OCD Awareness and its Misrepresentation

Hello everybody, I’ve actually posted all about this many months ago, but the topic closed because it had been so long! I find this topic important, so I’m making it again. I feel that it should be talked about more as well.

One thing that really bothers me is the misuse of OCD. I’ve had OCD since I was 3 years old (which is very rare to be diagnosed with that young) and am very passionate about spreading awareness about the disorder. The term OCD is now more than ever used incorrectly just about everywhere I look.

OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is a debilitating mental illness that is often overlooked by people and not taken seriously. Social media, influencers, celebrities, etc, portray it to be a quirky adjective, or just something that everybody has. Many of my past teachers have even misused it. Let me start off by saying that not everybody has it. It is far more complex than what many people realize.

It is not a joke or something to be taken so lightly. It’s just as serious as other mental illnesses but due to the stigma around it these days, no one takes me seriously if I say I have it. I waste hours every day doing rituals and other things in my head. Somethings I do physical rituals that other people notice. Sometimes I’m accused of spacing out. I take medication for it, which has helped me. To put the disorder in simpler terms, people with OCD have an electrochemical imbalance of turning the cells in their brain off.

Myself, just like many other people who have been diagnosed with this debilitating disorder, get understandably annoyed and insulted when others use the term frivolously to describe being neat, or just wanting something a certain way. There are so many stereotypes around it too, such as being neat or being a perfectionist. Of course some people who have it have those traits, but it’s not the only determining factor. It’s how much these rituals and thoughts disturb your everyday life. Please don’t misuse it or say you have it without being diagnosed!! It’s debilitating and not “fun” to have! ( yes, people have told me I’m lucky to have it.) Also grammatically saying “I’m so OCD” makes no sense. OCD is not a word… it stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You must be diagnosed. You cannot diagnose yourself. It’s not an adjective.

I know this is not in the promote your story section and the point of this thread is to talk about OCD… but adding to the topic, I have a couple stories about OCD.

My newest story is called OCD - Rituals.

A long time ago I wrote a story called Truthfully Yours, OCD . It was featured on the 2019 Voices of PWD shelf! (I wrote it when I was newer to coding, which is why I wrote Rituals.)

I’ll leave the links if you wanna check it out, because it’s kinda hard to think of everything I wanna say as I’m writing this. If you want to know more about it, that would be cool if you checked them out! I also encourage people to research it. Thanks for reading some of my thoughts.

Please feel free to ask questions and bring up other topics regarding mental illness misrepresentation.

My Instagram is @gabi.episode if you want to reach out. I’m open to talk about this subject!

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Thank you for writing this post. :heart:

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Currently reading the story you recommended me, Rituals! An absolutely amazing story. Thank you for bringing this topic up :100:

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I love this thread, thank you :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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ugh thank you for this!! I have OCD and it’s honestly ruined so many aspects of my life before I started any sort of treatment. It was literal torture because of how much it worsened when my anxiety would spike :confused:

So, seriously, thank you. It’s extremely offensive when people misrepresent it or say “omg this messes with my OCD!!!1!1!” LIKE DOES IT?? DOES IT REALLY CAROL?? :unamused:

ANYWAY! HANG IN THERE!! I’ll def be checking this out ◡̈

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Hii, thanks so much for this!
I have OCD - To be more specific i’m misophonic. It gets worse rather than better.
Anyway, i’m glad you brought this up, and i’ll be definitely checking out your story :sunny:

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Oh, thank you!

It’s rough for sure… especially before any treatment.
And Carol really just needs to stop. :roll_eyes:
Hope you’re doing good! And thanks!

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Thank you so much for spreading awareness! I’m really looking forward to checking out your stories as soon as I can. :grin:

Moved to Episode Fan Community since this is about Episode stories. Make sure to check out our Forum Tutorial for more info about creating topics, and feel free to PM me if you’ve got questions. :smiley:

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Great post!

A lot of people say “I’m so OCD” or “this is triggering my OCD” when they don’t even have it and barely know what it is. It’s sad and frustrating to see yet another mental illness that has been made to seem like a “quirky” personality trait to have.

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Thank you! And yes, it’s very misused! :roll_eyes:

Hey! I totally get not wanting to openly speak about it. It took me years to finally feel comfortable. Whether you ever feel comfortable doing so or not, just know that you shouldn’t feel shame. From what I’ve noticed before though (from my experiences anyway), it’s not really something people judge you for. They might not understand it fully, so if the timing is appropriate, I like explaining it a little. There is a stigma around topics like this in general, but the more people who actually are aware of how challenging it is to live with, the more they’ll sympathize and therefore stop misusing it.

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I really support you!

I don’t have OCD but I am deaf. I know it’s not the same but I do get the feeling of a miss used disability (or disorder), especially with the lip reading aspect. Only 30% of the English language can be lip read so it’s really had.

Thank you for sharing this! I got to learn a lot and now I know to be careful how I use OCD thank you again!

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Hi! Thank you!

And wow. Only 30%?

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I hate It when my mom and even brother says “everyone has a little OCD!!” LIKE NO.

Thanks for this post! I also want to talk about another type of OCD:

Pure Obsessional OCD is a type of OCD that is more focused on mental and intrusive thoughts instead of physical compulsions. People (like myself) who have this type of OCD have repeating images and scenarios of different things, and some of these things can range from religion and relationships, sexuality, etc. to violence. There’s information regarding this type of OCD online, and as someone who has it, it can be very distressing.

OCD in general is very misused and misunderstood, and it sucks that people like to use it as a joke or a light subject. Hoping that people are educated on OCD better.

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