Authors: Isobel Irons

Obsessive (22 page)

Don’t worry, Margot is getting her own book. Look for the next book in
The Issues Series
, MELODRAMATIC, coming in 2014!

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Educate Yourself About OCD

As most psychologists will tell you, one of the most hurtful things a sufferer of OCD has to deal with is when others misjudge or misunderstand the severity of this disorder. One only has to do a google search of the term “OCD” to come up with a long list of posts and jokes mocking sufferers of OCD or labeling any and all excessive sanitary practices or the appearance of extreme neatness as “that’s so OCD,” or “I’m so OCD.”

In researching this book, I read an article about a man who spent his entire adolescence plagued by violent intrusive thoughts, but he never sought help or fully understood what was happening to him until he’d reached adulthood. Because according to the dramatic portrayals of mental illness he’d seen and heard of on television and in other forms of media, he didn’t feel like his problems were ‘that bad.’ When he did try to explain what he was feeling to one of his friends, she rolled her eyes and said something like, “I totally know what you mean. I feel that way
all the time
.” So he kept the details to himself, and just assumed that his friend was better at ‘dealing’ with life than he was.

The most important thing to remember is that there is never just one side to every coin. The brain is such a complex, personal organ. Everyone’s mind works differently. Which means that illnesses and disorders will affect each person in different ways. Telling someone they don’t have a mental illness, or that they’re not entitled to the same kind of consideration and compassion as someone who has a more “severe” or more “obvious” disorder is wrong. Even trying to rank other people’s illnesses by how easy they are for the average “healthy” person to understand or relate to, that also seems really wrong to me.

Show You Care, but Don’t Compare

Be careful what you say, and what you assume. You can’t ever really put yourself in someone else’s shoes (figuratively speaking), no matter how compassionate of a person you are. But you can offer your sympathy, and support, without trying to compare their pain to your own.

Common Treatments and Therapies for OCD:

CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
– Or, as Jeanne called it, “Cognitive Reprogramming” can be extremely helpful, if done properly by someone who is trained to work with OCD patients.

Exposure Therapy
– The YouTube videos Grant watched that first introduced him to this type of therapy were based on a short BBC series called
“Extreme OCD Camp,”
which I highly recommend watching. You will probably laugh, you will definitely cry, but more importantly you will be moved by the courage of these brave teenagers who live with OCD on a daily basis. You’re going to see a variation of this technique used in Margot’s book, MELODRAMATIC, because it’s also used to treat patients suffering from generalized anxiety disorder and PTSD.

Medication
– As much as Grant wished he could go cold turkey and stop taking any kind of prescription, the truth is that some kind of medication will be necessary for most OCD patients. Contrary to the way Grant felt (and the way a lot of people unfortunately believe) it doesn’t make him weak or unable to cope, any more than a diabetes patient is weak for needing insulin. Wouldn’t it be great though, if there wasn’t any kind of social stigma associated with these types of medications? Don’t you think it would be easier to ask for help, if you weren’t worried about being judged or treated differently?

Learn More About OCD and How You Can Help (It Starts with Awareness):