OCD and Me

OCD is really cute.  I know it is because Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory has OCD, and he is as cute as can be.  He's all OCD about where he sits, what time he and his roommate Leonard poop, and exactly how his food is prepared.  Sometimes, his Southern Baptist mother from Texas has to show up and take over, but the rest of the time, we can all laugh at Sheldon.

We know Sheldon won't really care because, first, he isn't real, and, second, he seems to have Asperger's, too, and doesn't bond emotionally with others.  Not even his physicist "girlfriend," Amy Farah Fowler, played by Mayim Bialik, who has a PhD in real life.  How cute is that!

Mr. Monk from the show Monk was a really cute character, too.  He couldn't stand snakes, close spaces, milk, any foods touching on his plate, or a whole lot of other things.  He would interrupt solving a crime to rearrange the papers on a desk.  Adrian Monk had a really serious side because his wife had been murdered, and that triggered OCD so bad that he couldn't officially do his job.

Monk was still brilliant, though, and the SFPD used him to solve about one crime per week.  Come to think of it, Sheldon Cooper is really brilliant, too.  People with OCD are really smart.

Ahem (Lee clears his throat here), what I just wrote was a deliberately simplified version of the impression people who take their information from TV might have about OCD.  As someone who has battled OCD all my life and lived with the diagnosis for 21 years, I don't even find it objectionable.  The Big Bang Theory and Monk have entertained millions of folks and harmed none.

I also find much less to gripe about in the way Sheldon Cooper and Adrian Monk portray OCD than in some of the "helpful" comments I've gotten since I was diagnosed with OCD in 1991.  More than once I've heard that getting right with God was a cure.  Others have learned I require therapy and medication and sighed, "Thank goodness I'm strong enough to cope without all that."

Don't even get me started on Scientology and that fool Tom Cruise.  People who listen to him could die because they deny themselves or others the care they need.

If I could get someone who doesn't have OCD to understand a little bit how it feels, I would start by trying to explain the difference between obsessions and compulsions.  I have obsessive thoughts that I must count, that I'm dying, that the bed covers are not "right."  More often than not, I can fight back against these obsessions and go on living and working.

Too often, however, I give in to compulsive behaviors that my obsessions suggest, or sometimes figuratively scream at me.  I count to 18 (or 60, 100, 864, or any other number my mind chooses).  I Google physical symptoms and inevitably learn any given symptom can indicate a serious health problem, which I almost certainly don't have.

BUT "almost certainly" isn't "certainly," so the worries intensify.  I climb into bed, ignoring -- since I'm NOT a neat freak -- the stacks of books and papers, and turn the covers until they feel exactly right before I can go to sleep.

As long as I take my medications as prescribed and see my psychiatrist and my therapist, I do pretty well most of the time.  I have a wife, children, a job, hobbies, and countless interests.  I have my walking papers.

Sometimes when I am tired, overworked, stressed, or not responding to my current combination of medicines, the obsessions and compulsions take over.  Understand, please, that the obsessions never stop.  I cannot reason or study or argue them away.  They are incredibly stupid but equally persistent.  Distraction doesn't allow me to control them, but it does keep them from controlling me.

That is, until distraction doesn't work.  Then, I sometimes become so obsessed with compulsively counting, checking, reading, and worrying that I cannot get up out of my chair and cross the room for a glass of water.

Another never to remember is failure to recover.  The right treatments, therapies, and medications have always led me back to living my life.  This disorder will not beat me today.  For now, that's enough.

This post is a highly condensed version of one person's life with OCD.  Every other person's story is different.  None of us want to be defined solely by this disorder we happen to have.  OCD Awareness Week and this blog just seem the right time and place to share.  Thanks for reading.