I hate the romanticization of ocd.
And while this is spurred by an ocddriven breakdown it’s still not okay.
Mental disorders are never fair. I hate that Bethany can live life normally and fix one thing and go “omg I’m so ocd” and everyone is like “oh!! cute!!! quirky!!!!”
but I start to panic over something ocd-enduced and I’m “dramatic and faking it for attention.”
I don’t even let people closest to me see the half of it.
I don’t even feel like my own person. Piloted by a disorder as stupidly simple as ocd, I can’t go through a day where I ever feel comfortable.
I can’t have conversations about half of things involved with sex. I can’t have conversations with allusions or implications of human waste or germs- not to mention the turmoil brought about by full-on conversations about them. I can’t have conversations about some illnesses and hell- I spent 5 years of my life washing my hands until they bled over the word “shit” and even then that’s still a struggle.
Words can sent it off. Actions. Simple conversations. Textures and feelings. Thinking about it, dreaming about it, seeing it. Clothing of a certain color, stains of certain shades. These are some of the things that set me off and I get yelled at for reacting which is OUT OF MY CONTROL.
I can’t control reactions or what sets me off. Sometimes what I have to do to calm down physically hurts me. Anywhere from simple discomfort to full blown panick attakcs can happen over the smallest of things.
I don’t even know where to begin a conversation about it but as soon as I do something “weird” people automatically demand an explanation as if they deserve one and what I say it’s ocd? I always get a stupid response.
“That’s not ocd” or “I have ocd, you obviously don’t.”
Common populations mistake simple perfectionism or preference as ocd. Ocd is defined by obsessive thoughts that give way to compulses, or having to do something for comfort or to keep stable.
If your pink pen isn’t next to the blue like you like it and you fix it? That’s perfectionism.
If you obsess constantly and are put into a state of intense discomfort to a point of being unable to consentrait on another topic, that’s ocd.
Ocd comes in many forms. Just because I have one form that crosses into a common umbrella term of “germohpobia” DOESNT MEAN that I don’t have ocd. In fact, germohpobia is almost always an ocd symptom- and typically the most prominent.
Just like someone with bipolar disorder or depression, we have our struggles and we can’t just brush them off. And it’s exhausting to try to even brush it off like it’s nothing. It’s hard to find people who want to be your friends because people are thrown off by your compulses.
Ocd isn’t the most important thing in the world right now. It’s not even the most important disorder. But it’s real and the romanticism that media spawns of it needs to stop. It’s disgusting and makes it so that people feel like they can invalidate people with ocd, especially if they don’t show the common stereotype.
