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ocd
Viewers with OCD review Channel 4’s Pure and share their own experiences of the condition
In the middle of my illness I forgot to show this to everyone. I got a chance to write about OCD for the Radio Times!
#Pure is pretty accurate to the OCD experience so far. Especially the part when you scrunch up your face to stop the thoughts getting in. It never works.
Take Photos of Stove Dials Before You Leave for Vacation
…before leaving the house, take a photo of your stove and oven dials—or your thermostat, or your iron, or anything else you worry about accidentally leaving on. If your brain starts to play the “Did I really turn it off” game, you can simply tap your photo app and see for yourself
Reblogging to save a life
I also like to take photos of letters before I send them!
this may be a weird question but uh, do you know of any characters with (preferably not the stereotypical make fun of type of) ocd? I’ve been very desperate to find some proper representation
It’s not weird at all!
A few notes before the list: I’m not too familiar with shows that have OCD rep, nor do I have OCD, so this list is made up of characters from things I haven’t read or watched, nor do I know if they portray OCD or OCPD. I’ve put information as best I could from what people have said about it.
And, of course, if anyone knows of any other characters please feel free to tell me or comment and I can add it in, or if you’re familiar with the character, please let me know if the rep was offensive or not.
- Adrian Monk – Monk (*Sometimes played off as jokes, but mc with OCD who’s shown as brilliant and a wonderful detective)
- Anarchist/Tike Alicar (Earth-616) – X-Men comics (*Unsure which versions he shows up in, but this link may help as it has footnotes which includes some of the comics he’s in).
- Bea – OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu (Found from this list)
- Ellie Bishop – NCIS (*Non explicit)
- Emma Pillsbury – Glee (*I recall some jokes but also Emma’s distress about having OCD, moreso as the show went on. However this is Glee, so the rep may not have been ideal)
- Joseph Chandler – Whitechapel (*Main character, OCD was shown as a serious illness that impacts his life/job and is not joked about)
- Kevin Casey – Scrubs (*I recall that this showed how it negatively affected his life and job, but I believe he was only in 2-3 episodes)
- Monica Geller – Friends (*I recall there being jokes about this)
- Randall Brown – The Hour (BBC) (*Not played for laughs)
- Riddler – DC Comics (*Multiple versions, disorder seems to be related to his obsession with riddles)
- Sheldon Cooper – The Big Bang Theory (*Often played off as a joke at Sheldon’s expense)
Ooh I just thought of someone else: possibly/probably Wasabi from Big Hero 6? It’s not outright said that he has it, but I recognise some of his behaviours… (putting things in their proper places, getting anxious if certain rules aren’t followed.)
Mental Illness in the Horror Genre
Something that pissed me off the other day.
Talking to a guy who knows my parents but doesn’t know me very well, and he tells me that his friend (indeed, a very nice and talented actor) recently put out a horror movie. And I’m interested until I hear the words “So it’s about this guy with OCD…” and at that point my mom and I give each other a sidelong glance.
I say, “I don’t know, because I have OCD and it’s a pretty serious thing for me.”
To which he follows up, “Oh, you don’t have it like this guy! You’re totally functional!”
Okay, dude. Yes, I am standing before you in a fancy club, dressed nice, and looking relatively balanced. But you do not know me. You do not know OCD.
You do not know that I have been non-functional, and that in order to maintain my current balance of sanity, I take daily medication and see a weekly therapist, and I still have downward spirals and panic attacks.
OCD can add to a story, for sure. The Aviator is a great example–albeit, it was on the voyeuristic side, kind of “check out what a weirdo this guy really is”, but his condition was portrayed in a realistic and *sympathetic* manner, because it focused so hard on his anxiety and entrapment.
I don’t need a horror movie about my disorder for a couple reasons.
1. I already live the horror movie that is OCD.
2. Just like people with psychosis, schizophrenia/schizotypal disorders, dissociative identity disorders, and any other number of mental disorder that makes us act in unusual and yes, sometimes frightening ways, I don’t need it to be the hinge for your horror flick, a handy device that makes more people like you scared and misunderstanding of people like me.
3. And for people with the above disorders who may not be diagnosed, they don’t need to be told that they are dangerous monsters and cause them to avoid treatment out of fear. (This goes double for people who experience paranoia or delusions as part of their symptoms.)This post ended up way longer than I meant, but really, truly, hear me out creators:
MENTAL ILLNESS IS A TRAIT AMONG AN INFINITE VARIETY OF PEOPLE. IT IS NOT A CHARACTER FLAW, AND IT IS DEFINITELY A POOR PLOT DEVICE FOR THE HORROR GENRE. YOU CAN DO BETTER.
*Loudly looks @ the movie “Split” *
For real can we stop this shit along with having horror movies take place in mental hospitals
But imagine that the protagonist is the one with the OCD.
She is targeted by a serial killer who enjoys toying with people, gaslighting by proxy, and ‘maybe I’m going crazy’ works perfectly on all his victims until this one.
Because she knows the difference. She checks that her door is locked a dozen times before leaving the house, so she knows she didn’t leave it open. She unplugs every appliance in the house before she leaves, so she knows she didn’t leave the television on. Her clothes have to be organized in a very specific way so she knows that someone’s been touching them.
Of course, the horror movie aspect comes in when, because she has OCD, nobody believes any of this. Not the police, not her friends and family, nobody. “Everybody just forgets sometimes” or “It’s just your mind playing tricks on you” mouthed by people who don’t understand that she doesn’t EVER forget, that her mind plays tricks on her all the time and this is not like that, this is someone else *doing* it. she has more than enough experience to tell the difference.
When she reports whispers coming from inside the walls, she gets asked if it could just be ‘in her head’. No. It can’t. She knows what the inside of her head sounds like and it’s nothing like this. But nobody believes that.
She can’t leave the house because every time she does, someone comes in and touches and moves her things but nobody believes her. Her family come over to try to ‘calm her down’ which is absolutely zero help. It doesn’t matter how many traps she sets to prove that someone is in the house, nobody believes she didn’t trip them herself. In desperation, she turns to the people in her therapy group. Someone is in my house, moving things, whispering things, and nobody believes me, I need help or I’m pretty sure he’ll kill me.
And they show up, en masse, with improvised weapons and toolboxes, and they search every inch of her house (without making a mess in any way because they totally understand that that would upset her) and when she says the voice comes out of her bedroom wall they start measuring every room and wall and *that* wall might be thick enough for someone to hide inside so they tap on every inch with a rock taped to the end of a broomstick so they’re not in arm’s reach and that bit sounds hollow and that and that and that but *that* bit doesn’t and the serial killer bursts out to find a) way more people than he expected and b) OCD protagonist wielding a butcher knife.
When he’s doubled up on the floor screaming and clutching his bleeding abdomen they call an ambulance because they are not murderers unlike this guy and he gets pulled out and taken to hospital and her friends from therapy offer her a scrupulously clean spare bedroom and help cleaning up the blood and fixing the place up again and anything else she needs.
Six months later she’s back at work, and hears a receptionist talking about how her ex is being kind of creepy and she’s sure he’s sneaking into the house when she’s not home but her friends think she’s totally overreacting and maybe she’s just crazy –
OCD protagonist tells her that no, she is not crazy, and anyone who discounts her fears like that is not a friend. If she doesn’t feel safe, she needs to take steps to protect herself. Would she like to know how to rig some little traps to let her know for sure if someone’s been in the house? OCD protagonist knows some good ones.
Traps? Would they, like, hurt him?
They could. Would she like them to?
Yes please.
:D this is EXTREMELY relevant to my interests and now I’m mad this movie doesn’t exist because so few promising horror movies are coming out this year
This seems like a good place to mention that I especially love narratives where the MC’s mental illness or neurodivergence helps them out (aside from the ‘white autistic man is good at math’ trope because that’s been done to death) in situations that neurotypical people would have a hard time with – this reminds me of what I tried to do with Sally in The Ninth Daughter, where there’s a monster that specializes in manipulating reality without people noticing – but Sally’s schizophrenic and used to checking and re-checking the world around her for reality, so it doesn’t work on her.
In layman’s terms, OCD is the chain-letter-posts of the mind. It’s like having one of those “if you do not reblog this, you’re family will die” posts pop up in your mind, but instead of reblogging or reposting, you have to flick a light switch or pick something up that you just put down.
But with much higher stakes than ‘just in case’. Because your disorder makes you terrified that it might be true, no matter how unlikely it is.
Just in case.
no offense but this is literally the most neurotypical thing i have ever seen
Uhhhh… no.
This is what they teach you in therapy to deal with BPD and general depression.
When I got out of the hospital after hurting myself a second time, I got put into intensive outpatient program for people being released from mental hospitals as a way to monitor and help transition them into getting them efficient long-term care.
This is something they stressed, especially for people with general depression. When you want to stay at home and hide in your bed, forcing yourself to do the opposite is what is helpful. For me, who struggles with self harm- “I want to really slice my arm up. The opposite would be to put lotion on my skin (or whatever would be better, like drawing on my skin) the opposite is the better decision.” It doesn’t always work because of course mental health isn’t that easy, but this is part of what’s called mindfulness (they say this all the time in therapy)Being mindful of these is what puts you on the path to recovery. If you’re mindful, you are able to live in that moment and try your best to remember these better options.
I swear to god, I don’t get why some people on this website straight up reject good recovery help like this because either they a)have never been in therapy so don’t understand in context how to use these coping tactics. Or b)want to insist that all therapists and psych doctors are neurotypical and have zero idea what they are talking about. (Just so ya know, they teach this in DBT, the therapy used to help BPD. The psychologist who came up with DBT actually had BPD, so….a neurotypical women didn’t come up with this.)
I have clinical OCD and for me, exposure therapy–a version of “do the opposite”–has been fundamental. I’ve had huge improvement in the last year, but I’m 100% clear that if I hadn’t done my best to follow this protocol I’d be fucked. I have a lot of empathy for that moment when you’re just too tired to fight and you check the stove or you wash your hands or go back to the office at midnight to make sure the door is locked. But the kind of therapeutic approach outlined above has been crucial for me.
It’s hard to do. I’ve weathered panic attacks trying to follow this protocol. But I’ve gotten remarkable results. I was afraid to touch the surfaces in my house, okay? I was afraid to touch my own feet, afraid to touch my parrot–deliberately exposing myself to “contamination” has helped me heal. I can’t speak for people with other issues, but this has helped my anxiety and OCD.
I feel that tumblr, in an effort to be accepting of mental illness, has become anti-recovery. Having a mental illness does not make you a bad person. There is nothing morally wrong with having a mental illness anymore than more than there’s something morally wrong with having the flu. However, if you’re “ill” physically or mentally, something is wrong in the sense that you are unwell and to alleviate that you should try to get better. While there is not “cure” for mental illness, there are ways to get better.
There was a post on tumblr where someone with ADHD posted about how much you can get done when you focus and was attacked for posting about being “nuerotypical” – when she was posting about the relief she got from being on an medication to treat her illness.
I saw another post going around tumblr that said something along the line of “you control your thoughts, why not choose to have happy thoughts” which again was shot down as “nuerotypical” but while you don’t have control over what thoughts come into your mind, you absolutely can and should choose to have happy thoughts. In DBT we call this “positive self talk”.
I’m in DBT to help treat PTSD stemming from child abuse. The abuse and abandonment I experienced destroyed my self esteem and created a lot of anxiety over upsetting other people. DBT has taught me to recognize when my thoughts are distorting realty ‘no one likes you’ and answer back ‘plenty of people like you, you don’t need everyone to like you, especially if the relationship doesn’t make you happy’, to respond to the thought ‘I’m so worthless’ with ‘you’re really great and have accomplished something’
And it’s not easy to challenge your thoughts, it’s a skill that’s learned and it’s hard to force yourself to think something that doesn’t seem authentic or even seems wrong to think – it’s hard to be encouraging towards yourself when you hate yourself – but you force yourself to be aware of your thoughts and push back when you fall into unhealthy patterns
That isn’t “so neurotypical” that’s recovery.
Not shaming mental illness doesn’t mean shaming RECOVERY.
Pro-Recovery isn’t anti-disability.
Do not shame healthy behaviors as “neurotypical”.
Learning healthy behaviors and taking steps to treat mental illness and disorders including taking medication if that’s what works for you is important. You shouldn’t be ashamed if you have mental illness, but you shouldn’t say ‘well I’m not neurotypical therefor I can’t do anything to get better’ – while there is no cure for mental illness, there is a lot you can do to get better, to function better, to manage your mental illness and be safer, happier, and healthier for it.
DO NOT SHAME HEALTHY BEHAVIORS AS “NEUROTYPICAL”.
I have social anxiety, among other things. I was terrified to talk to anyone new for years. So I started going to cons and staying too busy to notice that I was nervous af. Immersion one one’s own terms is invaluable as a tool.
I think the assumption some people make about therapy is that recovery is to make us easier to deal with, and no, it’s more like adjusting your diet if you have diabetes.
I am trying to get better because my illnesses are fatal if left untreated.
My therapist: gives me advice on how to cope with something
Me: what kind of neurotypical bullshit!!!Also worth reiterating, again, that the creator of DBT herself had BPD–she was not coming from a “neurotypical” point of view.
I do exposure therapy for my OCD. It can be absolutely, thoroughly horrible. But it does help.