The Cutprice Guignol

A couple of weeks ago, I was reminded that it’s been around six years since I got diagnosed with OCD. God knows I’ve written about it a lot since then, but I was re-reading the post I wrote when I first came to terms with having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and it struck me just how much has changed in the last few years – and just how much I wished I could have gone back and told myself if I was able to. So, that’s what I wanted to write about today – a little reflection on how diagnosis and treatment has changed my life, for the sake of my old self, and for anyone who might be navigating a fresh diagnosis and trying to figure out what that means for them.

Firstly, and most foremostly, what stood out to me is how much things have improved since then. It feels like a bit of an understatement, honestly, “improvement”, given what my life looked like in the year or so leading up to getting my diagnosis. After I quit self-medicating with alcohol and other substances, I was suddenly faced with the full force of untreated Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and I’m not afraid to say that it truly was ruining my life. It’s really difficult to communicate, I think, how exhausting and all-consuming this disorder is unless you’ve been through it yourself – my life became nothing more than a constant and futile attempt to mitigate debilitating anxiety through endless compulsions. There was no room left for stuff like work or relationships or adventure – it didn’t feel like I existed anymore, at least as anything other than a conduit for all this horribleness to take place.

When I was at my worst, the thought of crawling out of that pit seemed genuinely impossible – the disorder had swelled up to fill every corner of my life in a way that I couldn’t even think about controlling. I’ve tried a few different treatment options since I got diagnosed, and I’ve found the most useful for me to be medication and a combination of cognitive behavioural therapy and exposure and response prevention – while I still have periods of intrusive symptoms and behaviours, my life is no longer utterly consumed by OCD. The more I was able to challenge those compulsions and obsessions mentally, the easier it became to deflect them getting their claws into me in any really dangerous way, and managing the disorder has become second nature rather than something I’m consistently and actively having to pour energy into.

OCD is a disorder that takes root via repetition; repetition, of the healthier kind of thought processes and behaviours, was the only way to instil real change. Much as I hated to hear it when I first started treatment, it really is a matter of practice, and it did get significantly easier the longer I stuck with it.

The way it’s felt to me, these last few years, is that treatment allowed me to crowbar some space around the disorder – the corners it had spread out to fill, I started to claw back, inch by inch at first. But the more space I made for things that weren’t OCD, the smaller the OCD became in comparison. My life grew around it, and yes, it’s still there, and it still threatens to swell up and fill up my life again sometimes, but the stuff I have outside of it is worth the continued work of symptom management and more acute support when I need it.

If you’ve recently been diagnosed with OCD, I hope you know, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, that I believe that your life does not need to be ruled or defined by this disorder, no matter how much it might have up until this point. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible six years ago, but I wish I could go back and tell myself just how much easier it’s going to be (and how much less of my life is going to be consumed doing pointless nonsense in the process).

I would love to hear about your experiences with OCD, treatment, and diagnosis in the comments below – let’s share some positivity! If you would like to read more about my experiences with OCD, you can check out my OCDiaries series here; if you’d like to support my blog, please consider supporting me on Patreon or dropping me a tip via my Support page.