Turtles all the way down movie critism from someone with OCD

If you are anything like me (and most of you are, because let’s face it, we are all on this chat), you have OCD. Real OCD, not the organisation, matching colours everyone thinks it is. Real OCD. I’ve always known I was different, known that my brain does some waking things and deep down, I’ve always known I’ve had OCD. But there is just something that changes when you finally get the diagnosis. It makes more sense, you have an explanation for your behaviours. So naturally I told my friends. When they ask why I had to stop and step four times on a tile I said ‘oh, I have OCD’. I finally had a word, a tangible concept that I could explain to people. But nobody warned me about the massive misconceptions about OCD. Instead of support or acceptance, my friends seemed to question the diagnosis saying ‘that’s not ocd, don’t you just like things organised?’. And no matter how much I explain it they don’t seem to get it. And that’s the part that feels so cruel. I go through hell in my head and it can all be reduced to a phrase of ‘oh, aren’t you organised’. So please be careful out there you guys, and if someone try’s to downplay your experience, know that you are valid and that what you are going through is probably something that they could never handle. It’s a lesson that took me time to learn, but it’s important because our experience matters. Our real experience.

Hey all, as an OCD newbie, i have some questions. These might be obvious or stupid, but idk, i just need some answers. 1. Is it hard for anyone else to watch movies and not get triggered? 2. Does anyone else get OCD about their OCD? 3. Is it possible/normal to have a lot of subtypes? And i mean like 6 or 7. 4. Do people usually misunderstand us and assume that our intrusive thoughts are actually what we want to do?

Last night I watched The Aviator (2004) for the very first time and I am shook at how much I related to Leonardo DiCaprio's depiction of Howard Hughes and his severe OCD. I never realized just how differently OCD can present, not just with the germ theme but as agoraphobia and not eating and verbal looping. If I had seen this when I was younger I wondered if I would have caught on sooner that I had severe OCD and not have been misdiagnosed until age 41 with other severe mental illnesses. If I had seen the scenes of Howard Hughes's mental breakdowns in The Aviator (2004) ... They looked so much like mine. Too much like mine. But without knowing about Exposure Response Therapy I still wouldn't have done anything about it. Deep down I knew I had it, probably knew by my late twenties, I just didn't have a name for it because they depicted OCD as these weird little actions you have to do before you do what you want, like turn a light on and off or count ceiling tiles, and not the things I do. And they never explained what was behind the compulsion, so I didn't know I was performing compulsions. I just wondered why I was exhausted all the time and had trouble with executive functioning. But the signs were there ever since I was a child. If I couldn't do it perfectly or figure out a way to do it perfectly I wouldn't initiate anything. Not for lack of initiative. So I wasn't washing my hands to bleeding or eating only 6 peas. I was writing until my hands were sore, memorizing Bible verses, uncontrollably glitching verbal loops, and suffering sleepless nights because my bedroom walls were not the exact shade of blue I wanted or I didn't start the day in the right order and it felt life-threatening. I remember in sixth grade I yelled out, "Spider!" That gave me the feeling of safety I chased and then I literally could not stop yelling it out, I was even annoying myself and everyone else and telling people I couldn't stop but all that would come out is the word "spider!" So I grew up miserable thinking I was the weird little girl in class not knowing I was sick. And that turned into the weird adult trying to hide the fact they were weird from everyone else until I broke over and over again. And that's when my adulthood sometimes looked like being frozen on the couch, porch, or bedroom for days, weeks, months convinced everything was crawling with bugs and avoiding everyone's phone calls and eating only popsicles, doctors thinking my repetitive glitch brain meant I was hearing voices and my lack of hygiene was something else. I was afraid of the harm I did, I was afraid I was in trouble, I was afraid I'd harmed other people without knowing it, and I was afraid I was too gross to love. This is still true to this day. Under the care of professionals almost all my life and only correctly diagnosed at age 41 when it feels like it's too late to make it better because I've been burned out for years is daunting. But I'm still here and it's been almost six years since my last hospitalization. I no longer think I am a monster. That in itself is more than I ever dreamed of.