But, a lot of people don’t quite understand what OCD is to be sure. Even I don’t fully understand it, but I feel I have a slightly better grasp than most. It always kinda bugged me when people would casually say that “like omg I’m so ocd” over some random thing they do or whatever. That’s not OCD and it’s diminishing the meaning of a diagnosis that’s very real and very potentially debilitating. It’s that level of cognitive misunderstanding that bothers me with a lot of colloquialisms that are centered around various medical diagnoses.

I had a pretty brief 2 years with not-debilitating but still life altering OCD, it's definitely always been there when I look back (my fundamentalist dad told me once the worst sin you can commit is "cursing the holy spirit" so little terminal thought about that for like 6 years until one day I cursed the holy spirit by literally stating it lmao). It's hard to convey what it's like to someone who hasn't had it or been near someone who has experienced it. Even people who have had loved ones go into pretty deep contamination OCD sometimes don't know even though they're doing all the exhausting compulsions and rituals their partner is doing, which is weird, it's a disease that's definitely not well understood.

My worst was always around checking and it felt like I was a crazy person. I was driving back to visit my mom, 5 hour drive, and I turned around and drove back home to my place to check the windows and stoves and doors - like this would add hours onto my drive. I would lose so much sleep checking the door and the stove over and over through the night. I say it's about checking but it doesn't really communicate what it was like unless you were around me, it was A LOT of checking, or unless you have had OCD. Eventually I started doing it at clinical, you're supposed to check you have the right med but I'd check again and again and again, and then I started getting help.

I do remember when the doctor said "you have OCD" and now I was also neurodivergent (I was cause of the anxiety before lol but I just didn't consider it). Which was a weird feeling. Anyway, I'm sure people would appreciate an OCD info post. I know for example at the height of my OCD I didn't even know why I was doing what I was doing, and I had had to study common mental health disorders, like it came up and I wrote tests on it - my point being you might even be able to help someone realize that they might have OCD and there are ways to move past obsessive thoughts and compulsions that don't hurt.