Listen to Executive Director Gabriel Nathan read this post aloud:

Why Do You Do That: My Journey with OCD

by Rosie Phillips

Today while my roommate and I were sitting on the couch watching TV and I was doing my usual ten minute long compulsion of re-adjusting myself to the “just right” position which occurs every time I sit down, she actually said something about it. In all honesty, I was shocked that this was the first time either of my roommates had said anything, given they both are subject to witnessing me doing my little routine, that closely resembles a dog with worms itching its behind on the floor, every time we sat down on the couch together for a show. But I guess it’s not the easiest thing to bring up—“Hey, why do you go into a trance where you won’t  stop scooting your butt and don’t speak to us every time you sit down.”

Nevertheless, my roommate was either curious enough, or more likely, tired enough of being wobbled by the shifting couch cushions for the first half of an episode, to finally ask the unspoken question today.

“Why do you do that moving thing when you sit down?” she asked, bluntly, mid-White Lotus theme song. Part of me was absolutely taken aback, while another part of me was fully expecting it at this point. Nevertheless, the question hit me harder than I anticipated, and I froze for a moment, feeling my cheeks turn the bright shade of pink that they do when I am uncomfortable or embarrassed. One would assume that after living with highly embarrassing physically-presenting OCD for the greater half of my life at this point; having been hand-fed in public as a teen, and dragged off of a crosswalk by my mother after getting stuck in a repeating compulsion once the lights had changed, that any feelings of embarrassment would have long ago faded for me in regards to my compulsions. However, I unfortunately care far too much about how others perceive me (which is a whole other can of worms), and no matter how seasoned I become in the art of public compulsions, feeling peoples’ eyes on me and receiving comments on my behavior always stings just the same.

I gathered myself and responded with my usual explanation for why I do strange things, “It’s my OCD.”  Thankfully, both my roommates are aware of my OCD, since it is quite impossible to live with me without noticing that there are clearly some misfirings going on in this brain of mine. When half the roll of our bathroom toilet paper was gone within the first twenty-four hours of my moving into the apartment, eyebrows were already being justifiably raised. And in the following days, when my roommates witnessed me having a full-blown panic attack because I thought my groceries had gone bad on my walk back home from the grocery store. And as they both voluntarily took a sip of the milk themselves to prove to me the groceries were safe to consume, it was painfully clear I had some serious issues.

Luckily (not for her, but definitely for me), one of my roommates has OCD as well, which has been a nice bonding experience for us (nothing brings two humans together quite like shared trauma). So thankfully, I didn’t need to dive into an entire spiel about what OCD is when she asked me that question—how contrary to popular belief, it does not in fact just consist of everything needing to be neat and tidy, and how it is the reason I spent close to a year of my life in a psychiatric hospital on every type of medication under the sun and hooked up to a feeding tube. She doesn’t need to know those details anyway.

Thinking my answer would be enough to suffice, I returned to my shifting directly after—but my roommate spoke again much to my surprise. After all, the episode had actually started now and White Lotus was something we were both very invested in.

“I know it’s your OCD,” she continued, “but why do you do it?”

Her question caught me off guard– usually the “It’s my OCD” answer silences the questioner pretty quickly. But my roommate’s repetition of her question was not something I had encountered before, and frankly was not prepared for. My “why” for doing these tedious compulsions was always automatically “because of my OCD,” but when she asked for the second time “why do you do it?” I realized she wasn’t asking what the mental condition was that causes me to do this strange behavior, but why do I, Rosie—not my OCD—personally feel the need to shift back and forth for ten minutes every time I sit down? This is just one of the many things I love about my roommate—yes, she can be painfully blunt and gives me shameful eyes  and a “Wow, you have quite a sweet tooth” remark when I come into the kitchen at night to make my sweet treat, but she is one of the most insightful, intuitive, and genuinely caring people I’ve ever met. You know how most people pretend to care about other people’s problems, some with more effort to disguise it as genuine concern than others, purely because they know it is expected of them? When my roommate asks a question, she genuinely cares to hear the answer, which is probably why her questions are so thought-provoking and compelled me to write this three page essay.

I paused for a moment, letting her question soak into my mind for as long as I needed it to. I frankly couldn’t remember the last time I asked myself, “why am I actually doing this? Why do I feel the uttermost need to do these tedious, painful, stress-inducing compulsions every day when in all reality I do have the option not to?”

​I then responded with the unfortunate truth—“because I am scared of what will happen if I don’t do it.” Just hearing the words come out of my mouth was a harsh awakening for me. Was that it? Was that really why I have lived the past twelve years of my life now in agony, a victim to this voice in my head telling me that if I don’t do its every command—even if those commands include staying underwater in the swimming pool and not coming up for a breath until I do a flip that feels “just right” and consequently nearly drowning—then it will make my  fears come true? Is this why I let OCD snatch me away from my life and place me in an inpatient psychiatric institution in Wisconsin the day I was supposed to begin high school in Los Angeles?….Why I have felt permanently behind ever since, always a grade below my friends in school once I returned?… Why I was unable to feed myself, dress myself, stand up from a chair, or brush my teeth due to excruciating compulsions? Because I was scared of what might happen if I didn’t do those compulsions? Honestly, pretty pathetic.

No, this is not me being too harsh on myself or needing to “give myself more grace” because, frankly, I have given myself more than enough grace at this point. I’ve been “giving myself grace” the past twelve years and look where that has gotten me—graduating a year behind  because I spent a whole year in the mental hospital, being heavily medicated since the age of  thirteen, still unable to drive at the age of twenty-five, and above all, still under the grasp of my obsessive compulsive disorder. So yes, it is indeed pathetic that I have let my life be ruined over the fear of what could happen—a fear that is not founded in any evidence besides the twisted magical thinking explanations I conjure in my head.

For the longest time, I saw this fear for what it first presented itself as—a fear of bodily harm to myself or to those who I loved, which soon evolved into a deathly fear of throwing up in particular (emetophobia, if you want to be fancy). While the intrusive thoughts I first experienced were more general in the realm of harm or death to my family and myself, my OCD got bored (as it tends to do), and eventually transitioned to fears that I or my family would get sick. Even the thought of feeling the slightest amount of nausea was—is, in all honestly—terrifying to me, and enough to get me to do whatever OCD was asking of me instantly, in order to “avoid” such a horrid feeling. My OCD clearly noticed the immense success it was having with vomit-related fears and compulsions, and stuck with this strategy. To this day, I am still deathly afraid of throwing up, and the majority of the threats OCD sends my way are centered around the possibility of feeling nauseous, getting the stomach flu, and getting food poisoning. Frankly, just typing out that last sentence was a true moment of exposure therapy for me.

However, as my frontal lobe has (ever so slowly) started to develop and I have come to understand the inner workings of my mind just a little more, it is clear to me that the fear is far more deep-rooted in my subconscious, far more personal to who I am than the way it presents itself through emetophobia or the fear of my family getting into an accident. The fear which has hung over my head throughout this journey, keeping me stuck and holding me back, is at its core, a fear of not having control; a fear of imperfection. Each and every tangible fear my OCD has cycled through shares a common thread—the lack of my ability to have control of a situation and make it perfect. What scared (and continues to scare) me so horribly about throwing up was (is) that feeling right before it happens, of not being able to control what my body is doing and how it is feeling. Similarly, my fear of my family getting into a deadly car accident any moment I was not with them was also rooted in my absolute need to control any danger that came their way, to ensure their utmost safety and wellbeing—which I felt I was achieving through my compulsions. It had always been blatantly obvious to both myself and anyone who interacted with me that I was an obnoxiously perfectionistic, the trait exhibiting itself at the age of seven when I sat at the piano for three hours straight, refusing to leave until I could play “Fur Elise” from start to finish with zero mistakes. However, it took years for me to connect the dots between my perfectionism and the fears which OCD fed off of, the fears it used to take over my life.

So maybe here is where my answer lies to the question which has loomed over me since that rainy day in our little New York City half-living room (the other half is my bedroom, it’s called a flex-apartment and you probably have never heard of such a thing if you haven’t been a broke twenty-something living in NYC). Maybe my dear roommate unknowingly sparked for me a discovery that years of the best therapy in the country and every SSRI on the market could not achieve.

“Why do you do that?” Because my desire to control, to perfect, to avoid any type of discomfort, is so severe that I will voluntarily resemble a dog itching its behind (not to mention sacrifice my ability to feed and take care of myself, see my family, and wear shoes with laces in them) in order to maintain such control. And the most peculiar part of it all is, in doing so, and in having done so for all of these years, the absolute opposite has happened—I have lost complete control. Of my life, my health, my independence, my sanity…of everything. In my desperate attempt to control any and everything through OCD compulsions, my OCD has taken complete control over me. I currently have the gum recession of a ninety-year-old according to my dentist, have undergone grafting surgery, and am scheduled for three more surgeries due to the damage I did to my gums from compulsive tooth-brushing until my gums bled. That doesn’t look like control to me in the slightest; that is being controlled by a malfunction in my brain who will not give up until I am back on a feeding tube, living in a treatment facility. So, upon much reflection, I now have the same question as my roommate…why do I do that? And until I can come up with a rational, reasonable answer (which I’m afraid simply does not exist due to the completely irrational nature of OCD) I am going to fight with all I have to not do “that” anymore.

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