Little Things
While “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is a common phrase, few of us celebrate the individual steps that help us get to that thousand-mile mark.
When I look back at the journey I’ve taken to get to a more stable place, that road is paved with hundreds of tiny milestones, some of which have been far easier than others, that help me lead a more normal life even with OCD.
Something that came to mind recently is that I avoided sleeping on my left side and my stomach for years thanks to an Internet sidebar ad that showed up one time for me. It was from a disreputable source trying to sell some kind of weight loss product, but the image of the stomach being “more full” if someone slept on the left side, and that that could cause nausea or vomiting, somehow got stuck in my head.
Like the vast majority of my obsessive thoughts, I knew it was completely incorrect. There was no way sleeping in a particular position – one I’d slept in plenty of times before – would cause anything to happen to me, but the idea wormed its way into my subconscious, and I found myself unwilling to sleep on my left side or my stomach.
Recently, however, I’ve noticed that the power of this long-held idea has faded. I sleep on my left side perhaps not as frequently as on my right side, but for whatever reason, I’ve felt the urge to sleep on my stomach. I was nervous at first, but quickly realized that it wasn’t actually going to do anything to me. I didn’t believe the ad I saw years ago anymore, and it had no power to make me sleep in any particular way.
And so, I tried sleeping on my stomach. It was scary at first, but I soon realized that I felt completely fine. One night turned into two, and now I sleep on my stomach just about as much as I sleep on my sides.
This might sound insignificant, but to me, every one of these tiny changes I make helps me live a life I can be proud of. I am reminded of this pride every time I try a new food (this week, I tried samosas for the first time as I hesitantly dip my toes into the world of Indian food), try a new activity that scares me, or convince myself out of a panicked thought loop.
Sometimes, when I get ashamed of myself for being afraid of things, I remind myself of these tiny steps and how they can make my fears much more manageable. I think about the time my best friend from college and I went to a Persian restaurant to try tiny bites of the food that might appear at my Nana’s 90th birthday party. I recall when, in the middle of the pandemic, I taught myself how to do things like grocery shopping again by taking two-minute trips to the grocery store where I touched nothing, just stayed in the building. In both of these instances, the “test drive” experiences made the real thing a lot less intimidating and helped me enjoy myself during times I thought were going to be ordeals.
When I discuss the various things I’ve gone through with friends, I sometimes hear that the things in their lives are impossible to handle or that they have no idea how I have handled what I have. I can’t see the whole journey either, when I’m in the middle of it – I just see the parts and the tiny little steps, and as I go along those steps, I find that I’ve gotten a lot farther than I thought.
In the world of therapy, this concept is called graded exposure therapy. Even though it often begins with the help of a therapist, I’ve found that it helps my everyday life to include little things that make me uncomfortable but help resolve my fears and obsessions in the long run. Whether this means listening to ambulance sounds to become less afraid of hospital memories, touching a dog for a moment in order to get used to being around dogs, or taking the tiniest lick of a new food, I appreciate the way these steps add up to create a path to where I want to go.
This mindset is a huge shift from how I used to see things when I was younger – that I was somehow stupid or bad for needing more steps to get to my goals. But now, this is my go-to method for anything that scares me. I’ve found something that works for me, and even if it takes more time and effort to make progress through little steps, I now celebrate them because they help me do the things I want to do and be the person I want to be, while acknowledging the way my head works and making accommodations for myself.
Ellie, a writer new to 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.