So, there was this:
Which ended up, eventually, motivating me to comment. After a couple additions and edits, it looks like this:
RE: OCD.
Here's what it is like for me to have OCD- this 'concept' that I have been diagnosed with, that people enjoy mocking [and will continue to mock even after I write this], that few people understand and many enjoy as a replacement for the whole emo shitshow:
OCD is pretty much a prison. You walk around and no one sees that you are stuck in this mobile jail cell. You are a caged animal and everything in the world is your captor, including the people around you [unbeknownst to them]. There are these complex and insane things you have to abide by. You actually understand that they make no sense.
You can't discuss them with anyone because no one understands the literal FEAR that this entire situation generates. It's not like "I'm nervous because I'm imagining these bad things happening" and it's some kind of bad dream you can simply wake up from.
Nope.
It is a constant nightmare playing in your head- the only *temporary* way out is to engage in rituals. Sometimes these rituals are completely obvious: flicking lights, touching door handles, picking up a pen and putting it down. Sometimes it is about avoiding a certain color [red=blood; black=death; brown=dirty, etc].
Sometimes the rituals are actually entirely mental, as is often in my case, If you are in that "nightmare", where you have this horrible intrusive thought, you need to fight it with another thought. Or a word thought over and over. Or you do something that no one else realizes is part of a ritual. Or you start avoiding things.
You live your life in fear because the fear always comes back. The trap is that the only way you know to fight the fear actually increases the likelihood of it coming back.
People will tell you to "just stop" and it's not that easy.
OCD can be heavily based in neurological dysfunction, it has been found. You might as well tell some one to stop blinking, which is actually a great analogy. Try it: stop blinking. You can for a while, but it becomes uncomfortable. If you stop for long enough, it becomes painful. Eventually people around you will notice something is wrong.
OCD is not always solved by medication and therapy. Sometimes it comes back. Sometimes you just live with it. Sometimes the symptoms are better or worse. People may think you like indulging in the symptoms of OCD so you become alienated [which can actually aggravate it].
I personally experience a lot of alienation because OCD puts me in a position where I get to a point where I will eventually literally be in a state of fear if I don't do something- follow through with whatever ritual or compulsion with alleviate my fears, even only temporarily. To be clear: this is not the kind of fear you think you are experiencing when you are on a roller coaster.
This is Literal. Fear...of something catastrophic happening. Unfortunately, the way I need to respond to people, to my environment, to events or simplyhow I behave in general in order to avoid that feeling can be perceived as just being a jerk.
And of course: "first rule of OCD: you don't talk about OCD".
This is not a good time and it doesn't make you "interesting". It can take away my humanity.It has before. Really "neat.
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Great reference for Pure OCD:
http://www.ocduk.org/sites/default/files/understand-pure-o.pdf.pdf
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