My name is Conor, I am a laid-back person with anxiety, a stutter, and OCD. This makes me different from most people, but I believe this story can still be inspiring and helpful. When I was a baby, I had RSV, a respiratory virus, and a collapsed lung, and I was given last rites in the hospital. Thankfully, I grew stronger and was discharged. Later, I was diagnosed with anxiety. In kindergarten, I was a rule breaker, which may surprise people that know me. At the end of the day, I would tell the teacher all the bad things I did, but then I would do more things I was not supposed to do the next day. After continuing this behavior, it was decided that it would be best for me to switch schools, which caused me to be heartbroken. I went to Loudonville Elementary School for the remainder of the school year. I liked it, the very tall hallways amazed me, and I met friends I still know today. I went back to St. Pius X after kindergarten, but my mom said the experience changed me. I talked to my friends less and kept to myself more. Maybe I feared getting in trouble and having to leave again.
In middle school, I usually followed the rules and was concerned about following them. I loved baseball and enjoyed basketball but quit both because of the anxiety I’d get during the games. In 8th grade, I remember going to Pyramid Lake for a field trip and doing an activity that taught participants to accept help from others. But I did not try to get help from others for my anxiety after this. Eventually, I graduated and went to Shaker for high school. My mom had me see some therapists for my anxiety, but trying something new caused anxiety and talking to a stranger triggered my social anxiety so I wouldn’t stick with it. Therefore, my anxiety would get worse, and I would read in class less and be more anxious around strangers. Eventually, I developed a stutter, which made my social anxiety even worse. By my sophomore year of high school, I developed religious OCD, also called scrupulosity. With obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, you get a really strong urge to do something out of fear that’s hard to resist. The urge is like the urge you get when you lock the door and go into another room, and someone asks, are you sure you locked the door, and then you get an urge to double check. That urge is what people with OCD get, but they experience it over a hundred times a day when the OCD is at its worst. The urge could be to remove something like germs or to figure something out. These actions are called compulsions. Compulsions are used to make the fear go away and gain comfort, but they make the anxiety and obsessions worse in the long term. On top of all that, people with OCD obsess over topics related to these urges for many hours per day when it is at its worst. There are different types of OCD, but they all have urges, anxiety, and unwanted intrusive thoughts. One person described OCD as more of a behavioral disorder since the compulsions make it worse, I’d describe OCD as an addiction with obsessing. I obsessed over whether certain things were right or wrong, spent hours many days in the summer, looking up if things were a sin, and I tried to be perfect. Maybe this fear of breaking the rules and not doing the wrong thing had to do with kindergarten, but maybe not, I shouldn’t live in the past either way. With OCD, I would be very hard on myself and I would try to control, even trying to control what other people did. I took longer than others on tests and homework from double checking too much, but I still got good grades. Eventually, covid happened during my senior year. The isolation made my anxiety and OCD a lot worse. I started having suicidal thoughts. My mom noticed I was not doing well, therefore she went out of her way to arrange for me to meet with her friend who’s a therapist, and she saw me remotely without charge. Her friend thought I had OCD, and this was the first time I learned that I may have it. A positive during this difficult time was for senior awards, I received the Triple C award for courage, character, and commitment. The person who nominated me did so because they saw me at St. Pius X mass weekly, sometimes by myself, and believed that it took courage for me to attend, which it did.
After high school, I went to Marist College, eventually majoring in Data Science and Analytics. My first semester was a really tough semester, the OCD affected me academically, making it harder to pay attention in class, and I cried in my room from being hard on myself. Since we were supposed to social distance, I wouldn’t hang out with my roommate and his friends when he invited me to hang out with them. Therefore, I would get lonely and depressed at college. I saw a therapist during the semester, but it did not help a lot since it was general talk therapy and not the specific therapy that’s best for OCD. Also, it was hard to sleep through the night, from cars honking next to my residence hall, the train going by, and a garbage disposal vehicle coming early in the morning and making an extremely loud sound. Therefore, if you go to Marist, I would not recommend Leo Hall, unless you’re a heavy sleeper. This lack of sleep caused nerves, which led to the OCD becoming worse. One day, I saw this video on YouTube of someone talking about his experience of having religious OCD, and after watching it, I felt pretty convinced I had it. There was some temptation to leave the faith, thinking maybe my OCD would get better, but I learned from another video that this could make the OCD worse, and even if I did that, I would still have OCD and I would just obsess over whatever became important to me in place of the faith. Therefore, I stuck with the faith. I eventually got through the semester, but my parents noticed I wasn’t in the best place, and my dad, wanting to help, went out of his way to find help for me. He found this company, NOCD, that offers online therapy for people with OCD. It has therapists who are trained in how to treat OCD. I met with a therapist, who went to Marist for graduate school, and I was officially diagnosed with OCD. I learned the importance of facing my fear, of not trying to get rid of discomfort or fear, and embracing the unknown instead of trying to figure it out. I learned resisting engaging in a compulsion can break the loop of an intrusive thought causing fear, doing a compulsion, and the thought coming back. The unwanted thought comes back because the brain recognizes that the thought led to a compulsion, which got rid of the fear temporarily and caused some comfort, therefore the brain will keep producing these thoughts to get more feelings of comfort. After starting therapy, I was worried one aspect of therapy would be wrong for me to do. I talked to Father Walsh about it. He said he didn’t think it was a sin, and God’s really merciful even if it was. I was confused since I felt it was wrong, but I eventually decided to have faith that I should do it, even though I did not fully understand. After that, I took part in that aspect of therapy and life got better. I was now doing ERP, the gold standard treatment for OCD. ERP is exposure and response prevention. You expose yourself to something that triggers OCD, and then you let the fear go away without doing a compulsion. At the beginning of therapy, you do this daily, for maybe 15 minutes a day, and that helps you to resist compulsions. Once you get better at resisting compulsions, you can do ERP less often. Also, I found this site called managingscrupulosity.com. It has a Catholic priest who has been mentoring people with scrupulosity for many years. He writes newsletters about scrupulosity. In my second semester of college, which I did remotely from home, I performed better academically. I got a 4.0 GPA and made the Dean’s List. The OCD was less prevalent, and I was facing my fear more. Also, doing school from home allowed me to be with my parents and cute cat. Therefore, life was going better with my parents’ help, therapists’ help and that site’s help, and I remembered back to Pyramid Lake to that activity that taught people to accept help from others.
I decided to go back to Marist in person for my sophomore year, even though my parents mentioned that I could transfer to Siena nearby. Marist felt like the right school when I picked it and I had hope that my experience could get better, therefore I stuck with it. Sophomore year was better, but it was still tough. I still had areas to improve on with OCD and I did not have many close friends. But I could tell that I was slowly growing as a person, which was important to me. I still had many rules for myself that I was making to try to act perfect, but this just made the OCD worse. This was similar to the Old Testament where there were over 600 laws, but people would still sin. One day, after my Christianity class, a classmate talked to me, and we became pretty close. I learned from this class and another class that life is about relationships. I thought oh man, really? Relationships where you talk to people, when I have social anxiety. But it was helpful for me to learn that. Over the summer I’d try to hang out with friends, but it was tough as people had jobs and girlfriends. During my sophomore year, I was in a remote stuttering group through St. Rose. It was a good group that taught people techniques to help deal with stuttering. It taught people to not avoid situations where they may stutter and to face their fear of stuttering, just like how I am supposed to face my fears to manage OCD better. Junior year was better since there was more group work. This helped me to get to know others more, but there still were not many people I was really close with and I still felt lonely at school. My friend back at home helped me realize that it could be okay to be by yourself and hang out in your room, which helped me to become more accepting of feeling isolated. There was a time that year, for the first time, where I went home and thought I’d rather be at Marist. Over that summer, even though I still had anxiety playing basketball against others, I played in a basketball league my friend runs. I drafted a great team that went on to win the championship! That was exciting and helped me deal with never winning an intramurals championship at Marist.
Finally, senior year came around and I thought I still needed to make more friends and become closer with people. Thankfully, a friend helped me live with some new housemates for senior year that I talked to and hung out with more than previous housemates. I also finally felt comfortable enough to go to a bar near college for the first time. Therefore, I went to this bar a lot of upperclassmen go to called Mahoney’s. I didn’t drink but I wanted to talk to people there. But it was difficult to hear people since the music was blasted. The next day, my ear was ringing until about 6 pm. But, I did get to dance and still gave the experience about a 6 out of 10. Since I stuck with the faith, I went to Catholic mass weekly. One day, after mass, someone asked me if I wanted to join a Catholic bible study he was starting with another student. I started going to that group called Immaculate Circle. It was a small group, but it helped people to become close with one another. The vice president of the group, the student who reached out to me after mass, scheduled retreats for us to shrines and drove people to them, never asking for gas money. One time, he drove an hour to a shrine just to ask the staff about holding a retreat for us, even though they could say no. I finally had things to do over the weekends, going on these retreats and becoming closer with people in the group. I made friends that could become lifelong friends like my dad wanted me to make at college. It finally made more sense why Marist may have been the right college for me. I eventually graduated Magna Cum Laude in May of this year. Over the summer, I worked as a field manager intern for Perfect Game, scoring and scouting amateur baseball games. My dream is to eventually work on the Yankees baseball analytics team to help them win multiple World Series. But how was I able to not lose hope, keep the faith, and not give up on managing the OCD, even when it was really hard? It was because of my faith. I prayed, received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, from Confirmation, and I received the Eucharist, weekly after beginning high school, which gave me strength. One of the gifts I received was fortitude. Fortitude is courage in pain or adversity. The challenges I experienced at college gave me the opportunity to use and develop the gifts I received, and what helped me have hope is I remembered the bible verse, “with man, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” College was a tough experience, someone has mentioned, multiple times, that I have gray or white hairs now, but it allowed me to grow as a person, and I believe it made this story better. It was not the college experience I wanted, but perhaps, it was the one I needed. Sharing my life story is uncomfortable, but I thought it had the power to help and inspire others who are going through struggles, and I’ve learned that with great power comes great responsibility. In summary, use and develop the gifts you receive, don’t lose hope, and accept help from others. Lastly, a thank you to Garrett Bernardo for inspiring me to share my life story, after I heard him share his story at St. Pius X church.
