.  And while an introverted nature has taken on a sort of hipster cool nowadays, that is not what I was striving for.  I just simply wasn’t very good at talking with people.  Not painfully bad, but definitely not close to good.  And this inward-focused nature carried over to other aspects of my life.  I was independent and self-sufficient, and I was proud of my ability to solve problems on my own without asking for help from others.  I always felt like I did my best work by myself and thus I loathed any type of group project, whether it was in school or in an extracurricular activity.  I loved my family and we had a good relationship, but I rarely shared anything of significance with them.  I was never vulnerable emotionally with them or with any of my close friends in high school or college.  And while as I got older and (very) gradually matured, I started to share tidbits here and there with people I cared about, my pace was glacial and it seemed I sort of was who I was at that point and that any sort of wholesale change would be extremely unlikely.

            And then right around when I turned 22, my OCD, which had been relatively mild my whole life, jumped to a whole new level.  Checking the door lock a certain number of times before I went to bed and other borderline “superstitious” activities turned into terrifying thoughts involving serious topics such as murder, rape, self-harm, and my own sexuality.  And I felt like sharing these thoughts with someone else would give the thoughts some sort of validity and the absolute last thing in the world I wanted was for these thoughts to be true.  Plus, I believed that if I shared these thoughts with anyone else, that person would think I was going crazy or was a danger to society.  So these two thought processes, combined with my lifelong introversion, led to the predictable outcome where I kept all of these thoughts to myself.  I had always solved problems by myself growing up, and so, I thought, this should be no different.  So I tried everything I could to get rid of these OCD thoughts, but I made little headway and in fact, it seemed like I was exacerbating the situation as the thoughts came more and more frequently and simultaneously increased in severity. 

            And then one day, I broke down and decided I couldn’t keep fighting OCD alone and I reached out to my mom and explained to her what was going on inside my mind.  I was frightened that she would think that I actually wanted these thoughts and that they were who I was at my core.  But to her credit, she listened, and while I am not entirely sure she understood exactly what was going on, she said she would do everything she could to help.  And a few weeks later, she sent me a podcast where people—with the exact same symptoms that I had— shared their stories and discussed how they got treatment for their OCD.  This podcast was revelatory for me as not only did I learn I had something treatable but also because I was able to find an amazing therapist.  And perhaps more importantly, my mom had shown me that opening up emotionally could be a positive experience.  The next few years of therapy were far from easy however as I still constantly struggled with my OCD thoughts, but this time I had someone to talk to and a plan for improving my mental health.  As I was going through therapy, I regularly communicated with my family about the experience and how I was feeling, and this led to an increased willingness on my part, to share other aspects of my life with my family.  I gradually became more open to communicating with others outside my family as well, a development that would prove important after I started to gain more control over my OCD. 

Looking back on it now, I liken the middle of my struggle with OCD to being adrift in the center of the ocean.  All you want at that point is to get out of the ocean and get to safety.  You are not thinking about anything else.  But once you do survive, you are much more open to going back and helping rescue other people from the ocean as you know how terrible the experience is.  Once I reached the end stages of my therapy and finally had wrested control of my life away from OCD, I found that I wanted to help others free themselves from OCD’s tenacious grip.  And so I, a lifelong introvert, started speaking to as many groups of people that I could about OCD.  I joined a mental health organization where I told my story to groups ranging from schools to private companies.  I have returned to my therapy center and spoken to support groups about what happened and how I found a road to recovery.  And it feels amazing to share with other people, especially when I am able to have an actual impact on their lives.  It is still a bit odd to me that it took OCD, a disorder that occurs inside one’s own mind and encourages an insular nature, to unlock my desire to speak and share with groups of people.  While I am certainly not overjoyed to have gone through this struggle with mental illness, I am thankful that I have been able to discover new, fantastic communities and develop better relationships with the people who matter most to me.  So, thanks OCD?!?