OCD: TO TELL OR NOT TO TELL
Barbara, a 33-year-old honors graduate of a prestigious Ivy League university, knew that she was an underachiever, working for a temporary agency. She was intelligent and articulate, but was plagued by intrusive thoughts that told her to check and recheck things. Had she unplugged the appliances? Locked the door? Often, she would leave early for her job, knowing she would have to turn around and come back home once or twice to check. One really bad day, she tucked the coffee machine and the iron in her book bag and took them to work. She felt very ashamed. “If you start doing these things,” Barbara told herself, “you’re going to lose whatever self-respect you have left.” So she developed new strategies for coping with her nagging and nonsensical thoughts: Before she left for work each day, she put the coffee machine on top of the refrigerator, far from any electrical outlet, and said out loud—and very tongue in cheek—“Goodbye, Mr. Coffee!” She had come up with a mnemonic device to help her remember that she had unplugged it. She would also press the prongs of the plug on her iron into her palm, leaving deep marks that she could still see thirty minutes later to reassure herself that she had unplugged the iron.
Barbara, who obsessed about whether she had unplugged Mr. Coffee, told everyone when she was first diagnosed, figuring that “if people knew the very worst about me and still thought I was okay then I was okay.” But she quickly learned to keep quiet about her OCD. At work, people would respond either by making jokes at her expense or looking perplexed and responding, “Why don’t you just stop it?” Barbara realized that being forthright about OCD was a bad career move. Unfortunately, that is all too frequently the case. Benjamin, who once had to live in a totally organized environment, says, “I don’t see anything productive about telling people I don’t have to tell because of people’s general lack of understanding about mental disorders.” He doesn’t tell work associates or new friends, for example. But he has been open with his girlfriend and with his family, and both have responded positively The decision to be honest with his family was a tough one: “Because I come from a highly successful family, high-powered people who were successful socially and professionally, I had sort of built this brick wall around myself” in an effort to hide this defect from them. Telling them about his OCD was “a great relief. After I opened up, they opened up much more. It had a positive snowballing effect. Their response was much more empathic and understanding than I had anticipated. I no longer have to carry around this big defense. I’m a much more open person, more able to admit other weaknesses and to laugh at myself.” He learned that “people respect other people for accepting themselves for what and who they are. And people do have a high level of tolerance for a physical disorder—if they see that the person is trying to function and interact as well as he can.”
OCD patients frequently talk about having OCD personalities, of being extremely introverted, afraid of aggression, and unable to deal with aggressive people.
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