Writer Biography

Elizabeth Hansen is a freshman majoring in psychology at Utah State University. She is the youngest of five children and loves community service with her family. She was a dancer for seven years and now continues her dance career by teaching at R&M Dance Studios in Hyrum, Utah.

This essay was composed in April 2022 in an English 1010 class. Hansen uses MLA documentation.

WE OFTEN HEAR THE PHRASE “I’m so OCD” for things like being organized or overly cautious about how things look. Phrases like this have become so common today that OCD is not seen as the mental illness it is. Many people think about OCD and think clean freak or someone who has to have everything perfect. That isn’t OCD, it might be a symptom, but it’s not what OCD is. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, OCD “is an anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent obsessions or compulsions or both that cause significant distress, are time-consuming or interfere with normal daily functioning, and are recognized by the individual affected as excessive or unreasonable” (“Obsessive-compulsive disorder”). To understand exactly what OCD is not, we must dive into what OCD is.

OCD is a serious anxiety disorder where a person has to complete personalized compulsions so that they don’t experience extreme fear and stress. Compulsions and obsessions usually run along four different themes: contamination obsession, obsessions about responsibility for harm, symmetry obsessions, and obsessive thoughts. Each of these four themes might have a common fear or stressor for many in everyday life, experiencing OCD takes both common or uncommon fears and exaggerates them (Cartwright).

Contamination obsession, otherwise known as being a “clean freak,” is what is typically represented in the media. Samantha Hellberg defines contamination fears in the 2020 article “Not Just Thinking, but Believing: Obsessive Beliefs and Domains of Cognitive Fusion in the Prediction of OCD Symptom Dimensions” as “fears [that] are primarily associated with overestimates of the likelihood and severity of threats related to germs and disease” (Hellberg et al. 70).

The second theme is obsessions with responsibility for harm with checking rituals. This is another popular one in the media. Checking rituals might constitute checking to see if the stove or oven is off repeatedly. If the person affected with OCD cannot complete the checking ritual, their brain signals that something terrible will happen. For example, someone might have a checking ritual to make sure their door is locked a certain number of times, and if they cannot or do not complete the ritual, they might be convinced that someone will break into their house.

The third theme is “just right” or symmetry obsessions with ordering and arranging rituals. Hellberg explains, “Concerns around symmetry present when individuals hold rigid beliefs about the need for control perfection and completeness and perceive not just right experiences to be highly intolerable” (Hellberg et al. 70). The feelings Hellberg describes aren’t just an “oh there’s a spot that wasn’t erased so now I’m bothered.” It’s a debilitating anxiety, and a need to fix it.

The last theme is obsessional thoughts about sex, religion, and violence with mental and neutralizing rituals. These obsessions about sex, religion, or violence come from the belief that thoughts are equivalent to actions and that you should be able to control your thoughts. These are similar to intrusive thoughts. The person with OCD has these thoughts pop into their head, and it causes them to feel overwhelming guilt, thinking that because it’s in their head means that they want it to happen or that they are a gross and bad person. This last theme is the most unrepresented in the media, further isolating people who suffer from these intrusive thoughts. Most people who suffer from this feel like they are so alone in how they feel, and all the misconceptions about OCD just being about neatness further pushes this alone agenda into the minds of those who are struggling. Instead of identifying their thoughts as a disorder, they are left to think they are a terrible person for it and alone.

One way to break the stigma around OCD is to think about it as a spectrum. Not every form of OCD is going to look the same. Some cases of OCD are more severe than others. As well as thinking of it on a spectrum, the symptoms of OCD are different for everyone. You won’t find two people going through the same thing. Sometimes OCD is more extreme for someone and makes them incapable of completing simple daily tasks.

If you’re not familiar with OCD or if you don’t know anyone who has OCD, you might be susceptible to believing the misconceptions about OCD. OCD is more complex than most people know. OCD is most misrepresented in the media, specifically TV shows (Di Cicco). If you have seen TV series such as Friends, The Odd Couple, The Big Bang Theory, or Criminal Minds, you might have pinpointed where they misrepresent OCD. Monica Geller in Friends is portrayed as having OCD. She’s seen as a “clean freak” and a “Nazi” about organization. Felix Ungar in The Odd Couple is also seen to be obsessed with cleanliness, and the show dramatizes his neuroticism for comedic purposes. Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory is also seen with “just right” OCD and cleanliness. And lastly, Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds is also seen adjusting things to be “just right” and organized. What do all of these characters have in common? They are said to have OCD, but the shows never accurately describe OCD. Instead, these characters are used as comedic relief. You’ve all seen it, a character gets uncomfortable because a pillow isn’t in the right spot, so they move it back, and then the laugh track plays. They never show how serious it is. They never show the inner conflict the character has.

Only 35-40% of people seek treatment for OCD (Melli et al.). A part of this startling number is because OCD is so brutally misrepresented. People with OCD face a risk of ending their life ten times the rate of the general population and are five times more likely to attempt to end their life (Melli et al.). More people could get the help they needed if they truly understood what OCD is (Nelson). Think about it, you can’t treat cancer if you don’t even know you have cancer. It’s the same thing for OCD, but because of all the misconceptions, it’s so hard to pinpoint what OCD is.

One of the most significant aspects of OCD is intrusive thoughts, and this element of OCD is often misunderstood. Many people who struggle with OCD have violent intrusive thoughts. It’s common for kids with OCD to have intrusive thoughts about horrific acts of child abuse. Teens who suffer from OCD tend to have sexually intrusive thoughts. These thoughts come with a lot of guilt and make the person act out a compulsive ritual to deal with the thought. People with OCD have no control over the thoughts that pop into their brains. The horrible thoughts and images alone are enough to be agonizing. Still, eventually, a person with OCD will stop trusting their mind, leading to depression and further anxiety that can only make the OCD worse. Unfortunately, it’s a never-ending cycle that so many people don’t understand.

OCD is more than just neurotic tendencies. It’s a real and misunderstood anxiety disorder affecting many people worldwide. It is real, and the people who suffer from it have struggles different from most people. It has been painted in the media to be something comical, and the media exaggerates certain aspects that may not be as common as other symptoms of OCD.

Works Cited

Cartwright, Rose. “OCD Isn’t About Being Over-Tidy.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Feb. 2019, Gale OneFile: News, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A575061088/GPS?u=pioneer&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=5bd1acee.

Di Cicco, Bella. “The Misconceptions of OCD by Bella Di Cicco, Rosebery School.” This is Local London (London, England), Newsquest Media Group, 30 Apr. 2020, Gale OneFile: News, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A622378146/GPS?u=pioneer&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=4e6dd57a.

Hellberg, Samantha N., et al. “Not Just Thinking, but Believing: Obsessive Beliefs and Domains of Cognitive Fusion in the Prediction of OCD Symptom Dimensions.” Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, vol. 27, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 69–78. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1002/cpp.2409.

Melli, Gabriele, et al. “The Role of Guilt Sensitivity in OCD Symptom Dimensions.” Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, vol. 24, no. 5, Sept. 2017, pp. 1079–89. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.dist.lib.usu.edu/10.1002/cpp.2071.

Nelson, Ethan. “A Disorder Distorted: The Misconceptions of OCD” UWIRE Text, ULOOP, 7 Apr. 2021, Gale OneFile: News, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A657702948/GPS?u=pioneer&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=09bdad1a.

“Obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obsessive-compulsive%20disorder. Accessed Nov. 2022.

Reflection

While researching this, I was shocked by the things that I had learned about the mental illness that I have. I was diagnosed with OCD last year in September, and since then, I’ve been learning more and more about what OCD is. When I was first diagnosed, I was in denial because I was under the impression that OCD is what everyone else thinks it is. Just being an anal clean freak, and if you ask anyone who knows me, they would tell you I’m quite the opposite. I have always been messy, and I’ve never had my life put together the way I want it to be. So, you can imagine my surprise when this was what I was told. After I was diagnosed, I started to research and listen to other people’s experiences with OCD. I finally felt like I related to what I was told that I had. I have intrusive thoughts and compulsing, and before I was medicated, they took up almost all of my day. I was hospitalized for stomach conditions caused by anxiety caused by OCD.

I researched this topic by using my former high school librarian, my psychiatrist, and my therapist. My high school librarian helped me find scholarly sources that helped me with my research. She walked me through my annotated bibliography and also all of my citing. This was beyond helpful. With my therapist, I would talk to her about exactly what I was dealing with, and understanding what I was dealing with helped me understand how to write this paper. Some challenges I encountered were articles that shamed people with OCD and other mental illnesses. It was good to challenge my opinion on OCD, but at the same time, some of the things I read hurt me. Overall, I’m glad I took the time to read other people’s opinions on what OCD is because it furthered my pursuit of what OCD is and what OCD isn’t. I implemented putting my citations in because initially, I didn’t put any in, mostly because I completely forgot I had to cite the quotes I was using. I wasn’t given any criticism that I thought was unnecessary; therefore, I applied all the help people gave me.