Editor and Founder Vrinda Pendred discusses what OCD really is, the key categories of obsessions / compulsions, and identifying the roots of your obsessions
Following on from our series on Tourette’s Syndrome, now we’re going to look at a related condition that often comes alongside Tourette’s, or you can have it all on its own: OCD.
OCD is another one of these very misunderstood conditions. TV shows like Hoarders: Buried Alive show just one side of the disorder. In my opinion, they’re exploitative and don’t inspire sincere sympathy. People watch them for their shock value. In reality, you likely wouldn’t know if someone had OCD. We’re not all buried alive under mountains of rubbish (although that could happen). Most obsessions aren’t so visible – and that means they’re not as widely publicised. In fact, even people with OCD may not realise they have it.
So, now that we’ve established what OCD isn’t, lets talk about what it is. To do this, we’ll break down the name of the condition. OCD means:
O – You have obsessions. This doesn’t mean you’re obsessed with trains or some celebrity. It means you fixate on things that – and this is the crucial distinction – make you suffer in some way. We’ll go through some examples later in this article.
C – It’s not enough just to have obsessions. To be diagnosed with OCD, you need to have compulsions, too. This doesn’t mean you compulsively lie or steal things or eat chocolate or spend too much money. It refers to any actions you undertake in order to cope with the discomfort arising from the obsessions.
D – It is a disorder. I want to emphasise this because so often we hear someone say, ‘I’m OCD about cleaning,’ (as if ‘OCD’ is a verb) or, ‘I’m really OCD about taking care of my books.’ That is not OCD. It is a preference, not a source of distress. OCD means it causes you to suffer in some way.
So, let’s go through some examples. Please don’t imagine this is an exhaustive list, because it isn’t at all. It’s just a sampling of common categories of obsessions someone with OCD (maybe even you) might struggle with.
Violence
What you’ll soon see is that the obsessions basically amount to dark thoughts (although I don’t think that term quite does them justice). Naturally, a common theme of dark thoughts is violence. For instance, for decades I couldn’t use any kind of even slightly sharp knife because every time I went anywhere near one, I would have the most intense, detailed visions of using the knife to slice open my arms, chop off my fingers, stab myself, stab others – you name it. Obviously I was never going to do any of these things! Hence the compulsion, which was to avoid knives altogether. The visions were so real and overwhelming that I didn’t trust myself. I had to do something to stop myself, or at least stop the upsetting visions my imagination brought to life for me.
Death
This leads us onto the subject of death. I still struggle near train tracks, because I can’t seem to help imagining throwing myself onto them. I see every brutal detail: the moment of realising what I’ve done, the panic on seeing an oncoming train, the knowledge that there’s no time to get away, the feeling train hitting me (and visions of it from third-party perspectives), being smashed or maybe severed, how quickly I’ll die or perhaps bleeding in agony until I finally die off…. Fun, yes? I’ll let you work out how long it took me to bring myself to go anywhere near the edge of a train platform.
Home was not a safe haven. For years I could only sleep on my left side, stemming from a long time when sleeping on my left meant my back was to the wall, allowing me to face the openness of my room. That meant I would see when the faceless man appeared, the one with the axe, who I was convinced would come for me in the night. And let’s not forget my terror of hands punching through the walls to grab me in the shower. This wasn’t simple fear. I dealt with the fear by developing self-soothing strategies, like counting (which, over the years, became an obsession in itself and wreaked another kind of havoc in my life).
Death, in general, has also plagued me from time to time. In my second year of university, I didn’t sleep for five straight days because of all the visions that hit me every time I was alone in the dark without distractions from my thoughts. The exhaustion resulted in me missing lessons and getting a zero on a key paper (which, thankfully, I was allowed to redo). My own mind was my worst enemy and I didn’t know how to make anyone understand or how to help it. In fact, when my teacher wondered why I had missed all the relevant lessons, I lied because I couldn’t bring myself to admit what was going on. It just sounded so stupid, and I didn’t expect anyone to take me seriously.
Cleaning
Alongside hoarding, I think this is the most common OCD stereotype. Yes, it is a common manifestation of OCD but not everyone does it. I never have, for instance – but I do understand it. It’s important to see that the cleaning is not the obsession: it’s the compulsion. The obsession is a fear of germs or illness, a conviction that one has contracted a deadly disease and is going to die or pass it on to others. In a way, it’s another death obsession. So if you like your kitchen in neat order, that is not OCD – you just take pride in your home.
Religion
Religious obsessions are a very common manifestation of OCD. Many people imagine they might break the fundamental rules of their religion, or simply disrespect the religious service by shouting out. They have thoughts that might be deemed sinful and then feel guilty, worrying God has heard them and they will be punished. They might act out any manner of compulsion to counteract this. I have never experience this kind of obsession myself, despite being raised religious. However, I did use intensive prayer to combat other obsessions – for example, my conviction that my loved ones or I would die in the night. For at least a decade, I was convinced one of us wouldn’t wake up the next morning.
Sex / The Body
Basically, if there’s anything at all to feel embarrassed or guilty about, it’s a potential obsession. Sex is a key part of this, and it can get particularly wrapped up with religious beliefs / obsessions. There may also be bodily obsessions, such as the feeling that you’re going to take off your clothes in front of work colleagues or inside a church. The general population might have a passing thought like this, but for someone with OCD the vision feels so real that it could actually lead to self-imposed hermitage.
Hoarding / Spartanism
Just as cleaning isn’t really the obsession, hoarding isn’t either. It’s the compulsion, to counteract the obsession, which I think comes down to feeling out of control. Speaking personally, I have lived through periods of hoarding (particularly as a child) and a lot of it came down to fears of amnesia – and why did that matter? Because I felt like time and life were slipping away from me and everything was beyond my control. Collecting things was a way of holding onto something, preserving it, giving it a kind of eternal life.
The inversion is spartanism, which refers to obsessively getting rid of things. I’m not sure this is precisely the same, but I have experienced this to a degree, as well. For example, when the shampoo bottle starts running low, I feel physically anxious about the fact that it’s nearly gone but not quite, every day until it’s fully empty. I feel tempted to throw it away just to get rid of the anxiety, even if there’s still some shampoo in the bottle. Some people take this to greater extremes and feel like they need to get rid of everything they own. I still believe this must be the compulsion, not the underlying obsession.
Superstitions / Magical Thinking
This is sort of a catch-all ‘miscellaneous’ category. I remember as a child being told that old schoolyard rhyme: ‘Step on a crack, break your mama’s back.’ As soon as I heard this, I knew it was just a silly song…but part of me had to ask: what if I was wrong? I didn’t want that kind of responsibility on my shoulders, so to be safe, I spent years walking with my head facing down. Looking back, all of these things – avoiding pavement cracks, straightening stacks of books, not sitting in the aisle seat in a cinema, and so many other compulsions – were ways of getting control over my life and environment when I felt otherwise powerless.
The Roots of OCD
The medical causes of OCD are similar to those I’ve discussed for Tourette’s Syndrome (as are the medications, e.g. SSRIs). That said, my own experience has taught me that although the propensity towards OCD is genetic, the form your OCD takes is unique to you. Your own life experiences are what shape your individual obsessions. I spent years examining mine and this is part of what helped me overcome them – identifying the lingering monsters, accepting that they were gone, and then consistently reminding myself that I didn’t need those coping strategies anymore. This is easier said than done – as I say, I spent years doing this and sometimes the obsessions can still hit me. We’ll talk about this more in later articles.
The important point to take away from all this is that OCD is not hoarding or hand-washing – it’s a portfolio of coping strategies for when life knocks you around. Medication can help, but it isn’t a lifelong solution because it doesn’t teach you how to cope better with the challenges in your life. And no one can tell you to just stop doing these things because it isn’t really about the aversion to knives, the counting, the hoarding, the cleaning, and so forth – it’s about the fears that underlie these things. It’s about how out of control you feel over your own life and environment. The only way to overcome that is to find healthier ways to start feeling in control – and that’s hard.
Final Thoughts
Over the next series of articles, we’ll be looking at OCD from different angles – what it’s like to be a child with OCD, how it can change as you move into adolescence, holding down jobs or relationships when you have OCD (or being in a relationship with someone with OCD), the impact of pregnancy and childbirth on a woman with OCD (and the impact of fatherhood on a man with OCD), the influence of the wider world around us (like the news and social media), and positive steps we can take to try to get control of OCD. Be sure to subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss any of these articles.
And finally, if you’d really like to get into the mind of someone with OCD and learn what it’s like to live with – and try to overcome – not just this condition but fear in general, please read my novel Equilibria:
Anna Nolon is obsessive – about everything. She worries about her grades, her appearance, germs, the pattern of her footsteps, the number of syllables in the words she says, her parents’ approval, the future and, most of all, death. It’s okay – so does everyone else. This is Equilibria: the first society built to accommodate OCD. But when Aaron comes along – the strange new boy who doesn’t quite fit into that pristine society of Holy Balance and Order – Anna is forced to look at the dark shadows hanging over her and decide if perfection is really what she wants.
Until next time….
Vrinda Pendred is a graduate of English with Creative Writing at Brunel University. She completed work experience with Random House and proofread for Mandala Publishing. She is married with two children and lives in Hertfordshire, England, where she does freelance editing and proofreading. She is also a writer, and you can learn more about her personal work here.
Vrinda has been diagnosed with five neurological conditions: Tourette’s Syndrome, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, ADHD, High-Functioning Autism and bipolar disorder. In 2010, she founded Conditional Publications with the intention of providing a creative outlet for people, and (hopefully) changing a few minds out there about what neurological disorders really are – including not just the limitations, pain or frustration, but also the more positive, beneficial ‘symptoms’ of these strange conditions.
She made three contributions to Conditional Publications’ debut release Check Mates: A Collection of Fiction, Poetry and Artwork about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by People with OCD. Since then, she has released a novel entitled The Ladder, inspired by her personal struggle with bipolar disorder, as well as a number of short stories, the YA sci-fi /fantasy series called The Wisdom, and Equilibria, a YA dystopia about a society engineered for people living with OCD.
