Skip to main content

Breaking the Stigma


I talk a big game when it comes to mental health – firmly stating that the more we talk about mental illness, the greater the chance of lessening the stigma and the more likely people who need help will seek it.

But then what do I do? I keep quiet about my own mental health issues.

No more. I have OCD and with this first post, I’m going to start talking about it. My hope is that even one person who also has OCD will read it and know that he or she is not alone, that there’s a support network out there, and that we have shared experiences.

My OCD comes in many forms – compulsive counting, touching, thinking “bad” thoughts. I have religiousity OCD. I have “magical” thinking OCD. I have a tendency toward “catastrophic” thinking and “black and white.”

I think I even have body dysmorphic disorder but then I doubt that – which, itself, is a form of OCD, the “doubting disease.”

And that’s just the beginning. Assuming there’s an interest in hearing this stuff about me, I’ll keep sharing.

Being this is the first post, I’ll end here. But I’m putting my money where my mouth is and doing my small part to break the stigma.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Could there really be benefits to having OCD?

It's not often, but sometimes to get a slight advantage on the bully that is OCD, I throw it a curve and think about the benefits of having OCD. Yeah, I know, there aren't many. And maybe it's stretching it to say there are any at all. But I came up with a few to throw in the bully's face. First, I believe having OCD has made me a compassionate person. There's no way to truly understand mental illness without experiencing it, in my opinion. I have empathy for others that I might not have if I didn't experience OCD first hand. I try hard to be non-judgmental. OK, I judge myself 90 percent of my waking hours -- but I do try hard to be non-judgmental of others. I give a lot of credit to my mother, who lived her life that way. But I also credit OCD. I have a better sense of what people may be going through because I know what I'm often going through. Speaking of my mother, she was excellent in a crisis. She was a nurse and a caretaker for her ill and a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Good letters, bad letters

I wrote previously about my OCD brain convincing me there are "good" numbers (9, 10, 17, 18, for instance) and "bad" numbers (4, 6, 8, 13, 14 and more). Similarly, OCD tells me there are good and bad letters. In the case of letters, it makes a little more sense. G and Y are good (G is the first letter in God, Y the first letter in Yahweh -- the Hebrew name for God -- so there's some logic to that). T is good (lowercase t is like the Christian cross, so again, it makes some sense). But OCD doesn't stop there: D is bad (devil starts with d, though it's sometimes good because God ends with d). H is bad (it's the first letter in hell, but then, it's also good, because it's the first letter in heaven). How I feel about these letters at any given moment, I suppose depends on how I'm doing in general. I don't really know why my perception changes. When I hand write "good" letters, OCD tells me they need to slant up and to the...
Post a Comment
Read more

A catastrophe just waiting to happen

One of my OCD issues is thinking, expecting, the worst to happen. It's the catastrophizing OCD. I've discovered it's why often when I'm having a good time, my mind goes to how that good time could turn devastating any minute. OCD says: Sure, things are going great, now, but when has that ever lasted? People have died, they've left you, tragedy has struck.... why would this be any different? My theory is I was predisposed to this kind of thinking (more later on the hereditary nature of my OCD) -- and all my OCD brain needed was a little bit of reality to activate it. There are many instances in my life that I recall a nice time turning bad in an instant. It's happened to everyone, probably, but OCD likes to cling to the bad and replay it over and over to give it more power. Two of those good-to-bad instances, in particular, stand out. I was about 3 and my mother, grandmother and I were hiding from my grandfather who was coming down the stairs outside my...
Post a Comment
Read more