Understanding What OCD Actually Is
What is OCD?
OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is a long-term, mental health condition which causes people to experience repetitive, often highly distressing, intrusive thoughts or images with feelings of high anxiety, doubt, and fear (obsessions). To relieve these feelings and reduce the thoughts, actions are taken which are performed again and again (compulsions). It is considered a disability under the Equality Act.
The Different Types of OCD
There are a variety of types of OCD, some being checking, contamination (physical and mental), hoarding, ruminations, intrusive thoughts and images, symmetry and ordering, counting, and avoidance.
Checking: the need to check something over and over until either it feels right, you have performed the check a specific number of times, or the intrusive thoughts and feelings have gone or reduced. Checking compulsions may be carried out several times, take several minutes, even an hour or longer. For example, someone with arachnophobia may have to check their bedroom several times before feeling safe enough to go to bed.
Contamination: the fear of being dirty or contracting something. This may cause someone to wash themselves, clean, or avoid the source of anxiety as a compulsion. For example, someone may fear contracting a disease from public toilets, so may have the compulsion to wash their hands until they feel clean.
Hoarding: the inability to get rid of useless, broken possessions. Although hoarding is its own disorder, some people with OCD hoard for specific reasons.
Ruminations: prolonged thinking about an event, theme, or question. A person may ruminate on a thought for a long time, going over and over the details, different scenarios, outcomes, and possibilities.
Intrusive thoughts and images: when a person experiences repetitive, distressing, disturbing, frightening obsessional thoughts. These may be relationship, sexual, magical, religious, violent, or body focussed. These thoughts are not voluntary and do not match with the sufferer’s true beliefs.
Symmetry and ordering: the need to have things positioned ‘right’. People may obsess over the positioning of something because the discomfort, anxiety, or fear is overwhelming, or because they fear something bad will happen if they do not position the thing ‘right’. These compulsions can take a lot of time to get ‘right’.
Counting: the compulsion to count things, counting to a certain number, doing behaviours a certain number of times, etc. For example, someone may begin walking up the stairs and feel the compulsion to count them. They may go back down the stairs to then walk up them again and count them.
Avoidance: the person works hard to avoid places, things, or people because of their obsessions. For example, someone who has distressing intrusive thoughts about bring contaminated by bodily fluids may avoid all public toilets at all costs.
Research on OCD is ever growing, and there are more and more types of OCD being discussed.
Misconceptions
There are two main misconceptions about OCD, one being that OCD is ‘the cleaning disorder’. This is not the case. Not everyone with the condition has fears and compulsions around contamination and cleaning. Contamination related compulsions can become very severe. For example, someone may have to wash their hands a certain number of times or for a specific length of time, multiple times a day, everyday which can cause their skin to dry out, crack, and bleed.
The second is the idea that if someone likes things to be neat, they must have OCD. Phrases such as ‘I’m so OCD because I like my bedroom to be spotless’, or ‘I like my stationary to be neat’ are thrown around in society frequently and do not represent OCD in the slightest. Everyone has their habits and preferences to how they like things, but obsessive compulsive disorder impacts a person daily, is exhausting, time consuming, often distressing, and can make it difficult, even impossible, to function.
My Experiences
I was diagnosed with OCD alongside Tourette Syndrome in 2012, when was 11. I wasn’t told anything about it, what it was, what it entailed, or what types of things I might experience.
I didn’t fully understand the condition until near the end of my first year at university. I was struggling with my mental health, so I decided to engage with those advocating for mental health conditions on social media. After following a variety of different accounts and speaking to people, I finally knew what OCD was and why I did certain behaviours. Because it can be so complex, I’m still learning about the condition all the time and exactly how mine works.
I experience a variety of types of OCD including checking, physical contamination, ruminations, intrusive thoughts and images, symmetry and ordering, and avoidance. The compulsive behaviours and rituals I have to do can be very time consuming, frustrating, and disabling, and sometimes even stop me from doing basic tasks. This is what I believe people do not understand about the condition: that it can be disabling. Despite the increase in advocacy for the condition, I still hear phrases like ‘I’m so OCD’ frequently. People do not understand how severe it can be.
Obsessive compulsive disorder tends to worsen over time without treatment. There are medications which can help, however the most common treatment is CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). Over the last few years, my condition has worsened. There have been times when it has seriously impacted my mental health, hurt me physically, and prevented me from functioning normally. I’m currently waiting for an appointment which will hopefully lead to therapy.
Final thoughts
Just like with any condition, all I want is for people to understand that the condition is not a joke and that it is a disability. I feel that OCD is a condition that to some people seems silly and irrational - how could someone be so scared of public toilets? How could someone spend so much of their time checking things? How can a thought disable someone? Although the compulsions may seem unnecessary, they can be very difficult to control and require professional medical help.
Cameron Curry
2022/23 Wellbeing Officer