I’m Not Broken: A Breakthrough
When therapy is portrayed in movies or TV, it’s often full of breakthroughs - big moments of understanding that change the patient’s perception of themselves or the world.
In real life, this is less common, but it still absolutely happens. One of my favorite ones from childhood was when my psychiatrist told me I was allowed to obsess about things I loved instead of fighting against my obsessive thought patterns all the time - and this has led to everything from fandom conventions to my upcoming adventure of a lifetime in New Zealand.
Breakthroughs may be rare, but they are still wonderful when they happen - and I’m excited to share that, this week, I had one.
It came from a combination of a therapy appointment and a chat with a rabbi who I have been meeting with about an upcoming speaking engagement. Before we got to business about my talk, he followed up on something I shared the last time we met, about the way people sometimes try to delve far too deeply into my business in a misguided attempt to help (see last week’s blog for more info).
He mused if that was why I sometimes feel uncomfortable in the Jewish community, which I have noticed tends to encourage a culture of extreme helping. I absolutely appreciate help when I need it, but I bristle when people won’t let “no” mean “no” or demand to help with things they can’t help with.
It’s the same principle as “Jewish mothering” someone with food. Sometimes, people want or need the food; other times, it’s pushy and hard to deal with in a respectful way. I know the people are well-meaning, but it doesn’t make it easier to say “no” when no one will listen.
It occurred to me, as we talked, that I didn’t mind this as much when I was growing up. I went to a Jewish school through middle school, a youth group in high school, and Hillel in college, but it was only in the last few years that I started to really notice and resent this kind of “help.”
Between my talk with the rabbi and my weekly therapy appointment, I realized that this is the same timeframe when I was working on my blog - anonymously at first, and then starting my journey as an open mental health advocate. And then, it hit me why I was bothered.
When I was younger, I believed that everything I was doing was wrong or bad if it had even the slightest relation to OCD. If I was eating strangely, performing a compulsion, or standing by myself in the middle of a social gathering, I felt like it was my fault and it showed that I was deeply flawed. I listened to the advice from people to help me fix these things because I believed that I needed to be fixed.
The big change now is that I don’t think I need to be fixed anymore.
Yes, I have a diagnosis - but that’s not a character flaw as much as something that I live with. I have friends who live with chronic physical health conditions that don’t feel like it’s their fault for having to do certain things differently, and the only reason I felt that way is because of all the stigma I internalized.
I believed what I was told by society, and thought that because this diagnosis was something wrong with me, I needed to fix it. But there is no cure for OCD, or for many other mental illnesses. The cure is finding a way to live a good life with it, not some magic pill that makes it all go away.
As a child, I used to dream about that magic pill - and I saw advice from people as a way to get closer to what I thought of as a “normal” life. But now, as I told my therapist, I love the life I have, OCD and all. I love the positives it gives me - like the trip to New Zealand - and have learned tools to deal with much of what comes up in day-to-day life.
So, when people try to fix me, I feel resentful because I now believe that I’m not broken. Being different isn’t inherently bad or wrong, and even if I can’t do certain things that people want me to do, I am still a human being living a completely valid life that I enjoy. Eating a new food or joining a club to help me make friends is not going to make me “normal,” nor would I want it to.
As I’ve been preparing for my trip, I’ve sent periodic updates to several friends, including Alex, my best friend from college. I told him that he could have had a normal best friend, but instead he got me packing weeks in advance and counting down to the trip in heartbeats (as I have been for the past 10 months) and making jokes about second breakfast.
His response was: “Normal” is boring; I much prefer the second brand of best friend :)
The more I surround myself with people who are kind and accepting, the harder it is to accept well-meaning advice coming from flawed reasoning that I need fixing. I know it’s something I’ll need to deal with in the future, and I’ll work on ways to do this in therapy - but knowing the reason why these remarks bother me actually makes me feel a lot better. It shows me that, after so long, I’m finally confident in who I am - and I can use this confidence going forward to help myself and others live a more successful life with mental illness.
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.