Rogers: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Overcome the OCD.

I was 10 when it first happened. When this specific fear first appeared and drilled its way through the folds of my brain and stayed there. I was sitting on the couch while my mother worked her second job and just for a moment I looked over at the kitchen. Then, an intruder came into my head, a quick image of me plucking a knife from its block and stabbing myself in the gut.

I was only ten, and I hated and feared myself for it.

You may simply gulp awkwardly and chalk it up to a kid's vivid imagination but there is a specific term for this kind of thought. One which is egodystonic to the person's character and causes some form of distress: an intrusive thought. It is perhaps the most aptly named term in all of medical literature. These thoughts which can run the gamut from violent to sexual, weird to persistently banal, will randomly barge into your head and will often stick there. For people without OCD this might be a minor inconvenience or something weird they can shrug off, for those with OCD it can become a lot more problematic.

Of course, I didn't know all of this at the time. All I knew was that I was afraid, and why shouldn't I be? Good people don't have these thoughts, right? And if I'm having these thoughts, I must not be a good person, right?

Even now it hurts to think about how my downward spiral started, how hard I was on myself, and how part of me still believes it all. But, for better and for worse, my childhood journey with OCD has shaped who I've become today. As time went on from that day I simply became more and more afraid of these thoughts that kept occurring over and over again, getting worse and worse each time. To the point of obsession.

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Of course, the obsessive fears and disorderly nature make up only two-thirds of OCD, what about the C, the compulsions? To be frank, the obsessions are hard to talk about because of how taboo they are, and the compulsions are hard to talk about because they are quite frankly embarrassing. My compulsions largely centered around control, superstition, and guilt. I thought that if I could control everything in my life I wouldn't randomly go insane and hurt myself or hurt someone else. This lead to certain superstitious behaviors, stepping over cracks with my left foot first, counting each step (starting with the left foot) until ten then starting over, only sitting down after ten steps, avoiding certain numbers like 4 6 & 9, apologizing profusely over and over again, repeating words in my head, and of course counting to 10 on my hands. (Man what is it with me and the number 10???)

Each of these started out small and weren't too invasive and they helped me deal with my thoughts and feel in control, right?

As time went on the behaviors just became more frequent and noticeable, I also avoided simple things like human touch, knives, and kitchens to quell my fear that I was secretly a monster. But I did what I could and for 7 years I tried and failed to hide my deep-seated anxiety from my teachers, my parents, my friends, and even myself I finally caved and accepted some form of treatment.

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Flash forward to my senior year of high school. My symptoms had gotten severe enough that just about all of this overachieving high-strung AP student's teachers were sending her to the counselor and after one too many emotional breakdowns, a very enlightening and kind psychiatrist, and two medications, I'm in the car on my way to Rogers Behavioral Health to participate in a partial-hospitalization program. (Yes, it was that severe, let this be a lesson to get help sooner rather than later.) This was where I was going to get treatment, this was where I was going to get better, this was going to put an end to my fears, right?

Well, yes and no.

You see OCD isn't treated with talk therapy as most people would assume. Talk therapy can be incredibly helpful for many individuals and disorders, but OCD is treated with a different method. It's called ERP - Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, or as I like to call it, the hardest thing you'll ever do.

There's something called the OCD cycle, basically, it starts with an intrusive thought, which causes anxiety, this anxiety triggers a compulsive behavior, followed by a temporary relief, then another intrusive thought comes along and the process starts over again. Instead of trying to completely eliminate these thoughts (which is incredibly difficult if not impossible), ERP tries to interrupt the cycle by stopping the compulsive behavior and anxiety response. Here's the baseline of how it is done, and what I had to do.

1. Identify the fear.

2. Expose patient to said fear.

3. Prevent the patient from using a compulsion.

4. Repeat until patient anxiety has decreased significantly.

For me, this ranged from stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, cutting out bad numbers, and holding a big knife for extended periods of time to name a few. All without counting, finding a better number, avoiding the knife, or repeating my self-soothing phrases. This would allow me to accomplish basic tasks such as walking, engaging with numbers, and maybe even cook, or heck even walk into a kitchen.

Essentially, things I needed to do to be an adult. Essentially, quelling the anxiety that never allowed me to be a kid.

Every single exposure was terrifying, heartwrenching, and a reminder of every part of my childhood I'd lost to this horrible disorder. I cried many times, faced many setbacks, but eventually, it became easier. Rogers, with its crooked paintings us OCD patients couldn't straighten, its cheerful therapists who helped us along the way, and its terrifyingly effective methods, allowed me to enter the coming of age phase of my life, without tripping over the cracks in the street.

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Everyone has a different version of recovery. Everyone has a different story to tell. Everyone's struggles are unique in their manifestation. For me, I learned to not be so ashamed and afraid of myself. But if there is one thing I learned that changed the trajectory of my life it was understanding and trying to achieve balance. When I was ten years old, terrified on that couch, my entire life became unbalanced. It dipped into horrible fear with very little light. I kept wanting my life and my thoughts to be perfect and clean. What I learned at Rogers, and what I believe makes me the person I am today, is understanding how to hold the darkness but not give into it. A balance between expectation and reality. A balanced view of myself. That's what recovery and growth look like for me.

Thank you to the staff and patients at Rogers Behavioral Health. I may have gotten help later than optimal, but I got the best help I could have gotten.