Where have you noticed OCD characters in TV shows, movies, etc? Thinking of a scene in modern family when Mitchell starts cleaning his office & gets stuck crawling into an air vent… lol he also ran out of things to clean and wiped the Clorox container with a Clorox wipe. Saw that episode before I was diagnosed and realized most people don’t do those things that I thought were relatable 😂
Nicholas Cage’s character in Matchstick Men
@Anonymous Haven’t seen this! Adding to my watch list :)
Hannah horvath in Girls!
Charlie’s mom in It’s Always Sunny
My Crazy Ex Girlfriend shows OCD, anxiety, depression and BPD more real than anything i’ve seen
Maxine from Ginny and Georgia, i fell in love with her character because it related to her so much and had no idea why. i love the way they show how ocd can make you come off annoying and pushy or controlling to others and i think being recognized healed something in me.
I always think of Miranda Bailey in Grey’s Anatomy. She got OCD after a surgery mistake. There’s a scene where the psychiatrist puts her surgery instruments in the wrong order and she has to sit there and not fix it. I totally get how torturous that would be now.
@Anonymous Ugh that sounds horrible. I had medical records written poorly that messed with an injury settlement I got later on. Now I’m in a profession where I write medical records for other people & the harm OCD amps me up so much like I could accidentally harm my patients if I don’t write their records perfectly.
Michael J. Fox guest stars as a doctor on Scrubs who has OCD. He hides it really well, until he is shown hours after he is finished with surgery still washing his hands. But, my favorite, and the one I can most closely relate to, is Adrian Monk, from the show “Monk”. He is a former detective who has a mental breakdown after his wife is brutally murdered and her murder has yet to be solved. Due to that trauma, he has developed many different types, symptoms, and classic behaviors of ocd. I really love that show. It helps me to laugh at myself 😂 because I do so many of the same things.
@amandasings Ooo good one! Was already thinking about rewatching scrubs with the reboot coming soon. I’ve only seen bits & pieces of Monk, but remember it was interesting! Being able to laugh at the silliness of the illogical thoughts sounds helpful! It’s nice to not take myself too seriously- lets the pressure off.
Chidi aragonye from the good place. (I never watched the full show, only excerpts)
I thought back to a Chicago Med episode focusing on OCD named “Step on a Crack and Break Your Mother's Back". It is the seventh episode of Season 9, and aired on March 20, 2024. In the episode, Dr. Ripley and Dr. Charles treat a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
@Anonymous Oh my gosh that saying used to stress me out so much as a kid lol
A movie about OCD called Turtles all the way down, based on a novel by John Green, who himself has OCD. Thought the movie was cringe at first, then ended up crying by the end of it😅
@EnglishBreakfast00 Ooooo that sounds interesting!
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.
How do fellow OCD people feel about horror? I feel like us OCD people have such high anxiety and intrusive disturbing thoughts that i assume a lot of us ignore or avoid horror. I find that i love it but my OCD doesn’t. It’s good exposure. I also feel emotional dysregulation so it intensifies the experience.
Hi! I was recently diagnosed with OCD. Most of my struggles are morality-related, but I've been doing so thinking, and I believe I also struggle with compulsive decluttering. Nine years ago, I decluttered my closet and started calling myself a minimalist. I have brought things in and decluttered other things out multiple times and constantly am thinking about decluttering again and making my wardrobe tiny but "perfectly minimalist". I want to get past this because I think I attach morality to the amount of things I own. Has anyone gone through this and how would I apply ERP to this?
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