I Have OCD; and I Can Never Forget That

by Tyler Mendelsohn

Listen to Executive Director Gabriel Nathan read this post aloud:

I didn’t grow up religious, but I’ve been praying my whole life.

As a kid, I counted my pulse to lucky numbers to keep people I loved from dying. I made bubbles with my teeth and thought as many positive thoughts as I could until they popped. I moved my right ring finger across the right side of my forehead and then up, underneath my hair. I don’t remember why, but the reason seemed logical and I knew it wasn’t.

There are several types of OCD but, if you’re a renaissance person like me, you might have many at once. You might have pure obsessions that don’t lead to compulsions. You might have some obsessions that do lead to compulsions. You might have compulsions that are divorced from a specific obsession, just lingering anxiety. You might have what’s called Existential OCD, which the International OCD Foundation describes as involving “intrusive, repetitive thinking about questions which cannot possibly be answered, and which may be philosophical or frightening in nature, or both.”

Or maybe that last part is something else.

As a kid, I regularly thought or dreamt wildly specific things that have then happened.

As an adult, I’ve asked the Universe to see or hear particular things to answer all sorts of questions—some about my own life, some about whether other people will be okay, some about bigger existential or philosophical questions—and I have always encountered those things in the timeframe I specified.

My parents are psychoanalysts. They find patterns in the subconscious mind that explain relational dynamics. I find patterns in the Universe that explain the Universe.

I sometimes wonder if I inherited the ability to search for hidden meaning, leading to strange experiences, or if strange experiences happen to me and I interpret them. Usually, I’m not looking for patterns; they’re just there.

One OCD site I found said, “Never forget that you have OCD” [emphasis theirs].  This means that you will not always be able to trust your own reactions or the things you think and feel…”

Another quote I found on an OCD forum said, “…so many cultures around the world accept the things we go through as already true without trying to find other natural explanations first. But many of us mentally ill people (despite our experiences) are fighting to be…critical thinkers and scientific minded, but…it makes it painful for us, because it’s hard to find rational dialogue about our experiences.”

Sifting through all this is like putting my brain through a colander and seeing if what’s not real—or really, what’s “just a mental health disorder” and not me—goes down the drain. It’s impossible.

But I have OCD, so I’ve been trying to do it for months now.

One time, I gave myself 11 tarot readings from a free astrology site. I told myself that, because I’d had a series of traumatic experiences in a row, I should just do what I want with my stress. But why did I want to do that?

*

In Alexander Chee’s essay “The Querent,” he discusses his changing relationship to tarot. At first, he used it to predict the future. Later, he saw examples of people using it to make sense of the present.

“What I understood…is that the mirror I wanted, back when I wanted to see around corners into the future, was actually not for seeing the future at all; the mirror is for seeing the now.”

When I imagine an enlightened spirituality, I imagine pure presence. Sitting in uncertainty and being here now.

To be clear, tarot cards are “spiritual, not religious”—but when I use them, they’re religious. Whenever I find myself overusing the cards, it’s at times when a lot seems to be going wrong, when I just want something out there to tell me things will be okay. I am the opposite of present; the present is what I’m trying to escape.

I’m sober—an addict in recovery—and it’s often suggested that filling your life with meaningful things in recovery will fill the void you tried to fill with alcohol or drugs. For a long time, I felt emptiness even with a life full of meaningful things in recovery. I was a hungry ghost, a mythological creature often used as a metaphor for addiction.

I thought “ghost” was my lot in this life but, at 36, I happily feel the emptiness fading; it’s almost gone, a tiny little familiar black hole in the distance.

But I think the emptiness was in part a disconnection from myself and what I was feeling, and perhaps that’s why I was kind of bothered by the quote: “Never forget that you have OCD.”

I know the author means not trusting the obsessions, some of which may be terrifying. But the meaning I make feels like trusting my own reactions and the things I think and feel. That seems important. On the other hand, compulsively searching for meaning—or trying to control it—isn’t healthy. As the emptiness takes its last breaths, I’m trying to understand if there’s a balance.

            *

Growing up with two psychoanalyst parents, nothing was what it was. There were always layers. If you used this word instead of that one, it had meaning that led to another meaning that led to another.

There was both mystery and order to it. The subconscious is supposed to be unknowable—or at least outside of conscious awareness—but there were patterns that could help you figure it out.

So when I ask to see specific signs and see them, I can’t deny that it’s strange. And there’s always a thought in the back of my mind echoing that quote from the OCD site, “Never forget that you have OCD. This means that you will not always be able to trust your own reactions or the things you think and feel…”

Superstitions in OCD are often referred to as “magical thinking”—not actual magic, just not true.

I’m trying to, like that quote on the forum said, “fight to be a critical thinker.” But I’ve also learned, and am learning, to trust my intuition.

Maybe I could just stop all this—decide it’s real to me and that’s enough.

*

I Googled “‘creating ritual’ when you have OCD.” Everything I found was about delaying or changing up your compulsions, an attempt to teach your brain that nothing bad happens if you don’t do the exact thing.

I’m not talking about compulsions. I’m talking about something you do in a particular pattern at particular times that feels meaningful, or maybe just calms you, or maybe makes you feel connected to something larger, or maybe connects you to yourself.

I Googled “what does a healthy ritual look like?” and every article recommended “7 daily morning rituals” or “10 wellness rituals.”

I’m not talking about routine. I’m talking about something outside of routine daily life—that feels special, that’s not frantic, that doesn’t have everything riding on it.

How do you engage in spirituality or meaning making when any ritual can become a burden? Some people pray, a lot of my friends have rituals around the tarot, but I just keep going and going in whatever direction I think will provide answers or comfort.

Some aspects of spirituality or tradition can involve repetitive ritual. But what happens when too much repetition prevents you from the transcendence you’re presumably looking for?

    *

So many articles about OCD start out with a little section like: ‘Wearing the same underwear you wore when your team last won. Wearing a ‘lucky’ outfit to an interview. We all have superstitions, but for some of us, those can get unhealthy.’

For some of us, they can.

In the book “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD, and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought,” author David Adam says that 90% of people have intrusive thoughts, but only 2-3% have OCD. When I asked him why, he said, “that’s the million-dollar question.”

I imagine it as though “everyday” superstitions are an umbrella, giving you a small sense of protection from what’s raining down; for me, obsessions are a bunker I’ve made so I never have to experience rain, but the bunker still floods, and I’m constantly trying to talk myself into leaving.

*

Khloe Kardashian says OCD is a cute and helpful disorder because it makes you neater.

It wasn’t clear whether Monica Geller from Friends had the disorder, but the other characters thought she did and it became fodder for the 90’s laugh track.

The Riddler is a supervillain who some say has obsessive-compulsive disorder because he needs to incorporate puzzles into his supervillainy tactics. His compulsions make him dangerous.

It was clear that Melvin Udall from the movie As Good as It Gets had OCD simply because of the way he walked down the street—avoiding cracks or contact with other people.

I learned to stop doing rituals in front of people.

My compulsions, as far as I know, have never hurt anyone but myself.

I’m not OCD as in “I’m so OCD.” I’m a counter and an obsessive meaning-maker.

The brain has layers and meta-cognition, people learn to compensate to survive, and a simplistic representation of anything isn’t how life works.

Do you know how life works? Do you spend a clinically excessive amount of time trying to figure it out? You might have OCD.

               *

When I interviewed David Adam, he said people with OCD are more likely to have an inflated sense of responsibility for what happens.

It’s like I’m playing God—’if I do this, this person won’t die’—while searching endlessly for something larger than myself.

Is centering self—asking for signs or answers from the tarot—antithetical to connecting with something larger? Even when I’m asking for signs about philosophical questions, it’s because of a self-centering quest to understand, to know how to live.

I had a conversation about this with a friend; he thought searching for something outside of the human or material for answers about how to live seems like the essence of spirituality.

Do you find it by asking, though? Or do you find it by sitting back and observing?

                    *

I want to experience the Universe stuff, whether magical thinking or not. It’s one source of meaning for me.

It’s not a symptom of a mental health disorder if it doesn’t cause distress, but it is OCD if I stay up at a creative retreat when my friends go to bed after we each got one tarot reading, giving myself several more and looking up the meanings of every card online.

I want control. Not the type that overpowers; the kind that makes me feel, if only temporarily, that bad things won’t happen, that everyone will be okay, that maybe life has some identifiable shape.

But I also want mysticism. I want beautiful, unexplainable things. And I hope against hope that, if part of this is just symptoms of a disorder, there can still be magic.

​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR / EDITOR: Gabriel Nathan | DESIGN: Leah Alexandra Goldstein | SITE ORIGINATOR: Bud Clayman