Getting Sick With OCD
My OCD first manifested as an intense fear of throwing up (emetophobia) after I vomited as a child--and ever since then, I became acutely aware of everything my body was doing. I was a pint-sized hypochondriac, thinking every cough or sneeze meant something terrible was going to happen to me.
I tried to control my health with compulsions, which I knew on some level wouldn’t work--it’s not like counting things a certain number of times would prevent me from catching a cold or stomach bug--but other things seemed so rational to me that I couldn’t stop doing them.
I refused to share food from other people’s plates or drink from their cups (which did, in fact, save me from a particularly nasty bout of norovirus nearly everyone in my dorm caught during a high school summer program). I would drink out of water fountains only if I was extremely thirsty, and I had a particular ritualistic way of doing it that didn’t exactly help me make friends. I tried to remember who around me was sick and how long the illness typically tended to last, so I could stay away from them until I was sure they were okay.
Thanks to this history, it’s always somewhat weird for me when I do wind up catching something. COVID was a bit of a special case since there was genuinely good reason to be scared of catching it, especially considering my history of a blood clot, but everyday things still bother me probably more than they should.
As I’m writing this, I’m (hopefully) on the tail end of having a bad cold with a near-constant cough, an ear infection that has almost completely eliminated my ability to hear out of my left ear, and pinkeye in both eyes.
As an adult, I know how to take care of myself--I set phone alarms for the twice-daily ear drops and four-times-daily eye drops, learned how to administer both kinds of drops to myself, and have been checking in regularly with my doctor to make sure I’m doing everything I can to facilitate recovery.
But on the other hand, it’s hard at times like these to not regress into the kinds of thought patterns I used to have as a kid. For example, I used to panic that whenever I coughed too hard or too many times, I would throw up. (Sometimes, if I thought I was going to throw up, I would try to get it over with and force myself to cough repeatedly even if I didn’t need to.) I still find myself hypervigilant of symptoms and feel the need to do something about them, even if there’s nothing I can do.
I was also afraid of coughing up mucus, as I believed that anything coming out of my mouth was similar to throwing up. That was always the worst part of having a cold for me, since it meant that I swung from attempting to relax to being on high alert in just a few seconds, and it would take me a long time to calm down again.
Even though these thoughts don’t take the form of compulsions like they did when I was a kid, it’s still strange to feel like I did back then, trying to control something I couldn’t. I can live a healthy lifestyle, but germs will still exist, and I am now old enough to know that trying to breathe through the gap between my front teeth won’t actually “filter them out.”
My therapist has told me that, at times like these, it’s important to have a balance between what my adult and child sides need. As an adult, I need to know I’m taking care of myself, doing work and chores, and working on other life goals as much as I can. But I also need to take a break if I need something calming or relaxing due to a spike in anxiety from more child-like thoughts.
The difference is that, now, I can reassure myself that things are going to be okay--but it’s still strange to re-experience the familiar thoughts of wondering if that’s actually true, panicking over things I really shouldn’t be panicking over, and overanalyzing everything about my body as it tries to recover from even a simple illness.
I don’t think I’m ever going to be especially “good” at being sick, considering my history, but I believe it’s important to note things like this as a way to demonstrate that mental illness is not something that can be outgrown or fixed in its entirety. There are always some parts that stick around, just like there are parts of everyone’s adulthood that reflect how they grew up. When I was a teenager, I thought I would be able to put OCD behind me for good, but it took me until I was in college and really struggling to realize that although people change over time, some things from the past will linger--and the way to move forward is acceptance.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.