(Note: I am re-sharing this blog post from August of 2023 thanks to the organization who offers my therapy, NOCD, offering to donate 1 ERP therapy session to someone who can’t afford to start treatment. I highly recommend NOCD and ERP Therapy and hope that if you are someone who struggles with OCD you will reach out to them for support)

Have you ever hated your own brain? Have you ever been so deep in struggle with the thoughts in your mind that you weren’t sure if you could get out? Have you avoided people, situations or things that you used to enjoy because you wanted to avoid any possibility that your brain might attack you with toxic thoughts? If so…you might be a little like me. I’ve shared in this space multiple times about my struggles with depression and anxiety and my mental health. While I do believe I have anxiety and depression still, these diagnoses weren’t and aren’t the full story. Trying to treat them with different methods and different remedies provided some short bits of relief, but didn’t address the central issues I was struggling with and still face.

Once again it was my wonderful and supportive wife who helped me come closer to finding the answer. Her amazing and exhaustive research helped me learn a little bit more about OCD. If, like me, a lot of you immediately think of ritual hand-washing and other touch-based compulsions when you first think of OCD…you’re not wrong, and you also don’t know the whole picture. OCD has an incredibly vast number of ways that it shows up and effects people. There are many different subtypes and in a lot of these subtypes, my OCD included, the obsessions and compulsions people struggle with are nearly invisible and almost completely played out within the mind.

I’ve heard OCD described by my therapist and others as “the doubting disease” and this is an incredibly accurate way of describing what happens to someone afflicted by this disorder. It is also characterized by intrusive, unwanted and often very disturbing thoughts. While everyone experiences unwanted and/or toxic thoughts…a person with OCD experiences and struggles with these thoughts in a much different way. For most people, when they have an intrusive or unwanted thought (for example, harming someone else) they pause, think about it and may say “Wow, that was a bad thought”. But they are able to move forward and never think that thought again because their brain realizes it’s intrusive, it’s not what they actually believe, and so they can pay it no mind.

When someone with OCD has this same thought, their brain sends them signals to panic. They may say something like “Wow, that’s a bad thought. Do I really feel that way? Wait, do they know I thought that? Did I do something to them because of that thought? Do I hate that person? Am I going to hurt them?” etc., etc. and on and on until their brain becomes filled with repetitive excessive worry that those thoughts somehow mean something about them as a person. These obsessive thoughts are the ‘O’ in OCD. What comes next is the ‘C’ or Compulsions. In order to help relieve and justify these thoughts going through their brain a person with OCD starts to develop compulsions to prove the thoughts aren’t true or to try to help them feel comfort finally moving away from it. These compulsions can and sometimes are physical touch-based, but can also occur completely in the mind as well through constant ruminating (playing the same thought or scenario over and over again in their mind), justifying (having to rationalize or justify the thought isn’t real or is wrong before moving on) and more. Confessions can also become a compulsion as the person cannot feel peace or cannot move away from the thought until they have confessed it to someone else.

People with OCD perform these compulsions because they provide temporary relief from the obsessive and terrifying thought. Unfortunately, compulsions require you to keep going back to them over and over again in order to find that relief. This becomes incredibly distressing as it takes a lot of focus and energy from the person to perform their compulsions in order to put their mind at temporary ease. Unfortunately, “temporary” is the key word in that phrase. OCD tends to send only more and more intrusive thoughts, so you must do more compulsions to keep up. It is exhausting, sometimes completely debilitating and can be very dangerous to a person’s mental and physical health.

I know and have learned all of this because I have now learned that I too have OCD. I have gained most of my knowledge and started my therapy through NOCD, a wonderful community of people and licensed therapists coming together to provide support and treatment for those living with OCD. I started by watching from afar and reading articles and posts from the community before I summoned the courage to sign up for therapy. I am so glad I did! I’m not going to lie…this treatment has been exhausting and at times very difficult. ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) is meant to help you learn how to give less attention to those intrusive thoughts, stop doing compulsions, and get comfortable with discomfort. This is especially difficult for someone with OCD who is used to relying on compulsions to ease the discomfort. However, the relief and progress I have felt going through this difficult therapy is so much better, and so worth it compared to the cycle of anxiety, terror, and shame that came with OCD Compulsions. I highly recommend this community, their app, my therapist and their treatment methods. (This is not a paid post by the way. In fact, this post was all my idea and I am still paying them for my treatment. I just really believe in its effectiveness!) It has finally offered some light at the end of what has been a very long and dark tunnel for me for a long time.

So I urge you…if you have been silently struggling and can relate to any of the descriptions or symptoms outlined in this post…ask for help. Do your research. Take a look at alternatives beyond simply being in the big umbrella of “depression” and “anxiety”. Because your mental health is absolutely vital to you and to those around you who love and care about you. And please know…you are not alone…and you are not weak or broken if you reach out and ask for help. In my opinion…it’s one of the strongest and toughest things to do…and shows that you are actually very strong.

What is OCD?

What are Compulsions?

Another Great Resource and Specialist on OCD: Alegra Kastens @alegrakastens on Instagram

This is overcoming OCD…

This is fatherhood…