What does my life look like?
6:00AM – Awake on the minute. Get up, tuck comforter back in 5 times even though you didn’t sleep under it because your brain insists that you can’t let it get “messed up”. Go to the gym, come back and make sure everything’s exactly in place, not necessarily even in order, just “correct”. Rearrange things over and over again until they feel right, this takes too long & I’ late for class. I need to leave now, but instead I convince myself that I need to re-tuck in my comforter (it hasn’t moved since last time, the brick wall of my dorm is scratching my knuckles and making them bleed, but that doesn’t bother me as much as it used to). Wash my hands 5 times if they’re bleeding and 3 if they’re not.
10:00PM – Come back to my room, re-tuck in comforter though I’ve been out all day. My nights are easier in terms of compulsions, but I tend to get a lot of anxiety during later hours which manifests into insomnia.
Then? 9:30AM class either the next hour or the next day for either of those scenarios. OCD’s up before I truly am most days, as these things feels almost automatic. With any amount of obsessive compulsions, some days seem impossibly long. This isn’t the full extent of my thought process, or what I do, but just some tidbits from my early mornings and late nights.
So… What is OCD?
For most of my life, my condition wasn’t diagnosed. At an earlier point in my life, I can confidently say that there’s next to no way I could have efficiently communicated to others that I struggled with mental illness. I found that there’s two typical responses to those with mental health issues: those who assume that I’m looking for attention, and those that I assume that I’m fundamentally worse-off than those who do not struggle as much. After a lot of self help, years of being afraid and convincing myself something was wrong with me, I reached out for professional help. It took up until January 2nd of this year for me to contact a psychiatrist to get a diagnosis. Within 15 minutes of the start of the consultation, she asked whether or not I’d already been diagnosed with it or not. That was by far the most relieving moment of my life. I’d often felt like OCD was misunderstood by those around me, constantly hearing “I’m so OCD about this!”, etc. and did my best to research it beforehand. Here’s an insightful graph I found with a solid description of the disorder from The Positive Page!
At the same time, however. I was horrified for what was next now that my OCD was professionally diagnosed. While I was almost certain beforehand, hearing it out of the mouth of a professional scared me. This condition is chronic, lifelong, and waned and waxed throughout different periods of my life.
With time, proactivity, medication, and reflection, I’m able to confidently say that there’s a plethora of ways that my life has changed for the better after I got diagnosed with OCD. I have most definitely learned how to live with (not enjoy or befriend!) my mental illness instead of hating it. And, honestly? A lot of the things I’ve adopted into my mindset are experience & breakthrough based, though they might not be for everyone; OCD gives consistent false narratives and finally breaking those to change my mindset was so difficult. I’m most certainly not done adapting to who I am, but here’s what I’ve collected so far.
here’s My life Hack as someone with ocd.
Expressing explicit gratitude: Some days are hard. There are days where I struggle so bad mentally I wish I was literally anyone else, at which point I find writing lists of things I’m grateful for definitely grounds me. It often looks like “certain aspects of how I’m feeling suck right now, but here’s why I enjoy my life anyways” and I give reasons I’m okay despite it being a “bad day”. These can be as broad as being grateful for my relationship with my mother, or as specific as the fact that I found a ring I thought I lost in my shoe a few days ago. I also often find that joking about the things that I do due to OCD makes the seem less important, and therefore less serious, so I often encourage people to challenge my behaviors and, while it’s extremely difficult, being able to adapt to these situations regardless of my condition is so inspiring for the rest of my recovery. Point being, it doesn’t always work to make me feel better (nothing routinely does) but it often puts things into perspective in the long run if done for long enough.
Beyond that, I try to consistently express gratitude for the way my brain perceives things, expressing that my OCD symptoms is just my brain working slightly differently, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing! I enjoy good days more, I think. It’s important to know that, despite it all, some things are good. Even if some parts are bad. Even if most parts are bad. I’ve learned all I know about hope and joy and recovery through countless medias, books, poetry, memoirs, shows, but most importantly songs. Music is everything to me, and that’s enough to get me through hard days. due to that, this quote remains one of my top of all time, and I repost this post on my Instagram at least once a month because I feel like it truly represents my journey.