OCD: The Suffocating Anvil

Throughout my whole OCD journey, I think the feeling I hated the most was not the direct in-the-moment anxiety that came from an OCD worry, but rather the “anvil” feeling that came after. I would describe the anvil feeling as such: my belief that I was essentially doomed because I’d had some powerful OCD thought that I couldn’t get rid of. My logic was that if this specific OCD worry, which seemed more significant because I couldn’t ignore it, was a true one or represented some valid part of me, there was no point in continuing to live. What would be the point of going to a movie, hanging out with friends, or doing any of the things I loved if I had this permanent mark hanging over me. Why would I want to do anything at all if I actually were this terrible thing my OCD was trying to convince me I was?

And while the first brush with an OCD thought is often filled with frenzied panic and an elevated heartbeat, the anvil feeling just made me feel lethargic and uninterested in anything. Thus, why I began calling it the anvil feeling in the first place as it felt like an anvil was sitting on top of me, slowly suffocating my will to live. This whole mindset fed right back into OCD as well as I felt like I had no choice, and that I was doomed/destined to be a murderer or something else terrible because that was what my mind was telling me. Feeling doomed manifested in two ways for me. Like I said earlier, I felt like normal activities were pointless (due to the strong OCD worry hanging over me). And on a related note, I also felt doomed in the mortal sense as I vowed that I would take my own life before I acted on any of these OCD thoughts.

For me, patience has been the key to dealing with the OCD anvil. Unfortunately, patience is simple in practice, but very difficult in execution (especially when you think your thoughts will send you straight to prison!). Like any other OCD feeling, anvil feelings fade over time. They just take a bit longer. I have had the anvil feelings for days, and even weeks at certain points in the past couple years. In the past three years I’ve had the anvil feeling about five to ten times. Yet, today I can look back on those periods in my life and not be bothered at all. Exposure Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy gave me the framework to handle the anvil feeling and improved how I dealt with it, but at the end of the day, I still needed to be patient with my mind and realize that OCD isn’t cured in a day. And for other OCD sufferers out there, I just want them to know that this anvil feeling–as terrible as it seems–is normal. Having awareness of the problem and realizing that you are not going crazy and you aren’t doomed is super important. Like everything else with OCD, it will be really difficult in the moment, but once you get some distance from it, it will become gradually less and less impactful. And then, a couple months after that moment, you will reflect back on it and wonder why it ever bothered you in the first place.