Heartstopper is a fantastic Netflix show that deals with many topics in a brilliant way, one of which is OCD. Finishing season three had me thinking about my teen years, the start of my OCD diagnosis and that feeling of the unknown. So I thought I’d look back on the last 15 years of my life living with OCD, with intrusive thoughts and compulsions and how that’s affected my life.
“Do you think I’ll ever get to the point where I don’t have any intrusive thoughts?” A line asked by one of the characters in the show. I cried when they said this. It really put me back into the headspace I felt when I was 14/15 and unsure of how my life would change now I knew I had OCD. My OCD is centric around germs, saliva and contamination, but also things like counting and small compulsive actions. As a teenager it was much worse than it is now, I was counting everything in sight multiple times, obsessively checking over my shoulder whenever I walked anywhere, and repeating small acts because my brain told me to. It was really hard, I felt like I was going crazy and I had no idea how my life would pan out.
As with any big thing in life that is new, it can feel immediately unsettling not to know how it’s going to turn out. Break ups for example. They will always be shit, but knowing you have survived one, can help you know you can do it again. Mental illness is a whole other ball game though, it’s smart, it adapts and changes and it feels like you can’t ever really shake it off. I still remember that sense of panic, of not being in control and not knowing if I ever would be. It was really scary, I wish I could hug young me.
Changing situations and environments like going from school to uni, living with family to living with strangers, was certainly a test for my OCD. At the heart of every person with OCD is a need to control and going to uni kinda flips things upside down for a while. It’s a whole new space and way of doing things and you are pretty out of control to start with. I had the best time of my life at university, I made new friends and experienced new things and I think in doing that, distracted myself from my brain, which up until this point in my life, had always felt like a massive mess.
Jump forward years later and I own my own home, I have full control over my environment, and much more control over my life and my brain. OCD is now a part of me, of my life. I’ve definitely grown used to how my brain works and whilst I still get frustrated by how I think at times, I know what to expect and how to cope with it. Sometimes I’ll develop a new tick, but the difference now at 29 vs 14 is that I know how to approach that and how to deal with it. I went to many a different therapist when I was younger, including trying hypnotherapy, but I think the real thing that has helped my OCD is time. Not technique or tactic I’ve been taught to cope with my brain has helped as much as my control over myself and knowing that it will be okay.
Obviously my friends and family have been around me with this OCD brain for some time and have also grown accustomed to how my brain works, but that doesn’t mean they always accept it. I think that’s something I find quite difficult now, years after my diagnosis, and something I thought would go away. Some of my OCD traits can be quite frustrating to others at times, even those around me regularly. People who are accepting of my OCD 90% of the time, still have a breaking point and I’ve found people around me can snap in frustration sometimes. I find this type of thing quite tricky because no matter how annoying it is to them to experience an effect of my OCD for a few minutes, I am dealing with it every second of every day and trying to cope on a 24/7 basis. I know I can be a pain in the arse sometimes, especially with the germs side of things, but ontop of any battle people see physically from me, mentally I’m trying to manage it all behind the scenes too.
So when I heard the line “Do you think I’ll ever get to the point where I don’t have any intrusive thoughts?” in Heartstopper, I cried because no, you will never get to the point where you don’t have intrusive thoughts, but it is okay. OCD is a beast to conquor and it may be one of the hardest things you ever have to cope with in your own head, but you will be okay. Young Beth, you will learn how your brain works, you won’t see yourself as a freak because of it, you’ll actually end up seeing it as a bit of a weird super power. You will always have intrusive thoughts, but life expereinces and time will teach you how to deal with them and process your mental illness.
