Robotic Brain and OCD

@Audrey/33 Thanks for your encouragement, I’m glad I’m part of this very supportive community with diverse backgrounds. It just seems that throughout my life, which was academically oriented, I’ve been used as a disposable commodity. Because of my OCD, I was very reliable to have my homework done. I tended to be a perfectionist, as I worked my @ss off and was expected to bail people out of their procrastination. During my academic studies, my classmates would be like “please help me, you’re a math genius I need you…”. But once I graduated, they were like “so you were a very difficult person to study with, and your OCD drove me nuts. Why be so perfect?”. They ended up ghosting me after I thought we were friends. Now I’m having an existential crisis thinking I missed out on life by just dedicating all my life up to this point for my passion for math. That’s pretty much it.

@Josean And to add insult to injury, this person in particular was someone who I had a crush on. We seemed to be very happy together, but once I moved on, they completely flipped on me.

@blazed Idk if this made sense

@blazed Yep, that’s it, you hit the nail on the head. Once you’re out of that academic bubble, you realize how out of touch with reality you’ve become. Your interactions with people suffer and you become a recluse. Because no one wants to hang around C-3PO when they can hang around R2D2 or BB8. (Ok, that was a nerdy joke just trying to bring some comedic relief to a depressing topic.) How’d you realize your worth outside academia?

@blazed Makes perfect sense!

@Josean Love the references 🤣 honestly losing touch with reality is the best way to describe it. I realized that just bc I’m good at one thing, doesn’t mean it makes up my entire identity or means I’m not good enough to do anything else. I recognize that my success/failures, productivity, and achievements don’t define my self-worth. What truly does are my values, beliefs, character traits, and contributions I’ve made for others. I had to experience failure in school to realize that no one actually cares about whether I fail or not, only I do. That fear does stick around sometimes but I’m learning to let it go.

@blazed That’s pretty much what I tell myself. It’s just that it’s hard to even believe it, as either my OCD or someone else gaslights me into thinking the opposite. Once I started getting out of my shell last year, my “friends” started to distance themselves away from me. I thought that by showing I have a life outside academia, I’d have a closer more meaningful relationship with them. But it did just the opposite. For example, I took a trip to Lake Tahoe/Reno Nevada, and I actually enjoyed it very much. I then told my friend, and he was like “so you went to Trump country? Why not go to Las Vegas?”. I hate politics and didn’t intend any political meaning, but my friend found something to complain about. It seemed that being that OCD robot was benefiting them and so they wanted me to stay like that. But I’m still trying to this day to find that self worth. I see that despite my OCD or my math ability, I can still be a highly empathetic person, a good cook, and a good role model for kids.

@Josean That’s horrible, people like that are so disingenuous. They just used your “friendship„ to their advantage and had no regard for your feelings 😟 but I’m glad you can still see your self-worth regardless of the things you’ve been through. OCD is going to keep clinging onto the ‘all or nothing’ thinking to continue the cycle, but keep reminding yourself of those qualities you have. And also take your time with getting better and moving forward.

@Nica Sorry, I didn’t mean that OCD and math are necessarily correlated. I meant that we tend to hyper-focus on one thing, to then seemingly exclude everything else. That one thing can be anything-music, literature, chemistry, etc…