The Cutprice Guignol

So, it’s been about five years since I was diagnosed with OCD, and I’ve been writing about it pretty much ever since.

And I’m glad for that, in general. Because I do really appreciate being able to look back on the early stages of living with OCD (or, rather, being aware of living with it), seeing the stuff that’s changed, and appreciating the spike in my quality of life that came after I started getting appropriate treatment. A few people have also reached out to let me know they’ve found that work helpful in handling some of their own mental health struggles, which, more than anything, means the world to me – thank you so much to everyone who’s taken the time to reach out to me in those terms, it really does make all of this seem slightly less than entirely self-serving, which I appreciate.

But, reflecting on the last five years since I was diagnosed, it’s almost a little wild to see how much has changed. At first, I took it on as this shiny new diagnosis – a filter I placed over almost everything that I did, and not always a useful one. I think it’s pretty common to hang on to a new diagnosis as the answer to all your questions at first, and, while it might answer a few of them, it’s not an explanation or a reason for every detail of my existence. While OCD does impact huge parts of my life, it’s also not the defining factor in who I am. Over the last few years, I think I’ve developed a better grasp of how to use my understanding of OCD as a way to navigate my life with a bit more grace and peace, as opposed to winding it around everything I do and am.

Writing about it publically has also thrown into sharp relief, for me, how little people at large appear understand about OCD, and how quick they are to jump to conclusions about how certain symptoms reflect on the person who suffers from them. After a brief post about a choice not to cover intrusive thoughts on this blog, I had a few people manifest in my inbox speculating about just how bad those intrusive thoughts must be – and what I must be trying to hide.

While there has been a broad move towards more acceptance for those suffering with mental illness in the last couple of decades (at least where I am in the world, and where I hang out on the internet), there also seems to be a real lack of understanding about how some of the less socially-acceptable symptoms manifest, and what they reflect about the person having them (which is: basically nothing). Having violent, involuntary intrusive thoughts is one of those things that is still so stigmatised, and I know my choice not to share my own experiences with it might add to that stigma. I don’t want to lie, but I also don’t want people to view me as a dangerous, violent person either (or view my writing through that lens), you know?

And that’s the balance I’ve been trying to strike – honesty, but an honesty that maintains some control over what people know about me. There are things in the earlier articles I wrote about OCD that I wouldn’t put out there now, but it’s a learning process; it felt important to put it out there at the time, and a helpful way for me to figure out exactly how I felt about what I was going through, even if I wouldn’t do it again these days. Writing these articles has been a big part of putting together the pieces of how my life was going to look now I knew I had OCD, and I’m grateful for the chance to do that (and for the audience who’ve endured it).

If you’ve written about mental illness, what have you learned from it? How did you find the reactions online and in real life? I would love to hear about your experiences – let me know in the comments below!