the doubting disease

making sense of my ocd... 25 years later

I’ve had some severe panic attacks in the last couple months, and it wasn’t until recently that I had an epiphany that explained it all: I suffer from OCD.

Similar to the way the media and most people perceive OCD, I have used OCD as an adjective my entire life, minimizing the gravity of the disease, using sentences such as “I’m so OCD” to describe my need to constantly organize and keep everything to a certain standard of clean. But evidently, it’s way deeper than that, and also goes far beyond me being a Virgo rising. An article from SELF magazine titled “16 Things You Should Know the Next Time You Say, ‘I’m So OCD’” informs readers that according to psychologist Jenny C. Yip, Psy.D, “OCD, short for obsessive compulsive disorder, isn't an adjective or a figure of speech. It's a serious anxiety disorder that can cause severe distress and derail your life.”

After beginning last week recommitted to getting better sleep—a struggle I’ve been dealing with most of my life but even more so since moving back in with my parents in January—moments of Rest slowly allowed me to observe how my Self-doubt has been at an all time high.

Apparently, OCD is also known as “The Doubting Disease.” In an excerpt titled “Why do I doubt if I have OCD?” Jenna Overbaugh explains that “People with OCD give significance to intrusive thoughts, which can quickly become obsessions. These obsessions foster doubts; doubts about whether their thoughts are significant; doubts about who they really are.” When I moved back in with my parents in January, after a year of being on a journey of conscious healing away from them, I knew I was going to be tested. Three months into my stay, I got into a huge argument with my mother that caused me to flee and take a vacation that I couldn’t actually afford just to get away from the house. The moment my mother criticized my inability to remain at peace because her OCD triggered my OCD, the Self-doubt took over my entire body like a plague. “Aren’t you supposed to be helping people meditate? You should know how to stay calm when you’re talking to me” is a statement that did not make me think twice about whipping out my in case of emergency credit card. I couldn’t explain why at the time, but this was a major emergency. This is the moment my OCD began to flare up the way it used to when I was seven years old.

When I was younger, I used to wash my hands excessively to the point where my skin would crack and sometimes bleed. I showered 4-5 times a day and still felt dirty. And every five minutes to an hour, I would have the thought that my entire family was going to die if I didn’t do specific rituals such as knock on wood in the pattern of 5-7-5-7 times. The extreme hand washing and showering went on for years until it faded away, but I developed new symptoms as I grew older. (Except the knock on wood ritual, that one you may still catch me doing on occasion, 25 years later).

OCD manifests in myriad ways. What inspired me to look even deeper into the topic was Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, where she discusses her own battle with OCD. During a callback, the former Nickelodeon iCarly star comically shares a moment she became elated that “The Holy Ghost” aka her “Still Small Voice” has finally spoken to her in the middle of a fantasy:

“Jennette, I, the spirit of the Holy Ghost, command you to cross your name out on the sign-in sheet, go to the restroom, touch your underwear band five times in a row, twirl on one foot, unlock and relock the bathroom door five times, come back, and resign in on the sign-in sheet.”

Young McCurdy responds: “Okay, Holy Ghost, and why do you want me to do these things?” And the answer she receives is “To ensure that you will do well at your Princess Paradise Park callback. If you do what I tell you to do, you will eventually book the role. When this happens, your mother will be happy and all of your family’s problems will be solved.”

This was the first time I had ever read such a specific description about OCD. My eyes widened as I experienced a physiological reaction from reading the words on the page. Every organ in my body woke up as my “aha” moment occurred. There was a name for what I have been suffering from almost my entire life and the name for it was a term I casually tossed around as an adjective for almost two decades?! How did I not put this together sooner? Or maybe I did and just wasn’t ready to see it yet?

After my immediate self-diagnosis, and due to feeling less alone and less ashamed from feeling completely seen through someone else’s story, I began normalizing talking about OCD with people I felt close to. I described my recent awareness to a friend and she later admitted to me that when I was terming my diagnosis as OCD, she even mistakenly equated OCD to only being hyper-clean, which she felt like I was not (compared to her)—she wasn’t wrong (lol). She then broke apart the acronym and realized quickly that it was indeed more serious than her original thought and connected it to my constant need to pick at my skin.

I was reminded of how my OCD won the battle over my fear of needles two summers ago. I had a non-cancerous mole on my right hand that I could not stop picking at for over a year. I picked. It bled. It healed. And then I’d pick again. Like clockwork. I grew overly anxious and frustrated from the burden of it, so I finally just made the decision to get it surgically removed. I fainted shortly after the procedure.

The more I gathered evidence from my past around the ways in which OCD has disrupted my life, the more I became interested in learning about other people’s stories. This catapulted me into Googling “OCD personal essays,” and I was locked in for hours. The more I read and learned, the better I understood myself. The wider my heart expanded. The deeper my self-compassion grew. And then, I began to reflect on being my mother’s daughter.

In the past, not only did I nonchalantly refer to myself as so OCD, but I viewed my mother’s OCD in the same way. So much guilt developed a few months ago when she suggested that she could help me financially with a temporary allowance if I would cook for her everyday because she was tired. I responded, “Mom, I’d love to cook for you everyday. I love cooking. But I can’t. Not in your kitchen. Not with the way you need to have everything. Not with the way I need to have everything. We don’t live well together.” It broke me to say those words out loud, and I beat myself up for weeks from feeling like a bad daughter because I couldn’t muster up the ability to transcend into my higher self and just get over it. I thought back to growing up with her OCD symptoms and the ways in which it drove me insane: always needing to close my bedroom door, locking it whenever she went to sleep (even if I was still planning to be in and out), turning on my ceiling fan whenever she was hot (even if she wasn’t in my room), unplugging every single device before we left anywhere, hanging up passive notes around the house telling people what to do, asking the same questions over and over, using three too many ziplock bags and plastic bags to wrap fruits and vegetables in the fridge and to pack baon. I diminished both of our needs to obsessively live a certain way as a mere annoying misfortune, rather than a heart wrenching situation that deserved so much more love, compassion and self-forgiveness.

Inner child work, shadow work, meditation, breathwork, and learning about capitalism, patriarchy, and colonization has significantly contributed to healing a lot of my trauma. Adding in my awareness of OCD and being able to have a name to articulate a mental struggle I’ve lived with for nearly three decades—a complete game changer.

Life becomes easier when we can learn to accept reality for what it is. When we can learn how to play with the hand we were dealt.

This is exactly why I find storytelling such a profound tool for self discovery. To write and share our own stories is cathartic. To see ourselves in other people’s stories is healing. There is beauty in our pain.

As humans, we’re gifted with the ability to create art through our life experiences. The best part about art is that it has nothing to do with perfectionism. A finished piece can be unfinished. Our process can be the art project. Our simple desire to create out of pure curiosity is what keeps us returning to our Souls. As Clarissa Pinkola Estés states in Women Who Run With the Wolves, “Art is the thing that asks us to be whole again.”

I pride myself for learning how to manage my OCD for most of my life. It’s a testament to just how much I am capable of. Whether or not it is something I’ll be seeking more professional help around is still yet to be discovered. But as of now, this realization has felt like a huge awakening to say the least. As painful as it may feel to come face to face with how OCD has held me back for most of my life, being able to live in the truth of it makes my path towards soothing the illness feel that much more easeful. I have a clearer pathway of release for my rage to alchemize. When I do my inner work, I no longer feel like I have to manage my OCD. Putting a name to it has moved me to feel confident that every time it arises, it’s just an opportunity for me to learn how to love it. And I believe this is how our darkness can lead us back to our light.