With and Without You
How to Be Whole With and Without OCD
I thought I started an OCD support group for others, but it was really for myself. Or, more accurately, for us.
Those of us who’ve always felt misunderstood, unseen, unsupported, and unwitnessed.
You’d think with all the visibility for OCD these days, everyone with OCD might already feel this—including me, including us—but here’s the secret hiding in plain sight.
Hardly anybody connects to OCD in a way that you feel in your bones and know in your heart.
And I don’t just mean talking about all of the terrorizing rabbit holes we all know so well, I’m talking about the profound sensitivity and feeling that comes along with our sensibility.
It took a group of other OCD sufferers to show me something I’ve always known but never thought aloud: we need to be seen in our fullness in order to heal and thrive. We need to know that these challenges and intricacies of our sensibility aren’t just design flaws, they’re design virtues too.
And most importantly of all, we need to feel and hear others seeing it with us, reflecting it back and seeing that once and for all, there is part of us that is REAL that has never been fully acknowledged. Not by the world, not by OCD specialists, not even by ourselves (Don’t feel guilty—how could we if it wasn;t reflected back to us in the first place?).
What are some of these virtues that need to be witnessed by others?
The capacity to feel and think so intensely and deeply is miraculously wonderful and difficult. It means that so much gets through and into us that it’s easy to lose our center and easily start doubting ourselves. Like a method actor, we easily feel into the experience of others but lose hold of the moorings on our own. Imagine if actor Daniel Day-Lewis couldn’t easily return back to himself after his many out-of-this world performances—that’s what it’s like for us on the daily.
OCD comes in to oversimplify and distract us. OCD is a way of dealing with the immense ambivalence of feeling and thinking so much. How is it possible to feel that I’m with my soulmate and also doubt if they truly are the right person? How is possible that I’m terrified of losing my parents and I also sometimes feel angered or hurt by things they do or say to me? OCD comes in to take us away from all of this difficult conflict and focus us literally one one thing that we must solve. It’s seemingly unrelated to what we need to find our center again, but if you look closer, it’s totally connected. You just have to learn how to decode it!
Decoding OCD holds the key to its creative message: OCD might have a new mother worry about harming her child when it’s trying to inform her that she needs more time to be self-interested and even selfish because she’s so tired, overworked, and psychologically underpaid. OCD might try to have you concerned about an illness du jour because it doesn’t want you to be in touch with an existential dread related to yourself or someone you love—perhaps they are sick but also were a difficult parent, and it’s really complicated to be with those feelings. OCD is trying to show and conceal this from you, trying to protect you, but then it also drives you crazy by constantly throwing you off the trail and further away from yourself.
Come Back To Being Human With Range and Nuance Again: So often, we have a hard time staying whole because the world doesn’t accurately reflect back the nuance and range that we’re capable of. Instead of trusting in that center, we start to overcompensate by being as pure and perfect as we can. We try to make up for the lack of sensitivity we have seen or experienced and try to be a superhero of goodness, empathy, and decency. The only problem is that being human is much more interesting, messy, and complex. Reminding ourselves of this Shakespearian range can help us back, and being around others who can see and speak to that range—and live it too—can make a world of of a difference.
Curious about any of your questions and comments on your own experience with this aspect of OCD. Have you always felt it was hard to have your whole self reflected back? Have you struggled with only seeing the downsides of OCD and not being supported in the upsides of this sensitive sensibility?
I want to hear from you and answer any and all of your questions. And a special thank you to the group that has taught me so much, and sees me in ways I never knew I was looking for—it is so lovely to see each other for who we actually are. That is the true gift.
Thank you for this article