Tag Archives: OCD

Mental Illness: What Should it Look Like?

December 11, 2012 Mind and Soul

I was involved in a facebook conversation yesterday about mental illness and some of the comments people afflicted are receiving:

‘You don’t look like you have a mental illness!’

‘You don’t look disabled!’

To people who make comments such as these, I’d like you to tell me; what should mental illness look like? That’s a serious question.

Mental illness (and I can’t believe I’m about to state the bleedin’ obvious here) occurs inside the brain. Can you see my brain? Yours? No. Some mental illness is obvious by the way someone acts, and some isn’t.

For those who are new to this blog, I’ll let you know that my partner has severe OCD and mild agoraphobia, plus depression. You can’t tell just by looking at him that he has a severe mental illness. Lately, he has started to get worse with a thing we call ‘quirks’, though. This means that sometimes he will make an involuntary noise, which is usually yelled out loud. It often sounds as though he’s in pain, or getting a sudden shiver, or something like that. Other times, it sounds as though he’s doing it to be funny, which he isn’t.

Sometimes he’ll start getting irrationally snappy, or nervous, or bossy (‘we have to get out of here now!‘). But for the most part, you can’t ‘see’ his illness. If you met him, you might not pick that he has a mental illness. It all depends on what sort of day he’s having, where he is, and how well he knows you. He will work very hard to suppress/hide his illness from you if he is feeling particularly anxious, and he is getting better at doing this all the time.

When he can’t suppress those feelings any longer, there is a chance you won’t see it, because he will make an exit, for fear of embarrassing himself.

It’s because of these things that I’m guessing people outside of our family don’t see his illness as it actually is. Let me illustrate what I mean with a few examples:

My partner cannot handle crowds very well, but is improving at this with treatment. In his first year of diagnosis/treatment, he didn’t go to our eldest daughter’s school awards night. (A few years in, he’s still never been) I have been told, ‘these things are important. A good dad would just go, it’s mind over matter’. Now, during our first year of dealing with my partner’s  illness, we were still worming out the idea that he might also be suffering from agoraphobia. OCD and depression were the main points we’d addressed to this point. It was a very stressful time.

My partner had not yet learned and practised techniques and strategies to help him cope with situations difficult for him. We still hadn’t found the right medication for him. I was still learning what my role in helping him was, and there were so many things I didn’t know. I still didn’t fully understand his illnesses, and hadn’t interpreted yet the best ways I could help him and the whole family through his anxiety and behaviour.

We were both hyper aware that we were no longer a ‘normal’ family. We desperately wanted to be normal again, and were grappling with accepting this new reality, and trying to understand whether or not we would ever have a normal future. At this stage of his illness, I was pretty much running the family and household, as my partner battled his demons, or spent full days knocked out on the wrong medication.

He had guilt about not contributing at that point, and I had guilt that there was only one of me, and only so much to go around! Plus, at this stage, my two younger kids were extremely young, so of course that was more demanding of my time. We both battled the ‘not good enoughs’ on a daily basis.

So, when you’re trying to hold it all together and function normally (which was pretty much impossible), to then be told that we were handling an awards night the ‘wrong’ way by ‘normal’ standards, it was pretty gutting stuff. I went to the awards night, and left the two younger kids with my partner at home so that they wouldn’t disrupt the evening. My partner was not at the stage where he was capable of being in a tightly packed room full of strangers, and being made to feel guilty about this, was not helpful at all. If anything, it lowered our morale to the point of it being a set back. We’re both a bit more resiliant to remarks of those who don’t understand these days, so it wouldn’t set us back so much anymore, than it would be a mere irritation.

Two years later, the same person mentioned that she’d seen my partner out driving every day, and that he ‘didn’t seem that bad if he could do that’. So, we have a man who has now found the right medication, has learned and practised some ‘mind over matter’ techniques to help him with difficult situations, and he’s still being criticised? Is he meant to force himself in certain uncomfortable situations, because someone else deems it necessary, then at other times, not challenge himself to improve? Does he need to stay ‘stuck’ in his illness, to prove how sick he is to others? Of course not.

It sometimes can feel as though he’s damned if he tries, and damned if he doesn’t. If he’s not ready for a certain challenge, he’s not trying hard enough, and if he makes a huge acheivement in confronting a fear and successfully completing it, then maybe he’s just not as sick as he makes out he is. On top of that, these comments don’t factor in the idea that those with a mental illness have their good days and their very bad days. He might’ve been successful in one task last week, but this week is feeling more stressed. So, this week he may not be able to complete tasks as well as last week, due a build up of anxiety.

Now, I can only speak of our experiences with mental illnesses, and I can’t claim to know what it’s like for other people with mental illness, and I don’t want to. But I would like to ask those who (understandably) don’t understand what it means to have mental illness a few things:

Mental illness doesn’t have a certain type of ‘look’ about it. Can you please stop fixating on appearances, be it looks or your perception of the behaviour of the mentally ill?

Can you please understand that mental illness is a work in progress? You don’t see the work going on behind the scenes. Sometimes, if you see someone with a mental illness doing something you’ve heard them claim they can’t do, you are watching the work in progress. It doesn’t disprove that they have mental illness, it just proves they’re trying to beat this thing. If you feel a need to comment on them not seeming to be particularly mentally unwell today, the most helpful thing you can say is, ‘well done!’ Let this person or their carer know that you’re impressed with what they’ve acheived. Saying, ‘you’re doing so well today!’ will actually help that person in their treatment! It’s so much more constructive than, ‘well, he seemed ok last week, I don’t see why he can’t do it today!’ Judgemental comments like these can even hinder progress.

Whether someone with mental illness is having a good day or a bad day, acheiving or regressing, it’s great to sometimes acknowledge, ‘I know how hard this can be for you’. Reinforce that you know they’re doing the best they can at the time.

To finish off, I’d love for anyone not dealing with mental illness (be it yourself or a loved one/friend) to simply understand that there is a whole big picture behind mental illness. You don’t see it, but compassionate people can try to use their imagination. Choose empathy. Even if you don’t understand a particular illness much, attempting empathy is more useful than blind judgement.

 

 

 

 

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Function

November 20, 2012 Family, Musings

Every day is an exercise in trying to function.

I’m waiting on ultrasound results, trying to stay awake and choose some simple jobs around the house before it gets too much and I sleep. I have mothers’ guilt. I have carers’ guilt. I have people who need me, I should be doing more. So every day, I try to work up enough energy to do the simplest tasks I can manage that allows the house to still function.

A load of laundry here. A quick wipe of the bathtub over there. Always followed with monumental exhaustion, as though I’ve acheived some amazing feat of strength.

The great thing about needing to rest a lot is that I can get loads of uni work done before study period starts. I want to be ahead on my work, because I don’t know how long my being unwell will last. I don’t know how much worse or better I can expect it to get, and after a month, I still don’t know what is wrong with me. I don’t know if I’ll need to be ahead on uni work, lest I have to fit surgery into it. So, since I sit here so much, so tired and in pain, I just do my studies regardless. What else am I going to do?

Most afternoons, sometimes before lunch if I’m really tired, I’ll pass out in bed for a while. For my kids, all they know is mum disappears. When I can be awake, but still resting, I might read a story to Missy 4. I might sit on the verandah and watch her paint, and eventually psych myself up enough to give the verandah a minimal clean.

Also, I’m playing a lot of FarmVille on facebook. Well, there’s a sentance I never expected to come from me. I never understood how some can just seemingly sit on these games all day. But people, the bar around here has been lowered. Now FarmVille is the saviour that helps to keep me busy of mind as I rest. To take my mind off my pain. To help me to hold off the need for sleep so soon in the day so that I can be awake to see my family.

I sit on FarmVille and sometimes think, ‘so, loser… is this what you do now?’ When I’m up and about more, I anticipate never wanting to look at frigging FarmVille again for as long as I live. But for now, it’s serving a purpose.

This particular sickness is a peculiar thing. A year or so ago, I was stressed enough that my carer support worker and Phams worker felt it was time to get treated for depression. Fair call. Usually if I get depression while in crisis mode, the antidepressants help to lift me out of it. Not this time. Because, what if it’s not depression? Or it is, but there’s something else? Something physically wrong?

So, I took the antidepressants, and still found it difficult all this time to get out of bed, but did it anyway. My hair kept falling out and breaking, I still felt flat, weak, dizzy and exhausted, even if I had done nothing to tire me. I lost my appetite, and when I forced myself to eat, could eat very little  (except at PMS time) because when I did eat, it made me feel nauseous. I blamed the antidepressants, thinking it was a side effect.

I’ve been off the antidepressants for a few months now, and nothing has changed. Most of my eating is functional. I technically need to eat, so I build myself up to make the effort. I eat half of what is in front of me, or less.

A few days ago, I decided that no matter what is wrong with me, I should try to get a daily walk done. Because no matter what is wrong with me, the fitter I am, the better I’ll be able to deal with it. I went for one walk. Loved it. It took two days of exhaustion to go back to feeling the way I was before, which was still crap, but at least a little functional.

I’ve decided I really shouldn’t do those walks. Not if I can’t function for a few days after. I’m a mum to three, and a carer to my partner. I can’t afford to be out of the game.

My partner, on the other hand, is really rising to the occassion.

Despite my health adding to his already stressed  mind, he does the same thing I do; he tries to pick simple tasks that will help keep this family afloat. Remember when I talked about OCD and cleaning before? Well, silver lining, people: his OCD is just starting to make him suddenly really into vacuuming. Couldn’t have happened at a better time, to be honest. And you know how I talked about all the work we put in for him to be able to pick up the kids from school? Now all that practice is paying off. He drops off and picks the kids up from school most days.

I miss it. I want to do it, because I love walking, being out in the fresh mountain air and spending that time with my kids. But my partner doing it at this time is a godsend, because it appears that my energy is at a premium. I hoard what little I have jealously, and carefully select what activities it’ll be spent on. Not walks, not fun. I spend it on the most carefully selected, most-needed-to-be-done-right-now jobs. I wait around until my energy peaks just enough and quickly decide how I’m going to help this household function today.

I want to know what is wrong with me now, please universe. When that happens, I want the treatment for it to be fast, effective and over quickly, so I can go back to being my old self. Which by then, I suspect, will be a new self. I want to stop wandering through my days like a lost soul, in a dizzy fog, in pain and exhausted, chanting the guilt litany in my mind: ‘I’m supposed to be a mum, I’m supposed to be a carer, I’m supposed to get up and do this son of a bitch’.


Being a carer while sick, and having the person I’m supposed to care for caring for me, is probably one of the most exquisite mind fucks I’ve  had the pleasure of experiencing. I’m not enough right now for anyone. I know my partner feels the same about himself, but I think he’s doing an amazing job during such weird times. I think we are two ‘not enough-ers’, two halves, making one whole parent right now.

I’d like to get up now, please. Doctor? Will you run more tests, please? We’re all tired of waiting. I’m ready for answers and treatment now. Thanks a bunch.

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Red Cross, I Want to Say Thank You

June 13, 2012 Family

 

Anyone who’s a regular here is probably well-versed by now in the details surrounding our house fire.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully convey the sadness, fear, panic and isolation we felt at that time. We were so overwhelmed and felt very helpless. We’re lucky to be insured of course, but when you have a fire two days before xmas, what happens is that shops close. Banks close. If you think about the types of services that would be helpful in a situation like that, let me break it down for you: they were closed. We had a lot of waiting ahead of us. In terms of getting the house fixed and in a suitable living condition, we are still waiting six months on. I thought we’d mostly need painting and the like done, but as asbestos has been ripped out, ceilings have caved in and so on, more and more problems with this house have unfolded. Anyway, this post is not about that.

Despite the world’s closing down over xmas time, we still had needs. The four (at the time, it’s now three) kids in our care still needed things. A roof over our heads until the soot could be cleaned out. Food. Clothing. Sanity.

Our insurance company put us up in a motel. We scraped what food we could salvage (we only lost half of our food), and rationed it strictly which the two younger kids struggled to understand. We tried to choose food that wouldn’t overcrowd our bar fridge in the motel and had to choose things that didn’t need to be cooked. We bought some food with the money we had on us. We also had some other help which I’ll go into in another post.

I’ve been wanting to write my ‘fire thankyous’ for a long time now, but felt a need to make sure I do it justice. Today is just the beginning.

We didn’t manage to get any sanity then, and not for a long time. I’m sure regulars would’ve noticed how stroppy I get in my writing sometimes. Just know that if I seem bitter and pissy at times, I am working to get past all that. It’s just that it’s been a shocking and devastating experience for us. It’s taken a lot over the past six months to just get out of bed, and take care of business. The business of getting on with it, even when you think you can’t anymore.

Now. Clothes. We lost most of our clothes as well. In the shop where the fire started, was where we stored the clothes we were using. There’s so much more space in there to do that. Also, it’s where I would dump baskets of clean clothing, before I found the time to sort, fold and put them away. We were in the heat of Summer. In our house part of the home that was not burned, were all our Winter clothes. Were they burned? No. Covered in soot? Yes. We took these soot-covered Winter clothes and wore them in the hot Summer. There were one or two pieces that were more suitable for Summer, so we’d mix it up a little bit with our Winter pieces! All the clothes we had did end up getting washed at the motel, but were still soot-stained, and we knew we’d have to replace all our clothes when we were capable, because the reality is that they were destroyed.

Here is my son on one of the few days we managed to get them to the park to escape the cabin fever of being squished into a motel. Most days it was too hot for the park, so we’d wait until afternoon/evening, then it woud rain! You can see my beautiful son modelling his flanellette pajama pants with a singlet top and gumboots. The two little ones only had gumboots left as shoes.

We looked and felt like derros. We were stressed, and added to that, we felt like losers who couldn’t dress their kids properly. At the park that day, few of the kids would play with our two little ones. My eldest daughter was wearing something more ‘normal’ that day, and the difference in how she was treated was palpable. I worried what all the other parents thought of us as a family, and more importantly, as parents. It was shattering.

We did manage to get together a few other clothes, and I’ll talk about that in future.

Anyway, where does Red Cross come into all of this, you’re probably wondering? Well, we’d had some friends recommend to us to ask Centrelink about a Crisis payment. Of course, this had to wait until Centrelink and the banks re-opened after xmas. New Year’s was coming, so we had to act pretty quickly. Every single towel we owned was destroyed in the fire. We had showers and dried ourselves at the motel, but when we came home, we were on the nose until we could get some towels! A few of us dried ourselves on some sooty bedsheets when we got really desperate.

I can’t remember the reasoning behind it, but for some reason we didn’t qualify for the Crisis payment. Centrelink assigned us a social worker. I’m not sure exactly how Red Cross got involved, but the point is that they did. They asked one major chain store to donate a voucher from their store to help us with clothing. I won’t name this company. They led us to believe that they would help us out for a week or so, then decided they wouldn’t be going ahead with it. Well, that’s their perogative.

So next, Red Cross approached Target, who almost instantly agreed to donate a $500 gift card at our nearest store. I raced into town with the help of a good friend, and because there was a very good sale on at the time, managed to get many, many new clothes and some towels at good prices. Not bad for a family of six!

Red Cross and anyone else who supported us at this time have a place in my heart forever. I plan to make it my mission to spend a lot of time on this blog supporting Red Cross in the future as a way to say thank you, and to help them do what they do best.

What they did for us during that crisis was fantastic and a huge relief, but they have done so much more for us than that.

When my mother had a stroke a year or so ago, she spent three months in rehab, learning to walk, feed and basically, function. It was a stressful and depressing time. Finding motivation was something she did well, but she too had days of feeling overwhelmed and helpless. She lost so much when she had that stroke. Although she’s been incredibly strong-willed even up to today, she can’t do a lot of things she used to do.

At rehab, they would hold bingo sessions and a few times, my mum won! Because her confidence was on fairly shaky ground, this made her feel happy at the time and capable. She won the two Trauma Teddies you see in the photo above.

My mum shares a birthday with my youngest daughter. For the first time ever, she wouldn’t be seeing her for their birthdays. She’d bought all her birthday presents right before her stroke amazingly! But can you imagine how pleased she was, to be able to earn these cute gifts for her granddaughter, hot on the tail of a stroke? That’s empowerment! I remember when I used to work in a women’s and children’s refuge, we had a cupboard full of Trauma Teddies to cheer up the kids going through a rough time. If you’ve never seen a troubled child receive one of these bears, let me tell you now, it is magical. Priceless.

I will be knitting these bears myself very soon.

Even then, this isn’t the end to how Red Cross has helped us. Two and a half years ago, my partner was diagnosed with severe OCD, depression and a little later, mild agoraphobia. He was tortured. I couldn’t cope with him yet, as I hadn’t learned how to. I had/have a carer support worker, and she suggested that I get a PHaMS worker (Personal Helpers and Mentors Program). This service is also provided by Red Cross. It’s mostly for people with an actual mental illness, but it can also be for people affected in other ways, such as carers.

My worker at the time helped a great deal. Once a week, she’d come to our home to talk to me and help me to wade through the myriad of obstacles I was facing with my partner’s illness. In time, we found that my partner would benefit from a worker of his own, so he was assigned my worker (because he knew and trusted her) and I was assigned a new one. In time, I found I no longer needed the service. My partner, though still sick, has just stopped needing a PHaMS worker now.

If it weren’t for his worker, he would never had gotten onto the disability pension, which in turn means I wouldn’t have gotten onto carer’s pension. She also helped him to get to appointments when he was too anxious to attend, and would often go with him, not just to help make him more comfortable, but also to advocate for him. To help him remember what was said, or to remind him of what the specialists needed to be told.

She gradually managed to get him to start leaving the house for walks, which is a much bigger deal than it sounds! She was very positive with him, always giving words of encouragement and pointing out his good qualities. She helped us to find services which could be helpful to our situation. She helped him to come up with plans for each step of his recovery, like little goals. She helped to troubleshoot issues he was having, ‘stuck points’, if you will. If he appeared to not be progressing in certain areas, she helped us to find strategies to get him through that.

She was always kind and compassionate. She was such a fierce advocate for mental health.

In short, Red Cross has given us support when we couldn’t find any. Help when we needed it. Hope when we had none. So it’s with much love and gratitude, that I say thank you from all of us, for all you’ve done. I want to do everything I can to support this brilliant charity, starting with this blog. I can start by spreading the word. Telling you the great work they do. Asking you to support them so that others like me can get the much-needed help when they need it.

If you’ve ever been helped by Red Cross, I’d love to hear from you! Comment below and tell us what they’ve done to help you. If you’d like to say thank you to Red Cross, give a donation, volunteer for them, hell, even share this on Facebook, Twitter or StumbleUpon! Put the word out there so Red Cross can keep up the good work. Ditto if you haven’t been helped but respect what they do.

Update: I have set up a fundraising page as my way of saying thank you to the Red Cross. Click here if you’d like to donate. I’d also like to make it clear that because I’ve set it up via Every Day Hero, I won’t see nor touch your money at any stage of the donation proceedings. As far as I can tell, the money goes straight into Red Cross’s account at regular intervals.

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Two Worlds I’ve Lived In.

February 20, 2012 Mind and Soul

There’s two worlds I’ve lived in over the course of my life. First, I lived in a place called Sanity World. A time long ago, when I was much younger. Sanity World is a place where a lucky few get to live, maybe for their entire lives, maybe not. It’s a world that is untouched by mental illness. You can hear about it, read about it, feel compassion for it and vow to help others who have it. But during the time you spend in this world, you don’t have mental illness, and no one you care about has it either.

It’s a place of innocence; the blissfully ignorant kind. You can be happy here, sad, angry, you can feel all the emotions. You feel them in a healthy way. You feel them when you have reason to. When I lived in Sanity World, I was a normal girl, living a normal life. Everyone around me, as far as I could tell, was pretty normal. I’m sure everyone wasn’t normal, but I couldn’t see it and was still untouched by it if that was the case.

I now live  in a new world I like to call Unsound World. It’s a place where people live when they have a mental illness, or someone they care about and usually live with, has mental illness. In Unsound World, you can feel all kinds of emotions; but usually not in a healthy way when you first get there. You can feel resentment, guilt, anxiety, hatred, self-loathing, rage, depression, intrusive thoughts and fear, just for starters. Yes, even if you’re not the one with mental illness. If you’re not mentally ill, you’ll see these emotions in your loved one/s, and down the track, you’ll feel some of these things too. In Unsound World, these emotions are magnified.

There is not always a reason for your feelings. In Unsound World, any feeling or thought could pop up at anytime. You know it’s not healthy or ‘right’, but you have to scramble through them, functioning through your life as if you still lived in Sanity World with an obstacle course crammed onto the top of it. People in Unsound World don’t always realise when they’ve arrived. They think they’re  still in Sanity World.

Nobody asks or wants to go to Unsound World. If your loved one goes there, you go there. Nobody asks you. However you got there, when you first arrive, you don’t know how you got  there. There’s new rules to be learned in Unsound World. New ways to navigate life. How well you cope with Unsound World and enjoy it is up to the help you receive when you get there. How quickly you get it and how willing or able you are to take it.

Some people get better in Unsound World. Some never do. Some never do but learn how to live a whole, healthy-ish life. No one who visits Unsound World ever returns to Sanity World, no matter how desperately they want to. No matter how sane you are, you never go back. You can never un-see what you’ve seen, un-hear what you’ve heard, un-think what you’ve thought or un-feel what you’ve felt. Those experiences stay with you forever and change the essence of who you are.

If you are willing and able, you can let yourself grow into a more compassionate, empathetic wise person. Even then, you can slip back into resentment and all those other painful emotions at any time. Because these emotions are unpredictable, come at any time, with no rhyme or reason, your ability to grow as a person can take a backward step. Some people in Unsound World become so worn down by the obstacles, the drama, the overwhelming burden of unwanted thoughts and emotions, that they can sometimes seem less compassionate, less wise and empathetic. It doesn’t mean any of these people are ‘bad’, simply struggling.

I am in Unsound World now. Only now am I realising I am a lifetime member. My partner and children are lifetime members, like it or not. Mental illness is a reality we all deal with everyday, be it our own, or our family members’. I sometimes yearn to go back to Sanity World, but then I realise that what I want more than anything in the world, is that my children could’ve lived there longer. Had that innocent childhood they started out with. Two years ago, my children were in Sanity World. They loved it there. They seem happy enough here in Unsound World, but as a mum, to me, it’s just not good enough for them. Not what they deserve. Yet, no one deserves to live in Unsound World. We can’t shield anyone from it.

Which world are you residing in now? If you live in Unsound World, would you ever go back?

 Other reading:

OCD on TV

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OCD on TV

February 9, 2012 Mind and Soul

I‘m so pissed off right now. We’ve been dealing with workers in the public sector, trying to put out some OCD fires.

(For those who don’t know, I’m a carer to my partner who has OCD. Without being too specific, there are other sufferers in our little family, too)

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get these workers on board to help us at times, or to respond the way we need them to, because of all the myths floating around about OCD.

I mean, some of the myths have been based on fact, but have been misinterpreted into something it’s just not. I think television plays a huge part in how OCD is perceived in society. Don’t get me wrong: I know it’s not fictitious TV’s ‘job’ to educate viewers on anything. The writers and actors are being creative, telling a story. What irks me though, is that whenever I see a character on TV portrayed with OCD, it’s regularly the same theme, time and time again:

- OCD sufferers are really neat and clean

- OCD sufferers are really organised.

- OCD is funny, but pretty harmless.

I used to watch Desperate Housewives a few years ago when it first became popular. I knew nothing about OCD at the time, and wasn’t living the reality everyday as I am now. There was one character, Bree Van Der Kamp, who had OCD. Wasn’t she just the ultimate, uber stepford wife, if you ever saw one? She’d keep her home immaculately clean. She was super organised. Apart from seeing a psychologist once in a while and being a bit annoying to her kids, she was the mother who was pretty much perfect. All the other mothers envied her abilities and would never have been able to keep up with her high standard of mothering.

I never saw her being two hours late in the mornings because her rituals slowed her life down. I never saw her hyperventillating with anxiety, or in a room on her own, rocking! I never saw her fly into a rage because someone near her mispronounced a word and it drove her to distraction.

In all fairness, I didn’t watch this series that long, so maybe that stuff was portrayed? But I seriously doubt it. Also, all OCD sufferers are different, and I wouldn’t expect all to be portrayed with the mispronunciation thing in mind.  But still… she was a ‘cleaner’ OCD sufferer. I never saw her scream bloody murder at the person who dared to unknowingly touch her pen. Just an example of what the reality could look like.

I never saw her run out of the home in a blind rage, threatening to never come back, that she was leaving all of them. But hey, I didn’t watch all seasons…

One show I have watched all seasons of, however, is Glee. Good god, how I love that show. And dear, sweet, harmless little Emma Pillsbury. Another organised little ‘cleaner’. I’m not denying that many OCD sufferers have a cleaning obsession. I’m just feeling that maybe I got a dud deal. I mean, how can it be that at last count, I had three OCD sufferers in this house, and not one of them has the cleaning obsession? It’s a bit hard not to feel ripped off.

When my partner was diagnosed two years ago with OCD, I was well chuffed.

I am going to have the cleanest home ever, and I won’t have to lift a finger.

Yes, sadly, I actually believed that. And, that we’d be super-duper organised. Guess what? Two years on, my house is still a pig sty. Because this illness wastes a shit load of time. My partner has improved a load, but I know he still has his rituals. His ‘checking’ behaviour.

But I need to go back to Emma for a minute. How is it, that when Will Schuester’s then wife deliberately contaminated Emma’s food, Emma sat there, just looking a bit pathetically sad? How did she not go completely postal, or at least glare at the woman with a thousand daggers of death? How did she not at least fidget, or hyperventillate? I mean come on, at the time, the woman was completely untreated, yet in a pretty severe stage of her condition?

Why, for the love of god, do you never see a TV sufferer of OCD, jumping out of a window of a frigging car? Or other, similar, impulsive behaviour?

How is it, that any time I watch a character with OCD on a TV show, the character never seems to feel as though the world is against them? That they are the lowest of the low, the scummiest of the scum? Because that’s the reality for a lot of sufferers!

It’s been scary to learn that many mental health workers we’ve had over time, don’t always know how to deal with it. That, if the police were called to help admit an OCD sufferer, that they may not take it seriously because what? They’ve run away, big deal. What are they going to do? Clean their way into town?

So, television execs, listen up: stop leaving the rage out of your characters who have OCD! Stop giving them such easy, perfect, harmless little lives! You’re not doing some of us any favours out here! Why don’t you throw in some suicide, some good old, ‘everyone would be much better off without me’? You make us carers, on receiving news of a diagnosis, think we’re in for a walk in the frigging park. Well, guess what? It’s not. It’s hell on earth, sometimes feeling as though there’s no end in sight.

Sure, it’s up to us, both sufferer and carer to get educated. Most of us do that. Yet we walk into that early stage, fresh out of diagnosis, with no information just yet. All we know is what we’ve seen on TV. For many workers in the public sector (teachers and police for starters), all they have is what they’ve seen on TV also. Until the information comes. Once we experience the reality as the illness unravels, we are shocked and horrified to learn that everything we thought we knew about OCD is just plain bullshit.

No end to the aggression, the being screamed at, the irrational behaviour and thought patterns. The not getting anything else done because all your energy is spent putting out this person’s fires. Watching someone you love/care about being absolutely tortured by their own mind. By the lies their brain is feeding them. Of course, with treatment, there is some relief, but it’s a slow, painful journey. For sufferer and carer.

In real life, TV execs, OCD sufferers don’t just throw on a t-shirt with ‘OCD’ on it in black letters, and dance on stage with the Glee Club students to Born This Way (awesome song though), and then everything’s hunky dory. Oh no, you didn’t! You’ve got to be shitting me.

PS: The OCD humour really doesn’t bother me. After all, we’ve laughed about it here at home many a time. It’s good medicine. And like my dad loves to say, ‘if you didn’t laugh, you’d probably break down and cry’.

Other reading:

Two Worlds I’ve Lived In

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