What are 5 Misconceptions About OCD? From Someone Diagnosed With OCD
In the last few years, more people have come forward about mental health problems than ever before. Allowing normally taboo subjects like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and personality disorders to slowly lose the stigmas people surrounded them with. One diagnosis that I think is still deeply misunderstood and misrepresented is OCD.
It’s possible I only feel this way because I suffer from OCD. But more likely I feel this way because I have had trained psychologists act on stigmas rather than understanding the core of what OCD is.
So what is OCD?
It stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. At its core, OCD is getting stuck in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions mean thoughts and urges that are unwanted. Compulsions are the behaviors that manifest to help soothe these thoughts. Approximately 2% of the world’s population suffers from it.
Lets break down some regular misconceptions people have about OCD.
1. Everyone with OCD is clean and orderly
Unfortunately, People’s first instinct when hearing about OCD is assuming the person is a hypochondriac. While these two mental disorders share many similarities, they are not actually the same thing. OCD has a lot more to do with what the person is experiencing internally than how they take care of their external environment.
John Green is one of the few people in the mainstream media who has casually and accurately depicted the experiences of OCD because of his own experiences with the illness. He describes OCD as a thought spiral that never ends just slowly get tighter and tighter calling it “turtles all the way down”.
2. It is curable
OCD is sadly not curable at this time. As of now, scientists believe there is both a genetic and environmental contribution that creates OCD in people. Luckily, There are numerous forms of treatment to help make living with it manageable.
Cognitive behavior therapy is one of the main treatments. A portion of this treatment is exposure and responsive prevention. This involves slowly tackling the things that bring you fear and intrusive thought to help you create ways to resist your compulsive behaviors.
In addition to therapy, a common treatment is medication. There are certain types of antidepressants called Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SRIs that help manage OCD. A psychiatrist can help you find the right medication that works for you. But once you stop taking the medication, your OCD will come back just like it was before you began the medication. Taking antidepressants has greatly improved my quality of life with OCD.
3. It’s easy to spot someone with OCD
A majority of the compulsions people with OCD have are not ones you can outwardly spot. This is why classifying personality traits like being clean or a perfectionist as OCD-related is really harmful.
4. Once people realize their fears are irrational,
they will stop fearing them
Most people with OCD realize that their fears are irrational. This doesn’t help prevent the very real base level terror they feel from their thought patterns. These fears create a deep sense of being unsafe in not just their environment but their body and mind. The compulsions they practice often have less to do with preventing the true fear and more to do with making the thought spirals stop for a moment.
5. Everyone has a part of them that’s OCD
A big reason there are so many misconceptions in the world about OCD is because of how often people who don’t suffer from it will claim it.
I have seen numerous people on talk shows and YouTube videos say they like to keep their space orderly and get told they have OCD. It has been a go-to joke of many to dump a container and cause a mess to freak that person out. I’m incredibly grateful, a majority of the time, these people don’t have OCD or mess doesn’t contribute to their intrusive thoughts. If they did have OCD, I would say it’s one of the cruelest jokes I’ve ever seen on television.
Using OCD as a joke when one doesn’t have it nor understand it, makes people less likely to come forward and get diagnosed. It also makes others lack the understanding of the suffering this mental disorder can cause people.
If you would like to learn more about OCD, I highly recommend checking out the International OCD Foundation
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Blog by Nicole Asherah. Nicole Asherah is an artist who tries to connect people to intimate moments, feelings, and relationships experienced throughout life through her poetry, paintings, and photography.
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