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the ugly side of ocd that the “i’m so ocd!! 
” people don’t know about / don’t want to talk about / deliberately ignore
— a thread
” people don’t know about / don’t want to talk about / deliberately ignore— a thread
trigger warning for ocd and the debilitating repercussions of it. this includes but is not limited to: panic attacks , invasive thoughts , compulsions , anxiety triggers , ableism , sleep trouble , burns , freezing
i haven’t touched a toilet with my bare hands for the past 10 months. there’s no apparent reason. i certainly wash my hands enough to where it wouldn’t matter. i touch dirtier surfaces. it’s just a compulsion that i haven’t been able to shake for nearly a year.
i’ve missed countless hours of school bc i had panic attacks over something my ocd tells me i didn’t do thoroughly enough at home. it could be checking the locks an additional time, turning off lights, or even something entirely irrational like pushing in a chair a certain way.
no matter how long i spend in bed, i average about 4 hours of sleep a night (on a good night) because i cannot sleep unless EVERYTHING sits right on my body. that’s the pillow case, the blankets, every article of my clothing, my hair, my stuffed bear, my cat, and anything —>
else that most people are not even aware of. i psychically cannot fall asleep unless everything feels a certain, virtually unattainable way. even if everything feels as it should at night (which almost never happens, it’s usually more of it coming close and me having to remind —>
myself constantly every second that i can’t do better), that’s not even to mention an aspect that has long been nearly taboo and a symptom that will silence an entire room of people. nobody wants to talk about it. everybody wants to pretend it doesn’t exist so as to not —>
venture into a territory that is so uncomfortable for them to think about. they don’t want to have to address that. they don’t want to try to understand because they never could even begin to. that is the invasive thoughts.
i can never live a normal life as the regular person does. i can never sleep, eat, walk, talk, go anywhere, do anything, buy anything, give anything, i cannot even EXIST normally as others do. invasive thoughts are constant and they are debilitating.
they can’t be compared to anything less than never being able to close your eyes when you have a screen taped to your face showing you the most vile, horrific things you could even begin to imagine. except that it’s constant, and nobody can see the screens. they’re behind our —>
eyes so that nobody knows what’s going on, nobody could understand, and we’re forced into it forever. we can’t close our eyes and make it go away. there is nowhere to run. nowhere to hide.
we’re trapped in a mind that’s plagued with a monster that only wants to make it a living nightmare. when we say we need trigger warnings, that’s because when we experience something that’s triggering to us, it will haunt us for life.
it goes beyond anything any neurotypical person could fathom. we are tortured every second of our life with thoughts and images and sounds that belong nowhere near humankind.
tw // burns , blood , skin coming off
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i wash my hands more than anybody i know. so much so that the skin on my hands burns off every year. i’m in chronic pain 24/7 because my skin is burned. i burn it constantly. it bleeds and cracks and comes off completely. but i can’t stop.
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i wash my hands more than anybody i know. so much so that the skin on my hands burns off every year. i’m in chronic pain 24/7 because my skin is burned. i burn it constantly. it bleeds and cracks and comes off completely. but i can’t stop.
no matter how much i hurt myself, i can’t stop. my ocd will not allow me to stop washing my hands over 25 times a day.
i have to be regulated constantly so that i don’t cause the burns to travel up my forearms as they have in the past when i scrub and wash my arms up to my elbows simply from brushing the back of one of my hand knuckles against my own bedroom wall on accident.
when i wash my hands, i do not touch ANYTHING with my left hand until i no longer need to touch food, paper, my computer, or anything else i want to keep sanitary. i don’t even close my fist because that would mean touching my palm. this has led me to come close to frost-bite —>
when i’ve kept my fingers so still and not touching anything, just sticking out by themselves in freezing temperatures outside, not moving or touching anything warmer than the air around it. but i can’t do anything, my ocd won’t allow it. if i move them, i could accidentally —>
touch something. if i touch a warm substance to keep them from freezing, i would need to wash my hands all over again and the cycle continues. it all sounds so irrational, but ocd is a condition that you can’t reason with. it’s debilitating and never silences
i can’t even begin to go into compulsions or everything that ocd does to me and all of us who suffer from it. i can’t put into words what it’s like to live with it every second of every day. and i know that the average person could not come close to understanding. —>
there’s no way for them to. all i do ask is that instead of trying to understand something that you can’t, you instead try to have compassion and help to break the stigma.
no more “i’m so ocd!! ”
no more “i have ocd : obsessive CAT disorder!!
”
no more “i’m so neat lol i have ocd!!
”
no more “oh you have ocd? so you just love patterns right?”
no more “you don’t have ocd, your room is so messy!”
”no more “i have ocd : obsessive CAT disorder!!
”no more “i’m so neat lol i have ocd!!
”no more “oh you have ocd? so you just love patterns right?”
no more “you don’t have ocd, your room is so messy!”
please just try to have some basic respect. offer to help your friends with ocd, especially if they reach out. don’t make a joke out of us and our condition. don’t turn it into an adjective or a quirk or a compliment. squash ableism and help to break the ocd stigma!
