What It's Actually Like Living With OCD

i know it's illogical objectively i know nothing bad is going to happen but i still can't stop hi my name is rachel i'm a video producer i'm an imperfect environmentalist i love animals i love cooking and i have obsessive-compulsive disorder if i could describe ocd in one word it would be exhausting ocd can look really different for a lot of people i feel like there's kind of this preconceived notion that ocd is someone who washes their hands a lot and they need everything to be super neat and tidy and organized but that's just not the case for everybody who has ocd it can be intrusive thoughts like maybe when you're driving your car you're afraid you're just going to suddenly swerve into oncoming traffic there are different types of checking compulsions there's contamination ocd really hot right now and many other types as well so my ocd started around when i was eight or nine years old and it really started with a fear of bad things happening to the people i loved so if my mom was late from getting home from work or my dad was flying for a business trip i would have to touch objects around the house until it felt right and the risk was if i didn't do it my mom would get into a car accident or my dad's plane would crash and then it would be my fault i used to ask my mom for reassurance constantly which is a very common ocd compulsion for instance if we were cooking together and i accidentally touched a piece of food while i was stirring a pot i would ask her if it was okay and i needed to hear her say it was otherwise i thought i could poison my whole family i used to assign significance to different numbers so two was bad three was good five meant death it's so strange hearing myself talk about it out loud because it's like what does that even mean so around this time my mom took me to therapy and that's when i was officially diagnosed with ocd and put on luvox i remember mostly just playing card games with my therapist and not really taking the practice seriously and after a couple years of this i just wanted to hang out with my friends and i felt like it was manageable enough where i didn't need to be going to therapy anymore since going to therapy when i was a little kid i have gone back a couple of different times in college and after college but then i would find that the therapy would be too expensive or i would move and i would just take a break from it and fall back into the same patterns ocd is an anxiety disorder and the anxiety and the compulsions really go hand in hand the way it works is i'll have an anxious thought maybe i'm anxious about a presentation i have to give or a difficult conversation i have to have with somebody and then i'll try to relieve that anxious thought by doing a compulsion and for me compulsions can look like all kinds of things walking in and out of the doorway retracing my steps touching different objects or specks of dirt on the floor rewriting and rewriting and re-typing and re-typing touching my elbows to the back of my chair or to my bed folding and re-folding my clothes when i'm putting away my laundry taking my hair up and down and up and down until it's perfect enough picking little pieces of fuzz off of the furniture i'll often have to change the shirt i picked out for the day because i'm afraid it's unlucky and it means i'll have a bad day or avoid certain tiles when i'm walking through the kitchen the most time consuming thing is really just the touching and the touching and the touching but i would say my most frustrating compulsion is my need to reread over and over again it's something that i really struggle with because it's not such a black and white compulsion sometimes it's natural to need to reread because maybe you zoned out or you need to better comprehend something so any gray area for ocd is a very slippery slope because it just makes it that much easier to fall into these compulsions ocd has absolutely been a challenge for me when i was in school and now when i'm working and really it's because it just eats up time reading always took me longer in school because of the re-reading especially when i was taking a test that i was anxious about when it comes to work now i definitely struggle with ocd when i'm editing i have to reopen and reclose windows over and over again i will purposely drag the mouse back on the timeline it's like i'm trying to make it more difficult for myself and shooting can also take me a lot longer because i will have to take the same shot over and over and over again until it is up to my standards when i was younger i used to be so terrified of friends finding out that i had ocd or that i was on medication because i thought they would think something was wrong with me and they wouldn't like me anymore i remember the summer before eighth grade i finally told my best friend jenna but only because we were going to summer camp together and you couldn't hide the fact that you were going to be taking medication and when i told her she just had the best possible reaction really she just felt bad that i was so afraid to come to her with it now as i've gotten older i am much more comfortable talking about my ocd and i'll pretty much talk to anybody about it that i feel relatively comfortable with i can be really good about hiding my compulsions around people i don't know very well but if i'm with a really close friend and i'm anxious enough it's very hard for me to hide when the pandemic started my ocd really just spiraled out of control this was just the combination of being so afraid and being so isolated and i just knew i needed to get help one of the best treatments for ocd is exposure response prevention or erp which is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy and a lot of times people will couple this therapy with medication the way erp works is you will set up a situation in which you are very triggered to act on your compulsions for instance i might have myself unload the dishwasher because that's a situation in which i will often spend time readjusting the cups in the cabinets and the point is to just carve out a window of time where you resist doing the compulsions and then just sit with the anxiety it's all about letting your anxiety come down naturally without acting on the compulsion so you can retrain your thought patterns and by doing that repeatedly you're continuing to weaken the control that it has over you i would say that most people don't know ocd can take up to an hour of my day depending on how anxious i am that day objectively i know nothing bad is going to happen but i still can't stop touch the edge of the carpet or you'll have a terrible first date straighten out your shoes or your best friend's plane will crash ask your mom for reassurance or there'll be a new covet variant it's just always something and logically i know whether i touch an object or don't touch an object it has nothing to do with anything but in the moment it's like wow you really won't do this one thing that's going to take two seconds that will save your parents or end the pandemic the exposure therapy can be challenging because i've seen myself make significant progress really quickly and it's almost like if you start a new workout routine and you're super motivated in the beginning but then after a while i get tired and i'll have a really stressful week we'll slip up once and i'll slip up again and then suddenly i'm just back down the ocd rabbit hole because i've had ocd since i was so young it feels like such a normal part of my life it's not until i take a step back and look at what i'm doing it feels so silly it's like i'm spending hours upon hours of my life touching and counting so that bad things don't happen but really the worst thing is that i'm just wasting my life i did cut back on my medication pretty significantly about five years ago because i was wondering if i was really being myself on it but since the pandemic and since i've started going back to therapy i decided i am going to go back up on my medication because i do think it helps me and i don't need to be ashamed of that i also meditate almost every single day so adding that in has been a huge help i am still working on this regularly and i just have to realize that i am going to have setbacks and that i can't be so hard on myself but overall i feel like i'm in a much better place than i was a year ago it may not sound like a lot to some people but i read six books in 2020 which is a really big deal for me i'm so lucky to have an amazing support system of friends and family that i don't have to hide this from i want people who have ocd to feel less alone and to know that they're not the only ones going through this and you're not crazy and you're not weird even though you may feel like it sometimes ocd is a part of my life but it's not my whole life it's not who i am and it doesn't control what i can accomplish don't be afraid to reach out to your friends and family don't be afraid to ask for help because even if it's not perfect it can become a lot more manageable you

Channel: Goodful

Views: 415,723

Keywords: Disorder, Health (Industry), K_fe, Obsessive compulsive disorder, Psychological Disorders, Psychology, Therapy, anxiety, buzzfeed, buzzfeed goodful, compulsions, exposure response prevention, goodful, growing up with ocd, living with ocd, mental health, mental health awareness, ocd, pItY, rachel buzzfeed, typical day with ocd, what is ocd

Id: p5EItATGNGA

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021