The realities of living with OCD

Brut America

No, OCD is not an obsession with cleanliness. Here's what living with OCD actually looks like...

Transcript

00:00It stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, not Obsessive Cleaning Disorder, not Overly

00:05Cleaning Disorder, nothing to do with Cleaning Disorder.

00:18I feel like a lot of people don't know what OCD is. So there are two parts, obsessions,

00:22which are negative intrusive thoughts, and compulsions, which are like repetitive rituals.

00:27Different people have different obsessions, different compulsions, but it's not satisfying,

00:31it's not nice, it's a disorder. So yeah, please make sure you're not saying, oh I'm a bit

00:35OCD, if you just like something, like, satisfying. Because I guarantee you, a disorder is not

00:41satisfying.

00:42Imagine being forced to think about your greatest fear every second of every day and having

00:46no willpower to stop it.

00:57I feel like a lot of people don't know what OCD is. So yeah, please make sure you're not

01:04saying, oh I'm a bit OCD, if you just like something, having no willpower to stop it.

01:09Imagine being forced to think about your greatest fear every second of every day and having

01:13no willpower to stop it.

01:28Now my family is safe.

01:29I was diagnosed with OCD about nine years ago in 2013. I was 13 at the time. The reason

01:35I'm obsessed with turning on and off the light switch and I have to do it over and over to

01:38make everything right is because I have this intrusive thought that if I don't do it, and

01:42if I don't complete this task, my house might catch on fire or something bad might happen

01:47to my family if I don't do it a certain way and make everything just so.

01:52I have suffered from OCD my whole life and struggle massively with germs. For some reason

01:59I struggle to have anyone in my bed without clean feet. So my fiance makes sure she cleans

02:06her feet every night before we get into bed to ease my worries.

02:10When you say you're OCD, I don't think you understand what it is. We aren't just anal

02:14about every detail. We fear something bad will happen, so we repeat a behavior multiple

02:19times to relieve the anxiety. It works temporarily, but the fear creeps back in. It's exhausting.

02:24I hope this helps you understand.

02:25With my OCD, I have to do things till it feels right. So with perfume, I have to spray it

02:29like a certain amount of times or something really bad will happen to my family. And it

02:33makes no sense because what is the correlation? There is none. But my head makes me think

02:37there is a correlation and if I don't do these things, something really bad will happen,

02:41which is scary.

02:42The door is locked. The door is locked. The door is locked. Thank you.

02:49The door is locked. The door is locked. The door is locked. Thank you.

02:52Oh no! I washed a dish! How mentally ill!

02:56You see that stop sign over there?

02:58Yeah.

02:59Definitely don't stick all of it up your a** while scream singing the YMCA.

03:03Yeah, I agree with you. I definitely shouldn't do that. I don't think that would even be

03:08physically possible.

03:09But you wouldn't have even thought about letting that stop sign turn you into a hat if you

03:12didn't deep down subconsciously want to do it.

03:16No. No, I don't want to impale myself on an octagon. A hexagon at most, but not a...

03:21Oh God, do I?

03:22When you have OCD, you are not the captain of the ship that you call yourself. Not just

03:27eccentric hand washing or being a neat freak or liking things to look tidy. It's categorized

03:33as one of the top 10 most disabling disorders by the World Health Organization for a reason.

03:38If you're struggling with this right now, just know it can get better and it will get

03:41better. You got this.

Category

Transcript

Recommended