I wrote this sobbing last night. Never written anything this easily - it literally poured out of me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the feeling that my own actions could possibly save the lives of those I love. Whether it was my keeping my mom from dying in a tragic car accident and having a mental image of me staring at her casket flash in my mind or if it was keeping my brother safe from the boogeyman, I have always felt compelled to try something. If my actions, or what i later learned are compulsions can make a small difference and help keep someone safe, why would I not just walk back and check the light while counting to eleven three times in a row? It’s nonsensical. It’s illogical, but, yes, I still get these thoughts. It’s because I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD. My earliest obsession that I remember was about telling my little brother the same thing every night. He slept in the bunk bed above me and every night I would tell him “I love you. I have you have good dreams. Please know you can always talk to me about anything.” I said this to my brother ritually because my brain was telling me that if I didn’t my brother would die in his sleep and I’d never have the chance to tell him that. Or worse my brother would die and be mad at me, with me having no recourse to right my unsuspecting wrong prior to his unseemly and early demise. Again, it doesn’t make sense, but to a 9 year old it felt quite burdensome. Then came the religious aspect. It was around this time that I was exposed to Christianity and the idea of being saved. Through learning about the concept of heaven I was also taught that an inverse existed: hell. This would be my OCD’s playground for the next several years. I was taught the Lord’s Prayer and I felt that I had to say it a certain number of times each night in order for God to deem me, a lowly 9 year old sinner, as “worthy” of the kingdom. This number felt absolutely imperative that I complete the prayers otherwise I might die in my sleep and go to hell. So I stayed up and said the prayers over and over. To say the Lord’s Prayer over 100 times in an evening was exhausting for my brain. Then afterwards to have to convince myself that I had met my requisite demands and would be allowed into heaven. Then came puberty and picking my face. I had acne and I was extremely self conscious about it. I picked at my face and created scars only making things worse. I picked at my skin and would put paper clips under my fingernails because the pain allowed temporary relief. It was possibly to ease my mind because it was a distraction from the constant heavy stuff I was considering. This is also when the intrusive thoughts began to materialize and get worse. It would be near constant that when I was speaking with someone I would get strange sexual or violent intrusive thoughts. I had no desire to act on them and I was in fact utterly confused and disgusted by them. They only compounded my confusion - how could I, the person who just thought about pushing someone down the stairs or holding another dude’s hand, be worthy of heaven. It led me to question every sense of my being as a person. I didn’t have a foundation to question but I still felt more confused because these thoughts were coming from me, maybe I wasn’t worthy of heaven. Maybe I was even dangerous or worse a monster and needed to be kept away from people so that I didn’t cause pain. I didn’t know at the time that these strange violent or sexual thoughts were apart of my mental illness. A distressing prod from OCD followed by compulsions to pray or reassure myself about everything. My relationships in college included me constantly seeking reassurances from myself that my friends didn’t secretly hate me. I knew that it wasn’t normal because I was exhausted. I can remember thinking to myself why is nobody talking about this? And then I remember thinking, that I didn’t want to talk about it either because it involved weird, embarrassing or even taboo topics that my intrusive thoughts seized upon and weaponized my own worst fears against me. Amazing nobody wants to discuss that with their loved ones regularly. In law school, the pressure ratcheted up and I knew I wasn’t right with all the compulsions I had to do just to make it through the day. Between the mental aspects of dealing with absolute chaotic intrusive thoughts, reassuring myself i was a decent person and physical manifestations of compulsions like repeatedly checking my bottom floor apartment to ensure I hadn’t killed the 300 other tenants in the building - I was exhausted. Luckily, my then girlfriend now wife was able to make it through the mush that is my brain through sheer effort and love she convinced me to get help. I didn’t tell anyone but her and I remember hoping nobody recognized me as I walked in to see a psychiatrist. I’d like to say things got better there and I learned how to control things, but they didn’t necessarily get worse either. That’s one of the tricks that ocd plays on you. It makes you think you’re stuck in the middle of something and it’s incredibly daunting to make it out. You should just give up and give in to these compulsions rather than actually try to fight all this. I got married and had a child and became a lawyer all very quickly. It was a ton of change and my anxiety was heightened. Recently I’ve had debilitating panic attacks and have felt the a sense of terror surge though me that I have never felt before. My panic attacks can feel all consuming and physically manifest themselves with weird symptoms like my hands cramping from hyperventilating. I’m seeing a therapist and trying different medications to get the balance right. I know that I am less anxious when I practice self care. It’s a process that I’m trying to learn because for most of my adult life I’ve lived with this secret that I felt like was all my own. Nobody ever mentions this kind of suffering for obvious reasons and popular culture portrays ocd as a neat assigning of colors and rows. I believe if we talk about our struggles more openly and practice empathy with each other we can help people suffer less. I suffered silently for a long time because I was scared to death what people would think of me if they found out I was broken - but what I was unable to see was that there are others out there suffering too. We are stronger together if we talk about these things openly but it takes courage. I have debated on speaking out about my struggles for sometime but I read something recently and it cemented that I had to speak out. If I recover loudly maybe other won’t have to suffer silently. I believe if someone had spoken to me and told me this was a disorder in my brain, it could have saved me a lot of suffering. I want kids and teens to know that intrusive thoughts and ocd exist. If it means one less kid going to school tired from being up too late saying prayers then it is worth it. My pride is not more important than other people’s suffering. I’m in a position to speak out and positively impact people. If you or someone you love has OCD please know I’m walking this journey with you. I don’t have the answers but I do know we can beat this. Together.

My struggles with OCD began in childhood, but it wasn’t until after giving birth to my first child at 30 that I finally received a diagnosis. For years, I suffered in silence with intense anxiety, insomnia, and intrusive thoughts, but because my compulsions were mostly mental—constant rumination, reassurance-seeking, and avoidance—I didn’t realize I had OCD. I experienced Pure O, where my mind would latch onto terrifying thoughts, convincing me something was deeply wrong with me. After my son was born, I was consumed by intrusive fears of harming him, even though I loved him more than anything. Seven weeks into postpartum, I hit a breaking point and ended up in the emergency room, where I was finally diagnosed. For the first time, everything made sense. I didn’t discover exposure and response prevention (ERP) until years later when my son developed Germ OCD during COVID. I went through the program myself first, and it completely changed my life. ERP helped me sit with my intrusive thoughts instead of reacting to them, breaking the cycle that had controlled me for so long. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s so much better than before. I can finally be present instead of trapped in my head. Now, I’m working on trusting myself more and handling challenges without fear of “losing control.” As I prepare to help my daughter start therapy, I feel empowered knowing I’m giving my children the support I never had. If you know you have OCD but haven’t started therapy yet, what’s holding you back?

A reflection I never saw myself being able to write✨ One year ago today, I was spiraling for a second time because I wasn’t sure what was happening to me, again. Getting through it once was doable but twice? I truly thought I was losing my mind. OCD wasn’t just a shadow in the background — it was a loud, relentless voice narrating fear, doubt, and compulsions into every corner of my life. I couldn’t trust my thoughts, couldn’t rest in silence. I was questioning everything. I was exhausted coasting through the motions of life trying to survive every minute of every day. But today — I’m here. Still imperfect, still human, but finally free in a way I didn’t think was possible. I got here by learning the hardest, most empowering lesson of my life: I had to stop depending on anyone else to pull me out. I had to stop outsourcing my safety, my certainty, my worth. I had to become the person I could rely on — not in a cold, lonely way, but in the most solid, liberating way possible. You see, healing didn’t come when others gave me reassurance — it came when I stopped needing it. When I realized no one could fight the war in my mind for me. It had to be me. Not because others didn’t care — but because I had to be the one to stop running from fear. I had to choose courage over comfort, again and again. And boy was that rough. But I did. Through therapy, I retrained my brain. (Shout out to Casey Knight🙏🏼) I stopped dancing to OCD’s obsessive rhythm and started rewriting the song. And yeah — the beat dropped a few times. But I kept moving forward. Slowly, I started turning my mind into a place I wanted to live in. I made it beautiful. Not by forcing positive thoughts, but by planting seeds of truth: 🌱 Not every thought deserves attention. 🌱 Discomfort doesn’t mean danger. 🌱 Uncertainty is not the enemy — it’s just part of being alive. I started treating my mind like a garden instead of a battlefield. I let go of perfection and started watering what was real, what was kind, what was mine. And let’s be honest — there were still a few weeds. (Hello, OCD — always trying to “check in.” ) Because healing isn’t linear, I still have days where I feel back to square one, but it’s a day, not a week, month, or another year of surrendering. But here’s the “punny” truth: OCD tried to check me, but I checked myself — with compassion, courage, & a whole lot of practice. To anyone still caught in the spiral — I want you to know: you are not broken. You don’t need to wait for someone else to save you. No else will. The strength you’re looking for? It’s already in you. It might be buried under fear, doubt, and rumination, but it’s there — patient and unbreakable. Start small. Start scared. Just start. Because when you stop relying on the world to reassure you, and start trusting your own ability to face uncertainty, you get something even better than comfort — you get freedom, resilience, power & SO much more. You don’t have to control every thought/urge to have a beautiful mind. You just have to stop believing every thought/urge is the truth. You don’t have to be fearless , you just have to act in spite of fear. You are not crazy You are not a monster You are not evil You are human You are capable And if OCD ever tries to take over again, just smile and say, “Nice try. But not today.” — Someone who came back to life, one brave thought at a time 🧡

this is the most i will ever go into depth about my mental health, all in one post; all in one sitting. this will be draining. to start this off, yes, i have OCD—but i also have several other disorders as well. some of my diagnoses that will come to light in this have a strong correlation to comorbidity and so instead of this being a story simply about my OCD, i will cover all areas of my mental health. for readers, i want it to be clear; this is for me. i’m doing this to put my story out. i hope you find some interest in what i have to say, but in the end, my intentions are strictly to make my damage good. symptoms of my mental issues were present frequently in my childhood experience. for years i avoided any truth to how i thought or felt. thinking, feeling, acting—all 3 were never in cohesion. i had a very anti-social attitude towards life for most of my pubescent years. i got use to faking and manipulating to appear a certain way when i knew i was at risk of punishment; it allowed me to get away with a lot of immoral behaviors for a long time before i eventually was forced into counseling from a school fight i had initiated. i was roughly 14 at this time. counseling was my initial therapy for a while. i have since seen 5 therapists. i can’t say any of those therapists knew a single truth about me, really—with a mixture of pathological lying and a bad masking habit, I was stopping myself from getting any real treatment. i don’t know why, but for a long time i was content with this truth. a part of me never really felt the need to address it. my manipulative behaviors were often unintentional and not once had i sought a need to be callous, even when doing the things i was doing. with every new therapist, i had tuned my personality specifically to fit them—a concept that i don’t have a name for but now can dissect in immense detail. i would take parts of my personality and accentuate them to fit the attitudes and interests of particular people. in my head it was always about admiring the story. nobody was real; everyone was a character, everyone was a unique, self-manifested character. i just made my character with greater intents. i was a good listener, i think understanding that made me get more comfortable with my destructive and manipulative tendencies. when someone believes your listening, like really, actively listening—they’ll eventually tell you everything about themselves. now for a slight addressing of the obvious, i want it to be clear, i’m not describing ASPD—aka, the real life equivalence of sociopathy. i do think i show strong signs of it early on in my youth, and i bring these behaviors up because i think the issues that i do have developed from my anti-social behaviors—however, i was a child; i didn’t know the consequences of my behavior like i do now. if anything is needed to be said here, it’s best to address the following events like this: i understand now, i didn’t understand then. turning 15, i had started off 2023 in a relationship that meant a lot to me—a lot more to me than anything in my life leading up to this point. it’s best to address this now as well—i don’t feel a lot, but when i do, it’s usually irrationally intense and feels completely uncontrollable. at this time, i had gotten over a lot of my anti-social tendencies by now and have spent the last year improving myself after the things i had done began hurting the people i valued most. from a long list of lying, manipulating, preying, harassing, even stabbing people with whatever sharp thing was at my disposal—i had come a long way in creating a character that i actually liked. an important thing to keep in mind during this time was the early development of my OCD that had initially come in the form of suicidal ideation. most of the people in here i’m assuming are people that personally have OCD and understand that it’s not a disorder based in the stigmatized-lens of perfectionism but rather an irrational need for certainty. death quickly became my “ultimate form of certainty” in my teenage years as i turned to the concept like a comfort place—a hand on my shoulder saying “it’s okay, you can fuck up however you might, there’s always a way out.” i had not been truthful about that in therapy either, nor did the several medications prescribed in my lifetime ever do something of benefit to what my issues actually were. of course, i blame no one but myself for not benefiting from outside sources. skipping over a lot of meaningless detail—the gist of the year went like this: Jan-April relationship breaks up badly—in my irrational state, i attempted to take my life and was hospitalized, and eventually, institutionalized. i stayed there for 11 days. at the time the only diagnoses they could make of me was MDD and ASD with slight signs of generalized anxiety. May-August i get extremely medicated and start taking 150+ pills a month to maintain what at the time was being treated for bipolar and schizophrenia. i was too young to see my clinical record, and i assume they wouldn’t tell this to a minor, but it seems they believed whatever my issues really were—i was simply too young to get an accurate assessment. September-December the medication makes me completely apathetic and my loss of care for life brought back my irrational gimmicks and self-destructive tendencies. i, in a 4 month period, ruined every single relationship i had kept close to me. 2024. i was alone. i stopped taking my pills due to a loss of interest and excessive weight gaining but it made my intense emotions start to bite me again. this was the year my OCD had fully developed and by April, i was diagnosed after failing a risk-assessment. for a long period of time, i lived a meaningless, uneventful, isolated life. that year, i let my mental health take over all acts of my being. i got deep into philosophy, psychology, pathology, a lot of tv shows built around psychological dynamics—i was desperate to understand this parasite that seemed to destroy my life without any awareness. i never wanted it to take the years it did since i was initially that 13 year old boy, but i write this now with a simple truth—a truth i refused to let myself believe until recently. i can’t fix this. the more i feed into it, obsess over it—the more these issues are going to worsen. for years i wasted my days thinking i was trying everything i could and it just wasn’t working. i couldn’t accept the fact that i don’t control this, and despite being told that again and again—it never got through to me until i spent the last week not feeding into the OCD and emotional dysregulation, and for the first time, i didn’t find myself counting the seconds that passed me by. it might not mean that much for an outsider looking in, but since my OCD had fully developed—i would always be counting the seconds in the back of my head, not like 1231, 1232, 1233… but as a tick of a metronome that made me always aware of the time. the days where this wasn’t annoying, it was boring, which i ultimately hated more. i’m seeing a light i haven’t seen in years, and with it i keep reaching the same notion—i wish i didn’t waste so much of my life being miserable. i’m getting a psychological evaluation within the next month. i’ve been out of therapy for about a year now but i’m going in now looking to help myself. this is specifically for my emotional dysregulation. my current theories revolve around cluster B personality types, 1 of 4 including ASPD as i had mentioned earlier, albeit my bet is actually on BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder.) I crossed off Borderline for a long time because the symptoms list always felt too broad, but the more i understand the disorder—the more i feel connected to it. my theory comes from several factors—my rapidly changing self image, my impulsive/erratic behaviors, my irrational emotions, my long history of unconventional relationships, my fear of abandonment, my chronic emptiness, my history of self harm, etc. this is not confirmed however, and i wish to get an evaluation specifically for the disorder. getting a personality disorder diagnosed in a minor isn’t easy, but i’m doing it half for the certainty of just knowing—and half for potentionally getting a medication that can help me live a healthy-adjacent life. i never thought i would see a life free of obsession since being diagnosed with OCD. now i can enjoy the silence. thanks for reading. any commentary appreciated.