Skip to main content

A game OCD likes to play

A therapist once told me I remembered "one-liners" from the past.

Turns out what she meant was I fixated on one-liners -- like when an 8th-grade classmate called me "the laziest bum" he'd ever seen, questioning why our teacher named me editor of the middle school newspaper.

There was also the time in 10th-grade geometry, when a friend described me to the class as "short and stubby."

OCD has played those lines over and over and over again, for decades, shouting them when I'm most vulnerable.

In a previous post I mentioned the humor of OCD. While I find absolutely no humor in being made fun of in public, particularly as a child with shaky self-esteem to begin with, I do find it a little funny that my OCD brain clings to these few words from people whose opinions I never actually sought out.

The guy in 8th grade? I don't remember anything else he ever said to me.

And my friend in 10th? We've reconnected a bit on Facebook and I'm certain he doesn't recall that moment because it meant nothing to him.

So why place such great importance on these instances? It took me a long time to realize it, but it's just another game OCD likes to play.

I do better when I remind myself that I have a chance to beat OCD at its game, as long as I remember OCD made up the rules and I'm able to change them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What OCD really looks like

We've all seen those cliche -- and inaccurate -- images of what OCD is: the crooked pencil in a line of straight pencils, the one yellow M&M in the pile of reds. So for my post today I want to try to show what OCD really looks like, at least to me. This proved especially challenging, because my most painful and most consuming OCD is mental -- whether it's "bad thoughts" or religiousity or catastrophizing. But I'm going to give it a try. For the most part, the images that follow probably look ordinary, boring. But to my OCD mind, they have some serious power. A normal bathroom soap dispenser? Yes. But my OCD tells me I have to pump it 7 times, or in multiples of 7, whenever I wash my hands. Just clothes in a closet. We've all seen this. But to my OCD mind, all the clothes "must" be facing to the right. Buttons to the right, prints on t-shirts to the right. I've tried hard to let them face left when I've made an error and i...
Post a Comment
Read more

OCD's musical mind games

Most everyone gets a song stuck in their head now and then. I certainly do. But recently OCD has gotten involved and it's turned from a simple annoyance to something of a concern. I realize this is one of those things that the general population isn't going to fully understand -- I think you need to have OCD or another form of anxiety to get it -- but I feel pretty safe talking about it here. It sounds like I'm joking, but here goes: For about the past month, I'd say way more than half the time I wake up in the morning I have Wham's "Careless Whisper" going through my head -- instantly. "I'm never gonna dance again, Guilty feet have got no rhythm ... Should have known better than to cheat a friend." Just those words. I admit, this sounds funny. The scary thing is I don't hear this song enough, if ever these days, for it to be so stuck in my head. It was never a favorite song of mine either. I didn't NOT like it, I just never s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sneaking in rituals, so no one can see

When I'm around people I still have OCD, I just find ways of hiding it -- or more precisely -- of doing my obsessions and compulsions in ways that aren't so obvious. At work, I have a desk in the corner of the room that faces a wall. It seemed weird at first, but then it was somehow comforting. I now think it gives me a sense of privacy -- kind of having my own office, without the door. At my desk I do have my OCD moments -- counting, staring at things, praying and then of course sometimes hitting myself in the head to get certain compulsions to stop. As much as I think someone must have seen me do this, it's actually quite possible they haven't. I'm kind of an OCD ninja, or an OCD magician -- now you see it, now you don't. Did you see me do something compulsive? No? But I did, and right in front of you. At home I sneak my obsessive routines in when no one is looking -- praying, touching things a certain number of times, looking at things, showering and ...
Post a Comment
Read more