I basically only write about my OCD when it’s not going very well. Given that my OCD centers around scary diseases (especially my loved ones having or catching them) I did not do very well during the womp-womp hantavirus “pandemic” that Zero Covid Twitter prophesized. And today, I’m writing about my OCD because—shocker—it’s been beating my ass lately.
But the silver lining in all of this is that I can finally articulate the only way I’ve ever been able to “defeat” my OCD (albeit in an ongoing, never-ending way…but thankfully, in a way that anyone can do). TLDR: I treat it like a demonic entity, although to be clear, I am fully aware it is not actually a demonic entity. (Can’t wait for the gossip that appears three months later: “Did you know CHH literally sought an exorcism for anxiety one time? What a millennial white woman thing to do.”)
While traveling this summer I was unable to meet my therapist for ERP (ie: exposure therapy, the gold standard for OCD). Add in a bunch of new locations and triggers, and it’s a perfect storm. I won’t get into details, but this month I became very worried about a loved one having a fatal disease with 1 in a million prevalence. I’m assuming that a normal person would never have Googled enough to discover this disease in the first place, nor would they worry about it after discovering it, but what can I say? I’m not normal. I’m a heckin’ mentally ill chungus.
Anyway, because this disease is so rare, I blew through almost all the medical literature on it in about a day. Still not reassured that my loved one was safe, I turned to AI, but I had to cheat with the free ChatGPT version because nice and ethical Claude refused to “reinforce my OCD.” The more reassurance and research I sought, the worse everything got. What’s worse, I already knew this would happen because it has happened many times before. But I was so worried about this disease, blinded by the degree of anxiety, that I was convinced that if I just read something that could “rule it out,” I would feel better. Narrator: She did not, in fact, feel better.
Once I realized I had to turn this around, I remembered a “trick” I had used the last time I was able to crawl out of the rabbit hole and actually stop my reassurance-seeking and Googling compulsions. This trick sounds a bit crazy, but sometimes you have to fight crazy with crazy. Basically: I simply pretend that my OCD is an otherworldly demonic entity.
BTW: I’m running a 30% off sale on annual subscriptions for the next week! (Even at my regular prices, I have some of the lowest $-for-article volume pricing on Substack, but a summer sale can’t hurt.)
