- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 30w
Not directly related to OCD, but also related
My mom just admitted to me today that she and my dad always thought I didn't interact with my classmates because I simply didn't want to. Back then, they would yell at me on the daily and tell me I was acting snobbish when I "ignored" my peers (which refers to speaking to them really quietly or sitting away from them). And apparently, I would clam up when my parents asked me why I did what I did. This came up today because I was expressing to her that I wish they had gotten me professional help while I was a child, because it had to have been obvious that something was wrong with me. I had severe social anxiety, and I was deathly afraid of my classmates from the age of 7 up till today (I don't remember life before 7). My social anxiety has severely impacted my life. I am an adult who has never made a single friend. I don't know what it's like to have them. All I know is a profound loneliness in life, and the depression this causes. As a college student, I am faced daily with the fact that I have no one to turn to in good times and bad. Outside of my parents, no one would notice if I disappeared one day. This ties into OCD because it makes me realize that maybe they also never noticed that? Maybe they didn't notice how I would line things up over and over again, how much distress it caused me to be the way that I was. Maybe that's why they just thought I was a perfectionist. Maybe they thought I would do the weird things I did because I was just being a child, and not because I was engaging in rituals fueled by anxiety. Maybe they thought my room was messy or I would leave my clothes on the bed instead of hanging them up because I was just being lazy, and not because I was so obsessed with cleaning it a certain way (it was a mix of "just right" and order and symmetry subtypes - I won't get into the specifics) that I became overwhelmed and paralyzed by it, because cleaning just one object would take me an hour. I guess... I always assumed that people are far more perceptive than they actually are. I thought they noticed and just didn't care. I still don't quite understand it, though. My teachers must have noticed that I was completely shut off from my peers, right? That I was completely socially isolated? Maybe they also thought I was just being snobbish and didn't like my classmates? But of course, part of my social anxiety is that I struggle so much to speak my mind. So I don't know how you can expect a child with what is essentially selective mutism (I believe that's what I had at the time, in addition to social anxiety) to be able to articulate the issue. It's not like I understood it myself. After feeling like an alien for my whole life, I finally looked up my symptoms at the age of 14, and "social anxiety" popped up as a potential diagnosis. It was a profound revelation at the time, although it feels so small in hindsight. After being called shy my whole life, I finally had something telling me that that's not what shyness is, that my problems were legitimate. Didn't help in the end since I still didn't get help even after telling my parents. I must sound so bitter, but's easy to judge when you've had time to grow as a person through interactions with others. But think about it. I wasn't socialized. The only people I have interacted with on a semi-regular basis in life are my immediate family members. I don't even know how one articulates their feeling in a way that would evoke compassion from others, rather than pity (which feels belittling) or scorn. I just wish that someone would care. But no one has an obligation to. If you read this far, thank you.
- Perfectionism OCD
- Existential OCD
- Order & Symmetry OCD
- Young adults with OCD
- "Pure" OCD
- Students with OCD