Skip to main content

OCD is a big bully

Early on in my battle with OCD, someone described it as being a bully.

I didn't really get the comparison at first, but now I see it's 100 percent accurate. Like a bully, OCD picks on your weaknesses. Like a bully, you can beg it to stop and it won't -- in fact, it generally takes your begging as a sign to attack even harder.

I know, because I've had bullies -- and OCD -- and I see the similarities. Though truth is, OCD is a bigger bully than my several human bullies ever were.

Some examples:

One of my OCD issues is having what I call "bad thoughts." Even as a kid I referred to them as "bad thoughts," I guess, because to categorize them more specifically seems impossible. They are all over the map. Anyway, when the subject of the thought is a person, it's inevitably a person I care deeply about. The bully knows I love this person -- my parents, a friend -- so it targets them. I don't tend to have bad thoughts about people I don't care about -- the bad thoughts are of people I would never intentionally have a bad thought about ... and thus hate myself for doing so.

Another focus of my OCD is my appearance. In particular, I am very anxious about my weight. So OCD pounds away at it: "You ate that? What were you thinking? You'll be as fat as you used to be -- fatter even!" And, of course, it attacks my appearance in general. "Look how old you look today. Awful. How do you think people will take you seriously looking like that?"

And then there's religion. I have religiosity OCD -- for me, it's a fear of offending God. So OCD pounds away with what it tells me are sacrilegious bad thoughts. It can get intense and I tend to get stuck in a cycle of bad thought, ask forgiveness, bad thought, ask forgiveness, etc.

So back to the original comparison: OCD = bully.

The more you show pain, it seems, the more likely it is to keep hitting you. For me, the best thing to do is try to ignore it -- but that's also just about the hardest thing for me to do.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

OCD, just like my dad

My father used to collect soap. I don't think he meant to, but I remember as a child, walking into my parents' bathroom and seeing a pile, a heap, of used bars of soap on his side of the counter. It didn't strike me as strange, so much, as it did unique. I never asked why there was so much soap -- why he didn't just finish off one bar before starting another -- but I probably wondered. In recent years there have been studies on whether OCD has a genetic component. I've been involved in a couple. But to me, there's no question, now, looking back with more knowledge, that my father's pile of soap was a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder. My belief is that once he used a bar of soap for what his OCD brain told him was the "right" amount of time, it was time to move on to the next. Maybe OCD told him the old bar was no longer clean. Or maybe it just felt "wrong." My father was interesting in that he would shower just once a wee...
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