How to Combat Your Obsessive Worries

“OCD is not a disease that bothers; it is a disease that tortures.”

― J.J. Keeler, I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands: The Other Side of OCD

My experience with OCD runs deep. I do not struggle with germs, I do not like things to be ‘even’, and I am certainly not the neatest person (much to my fiancée’s dismay). These stereotypes can be OCD, but they're far from the reality of most individuals who suffer from OCD.

If you are one of my followers, then you know that I have not been active for the last 72 hours. In fact, this is probably the first time anyone other than my significant other has heard from me.

For the past three days, I was paralyzed by my anxiety, my obsessive thoughts.

I was diagnosed with OCD when I was 18. I was obsessing over a mistake I made when I was younger, and I was fearful of the possibility of some sort of punishment.

The reality of the situation is that I was blowing my mistakes far out of proportion. I was viewing myself as this terrible, horrible master criminal who needed to be locked away from society for my thoughts.

When I was 20, I was Ubering home from a party (I was a big partier in college — a lot of self-medicating was involved) when the driver hit a pothole in the road. I did not see the pothole, but I felt it. I arrived home and promptly fell asleep.

When I woke, anxiety rushed through my body. Did I kill someone last night? Immediately, I felt as though I was an accomplice to murder. I believed with my entire soul that I killed someone.

Before eating breakfast, I grabbed my keys, ran out to my car, hopped in, and sped over to where I felt the bump in the road. Prior to arrival, I was expecting to see yellow crime tape (is that what it’s called?) sprawled throughout the scene, but all I was greeted with was regular Sunday morning traffic. I parked on the side of the road and scanned the scene for any clues I could find. There were minor holes here and there, nothing too big. Certainly no bodies.

My mind had created this false reality for me to live in an attempt to combat the misinterpreted signals it was receiving.

OCD thrives off of your greatest fear. Mine happens to be going to jail. It is this fear where the illness grows. The reason OCD is able to thrive off of your fear is that it needs uncertainty, and it needs fuel. The fuel is your brain's natural survival instinct — to find an answer to a problem.

Your mind is not perfect. It certainly is not always correct.

Unfortunately, your mind is basically the Kanye of bodily organisms. It views itself as being perfect, incapable of flaws. This is why it is so hard to combat mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, and OCD.

If you wish to combat your anxious or obsessive thoughts, then you must realize that your brain is very likely wrong. It will latch onto whatever logical conclusions it could draw and will place an inordinate amount of value onto this possibility, no matter how slight it could be.

The only reason your brain will believe in this reality is that if it is true, then it appeals to your ego. Our brains l-o-o-o-o-ve our ego. They’re practically best friends.

If you want to defeat your mental illness, then you must forego your ego. You must ignore whatever “logical” or “rational” thoughts your brain is telling you, and live a mindful, present life.

Remember that yes, there is a possibility of these thoughts being correct. But the likelihood of this is very much so similar to that of finding a winning lottery ticket. It’s possible, but because it does not appeal to any of your fears, your brain will not place any value on this possibility.