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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.


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