My experiences with OCD
In asking other people to share their stories and experiences with mental health, it dawned on me that in order for others to share, I had to share myself. Being a psychologist and fellow human, I thought it would be more than helpful to know that the afflictions and tribulations that people faced were not only experienced by the client in that room.
I recently wrote an article explaining the humanness of being a therapist here: 5 things to remember about me, your therapist.
I am a firm believer in the power of groups and and how shedding light to common afflictions can be used as a powerful tool for healing.
So, here I go…..
It started around when I was in 7th grade. One day, after closing my door and beginning my walk to school, I asked myself, “did I lock the door?”. It didn’t help that a few evenings before, I had watched America’s Most Wanted, detailing a story of a murderer who entered people’s homes through unlocked front doors.
I briskly walked back and gave the doorknob a jiggle.
Locked.
Phew. Crisis averted.
That is until, the next day.
Same scenario. Only a hundred feet from my door, the thought popped into my head again. “Did I lock the front door?” I briskly walked back to my front door and jiggled it again.
Locked.
But this time, it wasn’t enough of a confirmation.
So I jiggled it again.
Still locked.
“Alright, this time I checked twice. I won’t be confusing myself with the memory of yesterday’s check. It’s definitely locked.”
I was on my way.
A month had passed and this obsession with ensuring that my door was locked had become a little time consuming. I don’t have exact times, but I do remember that with my usual routine and schedule in the morning, I was barely making it to class before the bell rang, in comparison to when I used to be 15–20 minutes early.
2 months had passed. I was now making time in the morning to do my checks. Can’t be late to class.
I had created new, more inventive checks, to try and distinguish it from memories of other checks:
- I’ll jiggle the door an even number of times today. Odd tomorrow.
- I’ll start jiggling to the beat of a song. A different song each day.
- I even added pushing against the door to help qualm my obsessive mind. To add to that, I jiggled the doorknob and pushed against the door in a patterned way. Today, odd jiggles, and even door pushes. Tomorrow the opposite.
- At it’s worst, I had a series of things I was doing to “check”. What I recall is that my routine included jiggling the knob, pushing against the door, pulling the door back towards me, unlocking the door, opening the door, closing it again, re-locking it, and then another succession of doorknob jiggling and pushing and pulling the door.
It was a nightmare.
My mom had to eventually have the doorknob replaced because it was becoming loose. She had no idea why it had become so worn in such a short period of time. She never asked me about it though.
I can’t even begin to explain the embarrassment I felt when my neighbors would walk by (I lived in an apartment complex), heading to their cars, only to walk by again because they had forgotten something, and then pass me a third time after retrieving whatever they needed.
I’ll spare you the torture of explaining how much getting a new doorknob really messed with my mind and my routine. It was awful.
Due to unforeseen circumstances in life, a year later, I moved in with one of my friends. He lived in a house. With many doors that led into the house. My mind almost melted.
That is until I found out that they didn’t lock any of their doors.
The relief.
It was a smooth 2 years after that. But then, I moved back in with my mom. I was in high school by then. I had my driver’s license. And my battles resurfaced, but in a different way.
I didn’t have to go through my front door. Now I would walk into the garage, open the garage door, get in my car, pull out of the garage, close the garage door, and then wait and watch the garage door close completely. I’ll save you the suffering from listing my routine of checking, but it got bad. Let’s just say that I know my garage door had 4 windows and 24 panels. You can imagine the creative ways I used to do my checks.
This all came to a head one morning, when after doing my checks for what had to have been 30 minutes, I drove away. Being a quarter mile away from my house, the same damn thought entered my head again. “Is the garage door closed?”. I made an illegal u-turn right then and there (there were no other cars, but I don’t think I would have really noticed, considering how much I was in my head with my ruminations at that point).
I heard the sirens of a police car.
Looked in my rear view mirror and saw flashing lights.
Crap.
I pull over and had to sheepishly explain to the police officer that I made a stupid move because I was worried that my garage door wasn’t closed. I can’t explain the shame I felt after seeing the look of amusement on his face.
He was a nice guy. He said he would follow me home, which was not too far away and check with me. I believe he was checking to make sure I wasn’t someone who saw him and tried to simply get away by going the other way.
We made it back to the house. I pointed at my yellow house, which of course had the garage door closed. He said “well, looks like everything is ok. Don’t pull moves like that on the street anymore” and he was on his way.
I. was. mortified.
But I believe that it was the wake up call I needed.
That same day, I reached out to a friend and asked if he would drive to my house each morning (the same friend I lived with), check the garage door with me, tell me it’s closed, and force me to leave at any cost.
The first few days were awful. I’d ask my friend a thousand times throughout the day and he’d always reply, “it’s closed”.
Slowly, but surely, I simply stopped checking.
I relapsed on numerous occasions, but eventually, the obsessions went away. The need to check became manageable.
Side note: My friend was and is still a great friend. Never judged me for it. Till this day, has not asked me about it.
I’m not completely over it. I notice nowadays, in moments of particular anxiety, I check my front door before leaving. Or when I’m going away for a few days, my anxiety spikes and it requires me to do checks. These events happen maybe 5–10 times a year now.
What I gained from this was an unwavering empathy for those who suffer from OCD, or anyone who has ruminations that are debilitating to functioning in their daily lives.
I get it.
It’s awful. But it can be helped.
I’m glad my obsessions and compulsions had not manifested into anything longer than 1.5 hours at most. I was lucky. Or I was just more obsessed with the consequences of constantly being late to something else.
The biggest lesson was, I had to admit that I had a problem.
When I look back on it, I can’t even imagine wasting that kind of time anymore.
That is, until I’m in the middle of checking.
If you liked this, please check out other articles I’ve written:
[Shorts] Fighting Stigma in mental health one issue at a time pt. 2
[Shorts] Fighting stigma in mental health one issue at a time pt. 1
Radical acceptance. How to accept life as it really is and make meaning
