Tag: OCD

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We All Have Some Form Of OCD

OCD is a mental health condition I’ve been battling for years. It has plagued my life and had a huge impact on my last relationship.

I used to hate people joking about my OCD. I kind of laughed it off and hoped they’d drop the subject or simply go away. Now? I have an urge to educate people about what OCD really is.

In their eyes, I have this strange ritual that I perform seems ridiculous to them. Little do they know it’s just my coping mechanism. Trust me! Everyone has some form of OCD. Most are minor, few are major. The difference is only in degree but we’re all in this together, we’re all in the same boat.

Here’s an interesting question. Where did my OCD come from? I guess I was born with it. It’s no secret, no big deal and probably nothing new to people who know me well. Gratefully, they accept the way I am. Whatever, I’m living with it and prefer to deal with it privately. All in all, I’m not ashamed of it.

Now I know why there’s only a very fine line between strength and weakness. Neither is more or less important than the other. It’s up to you how you want to see OCD and use it to your advantage. I totally get it and I’m saying this in an orderly fashion!

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After All, Anxiety Just Needs A Dummy

Feed me! Feed me! Now! I mean N.O.W. now! Do you want me to spell it out?

Anxiety is throwing a tantrum at you like an unruly child. Oh No, not again! You become rather restless. You don’t know what to do. Meanwhile, anxiety is whispering in your ear: You are the worst parent in the world!

As the day progresses, that voice gets louder and louder, not to mention, those words that come out of its mouth also get nastier and nastier. Your heart is racing like a race car at Formula One or whatever the Grand Prix, your palms and armpits are sweating like Niagara Falls. Soon, you start to believe what anxiety has to say about you: You are a bad parent, a bad father, a bad mother, a bad boss, a bad colleague, a bad lover, a bad friend, even a bad loser. Everything except a badass! Way before the night sets in, you already feel as if it was the end of the world. Feeling helpless, you hide yourself in a little corner wondering: Could it get any worse than this?

Welcome to the prison cell of anxiety! Hello you, a jail bird, you’ve been hijacked and you’ve been sentenced to life. You start to act like a lost soul behind bar. Life sentence? It feels more like a death sentence in there. You can barely talk let alone walk, you’re dying inside, who gives a shit about writing a will. Your freedom is at anxiety’s mercy. You tell yourself you can’t function anymore. You look around thinking: Where is anxiety? Smile, you are on camera! It’s looking at you with a grin on the face: Sucker! Got you!

Your current situation is spiraling out of control. You feel stuck. Part of you is feeling sorry for yourself, another part of you is trying to find a way to distracting yourself from the side effects of anxiety. You start to perform those ridiculous OCD rituals just to get through the day and the night. Those so called bad habits also start to resurface wanting a piece of you – your health mostly. Come on! smoke, drink, get numb, it won’t hurt! You’re weak. You go ahead and do it like there’s no tomorrow.

Crazy! Crazy! What do you do? You do what you normally do. You get what you normally get out of. You call your best friends hoping to get some sympathetic/empathetic response. Haha, little do you know, when they see its your number on their phone screen, they decide not to answer it. Even if they do, they tell you they’re busy, not right now. For some silly reason, you begin to take things very personally. Feeling defected, you call your shrink or any health professionals you can find on your phone book. Surprise! Surprise! All you get is being put on a waiting list. At best, the next available appointment is some 2 months away. Before you have a chance to say goodbye, the receptionist has already hung up. Now you worry you’ll relapse into same old misery again. Perhaps you already have!

After all is said and done. You surrender. You give up fighting. You accept anxiety for what it is – nothing more, nothing less. Suck it up! You pluck up the courage, walk up to anxiety to see what it’s been up to. Suddenly…

You realise the reason why anxiety has been crying out loud. It’s dropped the damn dummy/pacifier on the floor! You pick it up, give it a rinse, then put it back into its mouth. Next, you realise anxiety has wet itself in bed. It’s time to change a diaper/nappy. It stinks like hell but you do it anyway. What’s to be afraid of? You’ve been to hell and back. It’s nothing compared to that. Before you know it, the tide is turning. Time is now on your side for a change. Anxiety is in its best behaviour – sleeping like a baby.

Finally, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Relief is on the way. You have a quiet moment to yourself. You come to a realisation that all these years what you haven’t really done is – toilet train anxiety!

No doubt anxiety is powerful, overwhelming, nagging and desperate! It can minimise your rationality, belittle your every effort to get better, throw your plans into disarray. Despite it all, one thing that anxiety can’t do in any means is to take away your playful side – your ability to make fun of yourself, make fun of anxiety. When you laugh at yourself, laugh at anxiety, seriously, no one gets offended. If they do, you know it’s their problem.

Lastly, before I close this post, here’s a quick quote of mine to share with you:

When anxiety sucks, just give it a dummy…

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OCD Your Flaw Or Your Gift?

The fact is we all have something. I decided to write a post about OCD here, a condition I’ve wrestled with for years since I was kid. No doubt facing my own imperfection in a public domain on my blog can be very confronting but that’s exactly the reason why I’m doing it and will keep doing till it’s not hard anymore. It’s funny when you set out to combat your fears head on, the very first step you take, you effectively reduce their significance and impact. As to why it works, I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of scientific theories behind it. But when the results can speak for themselves, I’m happy to take a lazy approach and not dive in to the deep, dry stuff.

Much has been said about OCD in print and on line. For those ones I’ve researched on, they all offered valuable insights into this sometimes-misunderstood mental illness. It was very fascinating to read some of those lines that described the symptoms that I was too familiar with. Anyone who’s interested in this topic can Google it and find many useful links and sites available. In short and in plain language, OCD is a form of anxiety disorder. The rituals associated with it are simply ways of coping mechanism. The very core of OCD is about controlling.

Contrary to the common views on OCD which see it as a mental illness and for the most sufferers who may even regard their OCD as something shameful, I now have a completely different take on it. In recent years I’ve begun to recognise the positive aspects of OCD. Things like great powers of observation, strong attention to detail and an acute sense of order and organization, all these are character traits ingrained in people with OCD. For me, anything that requires precision, accuracy and quality control, I’m up for it and can create amazing results. It’s about turning the infamous flip side of OCD and transferring it into something I can use to my advantage. The process doesn’t involve changing the person I am. I believe the skill set revolves around those tedious rituals that people with OCD perform is the same skill set that required to achieve great successes in life. The trick is to shift the focus area to something that’ll bring meaningful achievements.

Looking back at my journey, the hardest part wasn’t dealing with OCD itself. It was accepting it and worrying less about what others may think of me. It took me years and years to get there. All I can say conclusively is the only way to “come clean” is really to be comfortable with who you are. I was born this way for a reason and after years of questioning, struggling and battling, I no longer see my OCD as inner demons but as an innate gift… Very blessed!