I Wish The OCD Community Talked About Cinderella

And Why It Just Might Change How You View OCD Too!

I made a mistake, I was wrong.

When I read a heartbreaking piece about a NYC firefighter who lived with OCD in secret and suppressed his sensitivity and feelings, I thought it was safe to share with the OCD community. So many of these fellow sufferers and clinicians were deeply pained by this man’s plight and isolation. But most of all, they wished he knew about other treatments, like ICBT, to help him out of a shared hell.

I was more concerned with the man’s feelings, how he had to hide the sensitivity that likely begot his OCD in the first place. I was more taken by him being forced to be tough, the way treatment reasserted a false choice: be tough and get love, don’t please me, and you’ll lose everything.

When I spoke up for this part of the story in an opinion piece I shared in an OCD group, I was met with:

Did you make clear that ICBT is empirically supported, and don’t you know that Internal Family Systems is not validated and ACT is only supported in combination with ERP? Do you know how hard we have worked to get standing in the community to be mislabelled to an already misinformed public?

As an outsider to the OCD community for many years, I wasn’t surprised but I did find it strange and sad that politics and standing should trump feeling and process. The daggers pierced further when I was criticized for my work not being rigorously tested. One person chortled that the title of my next book should be “The Benefits of Leprosy” or “The Upside of Racism.”

The irony here was that the ICBT people had once felt (and still feel) mocked and devalued by the ERP people in a simliar way (holy parallel process batman!), and struggled for nearly 30 years to get credibility and standing in America even though they’ve had a lot of success internationally. They knew firsthand, in other words, what it was like to be treated as a Cinderella and yet now, they positioned themselves as the jealous stepsisters.

How strange and sad to forget who you once were, the goodness of heart that truly is the center of the person with OCD, whether in the ERP, ICBT, IFS, or any acronymed community of your choosing. Their cinderella story has never truly and fully been told, and that’s what was haunting me.

I’ve lived that story, I’ve seen family live out that story, and I’ve supported clients living through that story towards royal redemption. It’s an untold story that is spoken in secret, and sometimes in small groups, but as a community, it is frowned upon sharing.

It’s not empirically supported. It might as well be a myth or a fairy tale.

But before I could remember any of that, I was lost again. Like Timmy Reen, the firefighter who prompted the whole drama, I started to feel like an ever brightening world was now contaminated and dirty, with me as its garbage. My ideas, feelings, and even a book I took great courage to pen were now trash.

Until a good friend, like a fairy godmother, helped me break the spell. ‘You have good reason to feel so disgusted and disgusting,” She said. “Are you sure you want me to say more?”

I knew she was well-versed in the mysterious dialect of the heart, and trusted her words as a benediction rather than another curse. “Yes, please go on, tell me all you see,” I murmured, as if she was loooking into a crystal ball.

“Without realizing it, by devaluing your book this community didn’t just hurt your feelings, they dishonored and devalued your mother who was its inspiration. And by moving so quickly away from your feelings and the firefighter’s feelings, they made healing more about power than about poetry. Poetry is your native tongue. They search for reason but see no purpose in rhyme. "

She was right. The critiques I’ve always had, but could never quite put into words about ERP and ICBT, is that they never truly embrace feeling. They wrap their arms widely around behavior and even graciously welcome home thoughts that are sensible.

Good child, we will finally love you now if you finally see the light of reason.

But, they always run away from feeling, as if they too are ashamed of the vulnerability and sensitivity that comes along with being themselves.

Cinderella doesn’t become a princess because of her outer accomplishments or even for her beauty. It is because of the goodness and humility of her heart shining forth. Recall that she tends to the mice and birds, the most vulnerable creatures of all in the chateau. Dickinson’s hope—the thing with feathers—is what she ministers to. The meekest creatures who shall inherit the Earth, like us sensitive souls, are the beneficiaries of her guardianship.

And when my fairy godmother of a friend made these connections, she returned me to the world as a place of goodness, heart, and possibility. I could sense my own gold again.

It wasn’t a thought, it wasn’t a behavior. It was a feeling that enveloped everything that showed me I was home again.

The castle was never where I had wanted to live. I had always wanted to be amongst the creatures who knew how fragile and blessed this one wild and precious life is.

If that was wrong, I didn’t want to be right.