By: Abigail Anerella ❤️
*If you haven't read the "About OCD" tab, I suggest you read it before taking to time to read this story.*
If I’m being completely honest, I’m not quite sure where the stigma about being “perfect” started having a connection to being “so OCD”. I can’t speak for everyone who has OCD, but I can speak for myself in saying that it’s an extremely frightening topic to talk about. Since people have this idea that OCD is color coordinating your closet, or organizing your desk a certain way to make it aesthetically pleasing, I’ve constantly been at a loss of words for how to properly express what has gone through my brain. I only can imagine that I'm not the only person who feels this way.
For the 2 years I went undiagnosed, I spoke up about my experiences to 2 people. One was my mom, and the other was my hometown therapist. I didn’t want people to judge me, and I didn’t want people to look at me differently. I thought staying silent was the only way to get better. Maybe if I never talked about it, I could act like it was never there.
This worked for me until… shocker… it didn’t.
In making this website, the only thing I ask for is that people understand the message I want to put out. A disorder, coined “The Silent Disease” by its own community, feels like it’s been stigmatized beyond change. I want to change it for whoever is taking the time to listen to me with an open mind and an open heart.
That being said my story started in the summer of 2020. I was at a high level of stress and anxiety for other personal reasons, and that alone sparked an emotional battle with anxiety.
I remember being in the nail salon when a truly intrusive thought popped into my brain: "what if I'm not straight?" With no connection to reality, or what was happening in the present moment, I was left with nothing but confusion. I shrugged it off as whatever with the knowledge that what I was thinking wasn't true.
I went home that day and the more I tried to shrug it off and ignore it, the stronger it became. I couldn't come up with a reason for why the logical side of my brain knew what was true, but why the emotional side of my brain was so keen on attacking me.
I started having something that I like to call, "bliss periods". For very short moments of time, when my OCD was silent and I was present in my body, my emotion and logic connected, and I could know and feel that what was going through my head was unrealistic and didn't make sense. I kept trying to get these bliss periods back through a series of compulsions. Even just 5 seconds of bliss was worth it to me.
For months, my symptoms started rapidly getting worse, which led to me becoming silent. Anyone who knows me knows I've always been an outgoing person. Being silent isn't really something that matches my personality. I felt lonely with my thoughts. They kept leading me down a rabbit hole with no answers and seemingly no way out.
"Why all of a sudden is this happening? Why am I having these thoughts in the first place? I'm thinking them so it must be true. But it's not true, so why am I thinking them?"
***For those who aren't educated on the severity of OCD, OCD likes to take all of your core values and parts of your identity and flip them around. Everything you know to be apart of your character gets turned upside down and thrown out the window. The reason OCD is so distressing is because it tries to convince you of a life and reality outside of your own. So to whoever is taking the time to read this saying, "This is bizarre. This doesn't even seem like a real diagnosis. How could she not be secure in who she is?" To that I'm going to answer with one of three things:
1) I agree with you. It's bizarre, it doesn't seem real, it's uncomfortable to talk about, and doesn't make sense
2) Now you know why it's called the silent disease.
3) OCD doesn't respond to logic and it does not respond to evidence behind that logic. So trying to throw logic in its face is like going to your job and not getting paid, a complete and utter waste of time :)
I finally turned to the internet in search of what was wrong with me. Were my thoughts real? Was I just in denial?
I landed on a website titled, "NOCD", and started crying. I wasn't the only person struggling with something so bizarre. This is real? This is what OCD actually is?
For the next few days I was constantly stuck on the same website reading the same words and the same symptoms over and over again to confirm that I could relate to what they were saying. But for some reason, the only time I was ever relieved was when I was reading the post. When I turned my phone off the cycle seemed to start up all over again (this I would later find out is the deadly cycle of how compulsive behaviors are so harmful).
I completely stopped eating and ended up losing 40 lbs. I was so nauseous from my thoughts that food repulsed me and I couldn't stomach anything I put in my body. For a year I listened to people tell me that I was too skinny, that I needed to eat a cheeseburger, or that I looked sick. All of it was hurtful, but it seemed like the easier way out to deal with the comments rather than trying to explain something that felt unexplainable. I finally knew I had to tell someone about what was happening. The only problem I kept facing was the question, "what if they don't believe you? What if they just think you're in denial?"
I took the risk of that happening, because at that point I didn't care what anyone thought. I just wanted to get better and knew I couldn't do it alone. I sat my mom down in my room and explained everything to her. I felt like I was speaking a different language. Begging her to believe me and trying to explain how it felt like I had two different brains in my body. My mom was extremely supportive, but also visibly worried. I wasn't sleeping at night, I was rapidly losing weight, and I had no interest in doing anything. I deleted all social media off my phone in efforts to avoid anything that would trigger me, and I never wanted to hangout with my friends.
I got in contact with a therapist from my hometown and she's someone I still see to this day. I was honest with her about everything, and she was incredibly helpful in more ways than one. At this point, I never got an official OCD diagnosis. And my therapist isn't specialized in OCD, so she wasn't able to diagnose me herself. That being said, she unknowingly helped me deal with my OCD the way it's supposed to be dealt with. By accepting uncertainty. By acknowledging your thoughts, but not engaging in them. By accepting that they are just thoughts, and you aren't defined by your anxiety. I adapted the mentality, "I don't think this is true, but if it ends up being true one day then whatever" and "I don't want this right now, so focus on what you do want." "What iffing" your OCD back at itself is probably one of the greatest ways to deal with it. It's what iffing you, so why not give it a taste of its own medicine right?
About 10 months into therapy I met the most special boy, Thomas, who I am now lucky enough to call my boyfriend. My life seemed perfect. I fell in love with a boy who made my worry seem to fade away. My OCD felt like it was healed and I was finally able to breathe. I never talked about my OCD with my therapist after I started dating Thomas out of a fear that I would get triggered and start ruminating again. Shutting up about it seemed like the best way to deal with it. Why poke a sleeping beast if you don't have to?
9 months into my relationship with Thomas, right as we were about to start long distance freshman year of college, I got another intrusive thought. "What if you don't actually love him?"
This sparked a rumination spiral. How could I not love him? Of course I love him.
But the more I tried to reason with my OCD, the more it bullied me.
Me: Of course you love him. You have never doubted that before.
OCD: Yeah but what if you were just lying to yourself?
Me: I'm not lying to myself, I am in love with him.
OCD: You're probably just in love with the idea of him.
Me: *searches up online how you actually know you love someone.*
*is reassured that I am actually in love with him*
Me: See? I told you I love him.
OCD: Yeah, but you guys never argue. Arguing is a sign that you care for your partner.
Me: *starts an unnecessary argument as proof that you love him*
OCD: Wow you're arguing. You must really dislike him.
What people don't realize is that this is what goes through an OCD brain even when they're actively doing something. I couldn't count the amount of people that have been subjected to a zoned out version of me while I was trying to mentally piece together my OCD with broken puzzle pieces.
I went to college in the midst of my Relationship OCD flare up. And just because I'm extra lucky, my ROCD started feeding off of my SO-OCD and vice versa. So now I was hit with a double whammy as I moved 5 hours away from home, my boyfriend was 900 miles away in Minnesota, and my safe space felt like it was ripped from underneath me. I was surrounded by a bunch of people I didn't know, in an unfamiliar bed, and what felt like an even lonelier lifestyle than when I experienced in my first OCD flare up.
The first weekend of college, I went out with a huge group of girls that I barely knew. I was having anxiety the entire night, and I don't drink, which already made the night seem more anxiety inducing. Throughout the course of the whole night (from 8pm-12am) I had about 3 drinks. I remember being so anxious that I almost felt drunk. My vision felt like it was blurring and my head was killing me. I felt like I was in a body that wasn't mine. I was texting and calling my boyfriend the whole night for a feeling of safety in an unfamiliar place. At this point, he didn't know about any of my struggles with OCD.
The next morning I woke up with extreme anxiety. I couldn't breathe, I was nauseous, my head was pounding. Was I hungover? There's no way. What if you blacked out and cheated and forgot about it because you were so drunk?
I searched through my phone for time stamps on my conversations with Thomas. There wasn't a period longer than 20 minutes where I wasn't in touch with him. Was that long enough to do something, forget about it because it was traumatic, then remember the rest of the night?
Disclaimer: for those who don't have OCD who have come this far into this post... yes, I am aware how unrealistic all of these things sound when you say them out loud. Yes, I am aware that I KNOW they aren't true. Yes, I have a disorder that takes logic and puts it through the paper shredder.
I texted my college friend and asked her if I acted weird at all the previous night. She said no then asked why. I made up a lie and said I was drunk and wanted to know if I was being annoying.
What was a double OCD battle now turned into a triple one. Now I was creating fake scenarios in my brain that felt like real memories. I convinced myself I could cure myself on my own by reading articles on how to deal with OCD. Obviously none of this ever worked, and the world seemed like it was melting around me.
Parents weekend rolled around and my parents showed up at my school with my cousin and his husband. My dad rented a loft apartment that we all stayed in for the weekend. We all gathered up on the couch, where we scrolled through Netflix for something to watch. And what did we end up watching? The Dahmer Show. If you haven't watched this show, do yourself a favor and never watch it. Evan Peters said in an interview that he went to a very dark place filming the show and had to attend therapy for it. What they don't tell you is that it also sends people to a dark place while watching it.
And so my Harm OCD was activated. And I never felt more sick to my stomach in my life. I was having constant intrusive thoughts about harm. Asking myself if I was capable of ever doing something like Dahmer did. Asking myself if I was secretly a monster, and trying my best to avoid my family during parents weekend.
For those wondering what OCD can look like: this was me in the middle of a horrible OCD flare up during parents weekend. And I looked like nothing was wrong because I tried my best for it to look that way. (Hi Dean)
This was the moment I knew I needed extra help. My mom knew about my first OCD flare up, so I knew I could always talk to her. I couldn't speak to my therapist because she was only licensed in New Jersey (I was at the University of Pittsburgh), so I turned to my boyfriend. Terrified of the response that I was going to get, I expected he was going to break up with me for thinking I was some sort of freak. I accepted that as a strong possibility, but to my surprise, he did the exact opposite.
Thomas if you're reading this: you are an angel. And I love you so much.
I let everything out to him, and I know if he was with me instead of 900 miles away he would've held me tighter than he ever did. Even though my symptoms were so severe, I felt at peace knowing I had one more person on my side to battle the monster that is OCD.
Fast forward to October, I visited my him in Minnesota and ta-da! my OCD once again felt like it was gone. No stress. No worry. No obsessing. How could I ever believe that any of that was real? Looking back on this now, after having been through the therapy I have, it's so clear to me that OCD presents itself during high levels of stress. Visiting Thomas took the weight off my shoulders, and the power out of the hands of OCD.
From the end of the trip to the beginning of November, I felt like I was riding a wave of emotions. Some days were good, some were bad, some were just eh. None were special, until for my 19th birthday I came home to my entire family.
Everything felt right in the world again, and I didn't want to go back to school. I knew my OCD would flare up.
My OCD hopped from subtype to subtype for the next couple of months until Winter break. I tried my best to do everything I could, but I subconsciously was giving into compulsions that only made things worse. Before OCD I was about 145 lbs. In December of 2022 I was now 103 lbs.
I cried on the phone to either my Mom or Thomas almost everyday with what felt like no way out. My OCD was getting worse, and my grasp on reality kept slipping away.
What most people don't know about OCD is that the reason it gets so sticky is because it feels so real. It feels so real because your body is reacting to your thoughts as if they are reality based. Similar to how you react to movies or tv shows like they are real. Jump scares, a fast heart beat, an attachment to a fictional character, built up anger at the antagonist. OCD works in the same way, the only difference is that in real life, you can get up and leave the movie theater or turn the tv off. But with OCD, it's the one in charge of the remote (spoiler: it never uses the "off" button).
I went back to school for 6 days of the second semester. On the 6th day I got a random intrusive thought looking out the window on the 10th floor of my dorm building, "what if you just jumped?" Terrified by what just entered my brain, I closed the window, shut the blinds, put all sharp things away, sat in my bed, and researched about 12 different times..."How do I know if this is actually OCD?"
I couldn't sleep that night, and I got out of bed at 5 am. Coincidentally enough, I opened my phone to a text from my Aunt saying she got a sign she should reach out to me, and she was having a hard time sleeping too. Her text read, "Thinking of you. I thought I would send you this... XOXO". Attached to the text was a motivational Instagram post (mind you she had no idea I even struggled with anxiety, let alone OCD). I started crying, called my mom once it hit 8 am, and my Dad showed up at Pitt 4 hours later (it's 5 1/2 hours away).
I was going home with no plan, but to get better. I didn't care about school. I cared about getting a diagnosis that I knew I had.
On the way home I started to experience depersonalization episodes that lasted for a week (read Blog Post: My Struggles With Depersonalization). I finally got an OCD diagnosis, went back to my hometown therapist, and we searched for outpatient programs for patients with OCD.
I attended an AMAZING facility called The Anxiety Institute in Madison, NJ (If you would like to learn more about my treatment read Blog Post: My Treatment Journey), and I graduated in May of 2023.
I am not cured of OCD because, well, there is no cure. What I am cured of though is feeling lonely in a place that was always full of life. I still have a long way to go, and a lot I need to work on. 2 1/2 years of bad thinking habits aren't magically cured in a few months.
All that matters is I'm getting there, and with the right help, you'll get there too. Everything will always be okay. Trust me, and don't forget to trust yourself too. ❤️
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