I'VE LEARNED

I’ve Learned

A few months ago, I participated in a social experiment: I showed up on a Zoom call with no idea of what was going to happen, along with a stranger who was also given no explanation. We talked to each other for fifteen minutes before a jaunty tune played and we were told to leave the call.

Back then, I was offered the opportunity to have the person behind this experiment - who runs many such programs and who introduced me to improv - dissect the 15-minute clip to see how my conversation partner and I act in social situations and offer potential feedback.

I was nervous to say yes to this, but according to my improv “yes and” mentality, I decided to go for it. After all, there are few things I haven’t heard about my conversation skills (or lack thereof) throughout my life.

When I was a kid, I used to talk all the time to the point that I almost never came up for air. I talked over everyone, whether about the things I was worried about or my favorite new hobby. My brain moved so fast that it was hard for me to slow my mouth down, and I remember feeling like everything I had to say was so urgent that it simply couldn’t wait.

I was taught in therapy how to recognize that if people were backing away or offering excuses, that meant they weren’t interested in listening to me anymore. I also had to let other people talk instead of monopolizing every conversation, and listen when other people wanted to share about their hobbies, likes, and worries.

Ever since I started learning these things, I’ve been very conscious of how I interact socially, both online and in person. I’ve tried to get to the point where, unless I’m extremely excited about something, I don’t let myself go off the rails and dominate a conversation. I do my best to provide a listening ear to my friends and family, but I am still aware of the fact that I bring a lot of energy and chattiness to conversations and keep an eye on that in case it goes awry.

That being said, I was nervous to see the footage from the social experiment. The person giving feedback, Holly (name changed for privacy), was doing so over a recording of the conversation, so I would have to listen to myself in a conversation with a stranger. It’s something that I could definitely see being valuable for someone like me as a younger person, but when I went to listen to the recording, I was instantly nervous.

What if all of my efforts that I thought I was so good at were all in vain, and I dominated the conversation? What if I rambled on and on without listening? What if I got too personal or too loud or too hyper (a word often used about me in social situations when I was a child, that I still hate being described with today)?

I decided to just bite the bullet and listen to the conversation. During the video, which I barely remember filming last October, I am speaking to James (name changed for privacy), a fellow improv performer and pet lover.

I was afraid when Holly paused the video for the first time, but she was just saying that she was glad I, as a woman, felt comfortable promoting my improv show, as many women keep quiet about their accomplishments. She said I gave off a friendly vibe and both of us were listening to each other and building a good rapport.

At one point, I started to cringe as my past self enthusiastically described the adorable puppy I would be picking up in two weeks. I noticed that, while I did start to take over the conversation a little bit, that moment was brief and Holly noted that I was giving James a gift: the opportunity to learn more about me from specific details and ask questions.

I’ve never heard my tendency to do this as giving a gift to someone before - usually, I’ve heard it as taking away my conversation partner’s agency and enjoyment. But this time, it was brief and I was asking questions too, and even though Holly noted that my energy was higher than James’, I never overwhelmed the conversation or stopped him from contributing.

In the end, Holly’s only feedback to me was to angle my camera differently. Nothing about what I said or how I said it was wrong in her eyes, and even though I know she’s not the be-all-and-end-all of judging conversations, it still felt good for an objective voice to not find any problems with how I interacted with a new person. As a kid who was always told to be quiet, I never could have imagined getting such a good review on a conversation - and I was especially proud of one thing:

The most consistent thing I noticed in the conversation, even though Holly didn’t note this, was that I was happy to be meeting someone new. There was a smile on my face the whole time. I laughed freely, brought positive energy to the room, and apparently incorporated the conversation skills I learned in therapy well enough that I could behave correctly while still enjoying myself.

I was honestly very proud when the 27-minute video finished and Holly didn’t say I was being a bad conversation partner, rambling, or dominating. It was great to see that after so many years of work to keep both the positive and negative aspects of what’s going on in my head to myself, I can do it without having to concentrate so hard that I lose the flow of conversation.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m not sharing a steady flow of nerdy memes, silly moments from improv practice, and cute dog pictures to my close friends. But I have gotten to the point where I know what my friends like and want, and I’ve controlled the spiraling thoughts in my head enough to make those friends in the first place.

The recorded proof of my self-control - and the fact that I have friends who I can lose that control with - is a refreshing reminder of how far I’ve come on my OCD journey, and has inspired me to look at my life now for more of these moments I never thought I could have.

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.

I HUGGED MY NANA TODAY

I Hugged My Nana Today

I’ve been waiting almost 15 months to run into my Nana’s apartment and wrap my arms around her without thinking about germs - and it finally happened. It’s been two weeks since her second dose of the Moderna vaccine, which my mom got for her out of pure dumb luck thanks to our state’s first-come-first-serve system.

I was so concerned with her being immune that, on the way out the door, Mom reminded me that I would need to wear a mask during our much-anticipated hug. I asked why, only to be reminded that I am unvaccinated. It struck me that I hadn’t thought about my own medical needs this whole time.

Sure, there are times when I worry about getting COVID, especially due to my history of blood clots and horrible fear of having a recurrence. But I hadn’t even considered my own safety - only my fear that my very occasional grocery store trips or dog walks would mean that I would breathe a germ onto Nana - who is 92 years old and my “blood thinners buddy” thanks to a heart condition - that would kill her.

It struck me, as I hugged Nana close, that this is one of my very rare obsessions where I worried about someone else’s medical safety above my own.

When I was little, I thought I’d broken my mom’s back by stepping on a sidewalk crack, not realizing that she had hurt her back long before I could walk. But even when, when I assiduously avoided stepping on more cracks, part of me knew that was just an obsession and I couldn’t really hurt my mom. My therapist said it, and even Mom said it - but in the case of COVID, there was an actual, legitimate way that I could do something careless, carry the virus back to Nana in a state where resources are spread thin especially in the case of the elderly, and actually kill her.

And so, I was meticulous. Even though I wanted to “cheat” since day one, when I phoned her from her lawn instead of going into her apartment, I didn’t hug Nana. I came close a few times, but never gave in to the temptation of a big hug that I’ve wanted (and sometimes needed) since the pandemic started.

When I came home last March, terrified of both the virus and germaphobic thought patterns I hadn’t had in a long time, I didn’t hug her even though it was something I always did when I was in trouble. When I gave back my puppy and sobbed my heart out to Nana over the phone, and then from across her apartment after I came home and quarantined, I wanted to hug her more than anything, but I was too afraid of hurting her.

It’s strange because, looking back, my germaphobic obsessions were always extremely self-centered. I didn’t care if kids in my class threw up as long as they did it far away from me. When I heard anyone was sick, whether it was something little or catastrophic, the first thing I thought about was when I’d last seen them, whether they had something contagious, and what the signs of their illness were so I could monitor myself for symptoms.

It all seems incredibly selfish when I think about it now, but I’ve always experienced OCD like a vortex - it’s not just that my thoughts cycle, but they can also pull me into an increasingly narrow focus until I’m only thinking about myself and my own medical needs - even if I am feeling completely fine.

This pandemic has been the first time I can remember someone having to remind me to look after my own safety in a medical situation. It’s the first time my obsession haven’t led me down into a whirlpool, but instead, compelled me to look after someone else. I bought masks with extra layers, was extra conscious of social distancing, and spent 8 months living 15 minutes away from Nana without hugging her because of her safety, not mine.

When Nana got her vaccine doses, I couldn’t wait to be able to give her one of our great big bear hugs that I’ve loved my whole life. After all, she was the first person to hold me when I was born - and we basically haven’t stopped hugging ever since. When I feel down, it helps me to think of some of our most memorable hugs, like the bear hug I got after every graduation ceremony, the ones when I flopped onto her like I had no bones when things weren’t going well, or the marathon hug I timed after I got out of the hospital (15 minutes, if you’re curious).

Today’s hug was another memorable one - I felt like I was learning how to hug her all over again, remembering our height difference, the smell of her shampoo, the way we cling onto each other and it somehow makes everything better on both ends of the hug. Even with a mask, it felt natural and special, and I couldn’t imagine worrying about catching COVID from this encounter. In that moment, no thoughts or fears could stop me from technically taking a risk for my health that was so overshadowed by joy that I barely even noticed it.

I hugged my Nana today just like I’ve wanted to since the moment I said goodbye to her at the end of a family vacation in December 2019, the last time we saw each other before the pandemic. As I drove back to my parents’ house, I thought of the days when I could never imagine putting someone else’s medical needs above my own or taking a risk for any reason. It reminded me of how far I’ve come and how far I’ll be able to go - thanks in no small part to Nana.

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.

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING "SUPERPOWER"

A Thought-Provoking “Superpower”

TW: Food, disordered eating

Earlier this week, for once in my life, I wanted to taste something bitter.

I had just received my supertaster test kit designed to tell me if I am one of a small percentage of people with a higher number and sensitivity of taste buds. I’d wondered for a while if I fell into this group because I seem to be a lot more sensitive to certain tastes and textures than other people in my life, even to the point of liking certain colors of the same foods better than others when my friends and family can’t tell the difference.

I also wanted to take the test because, after years of working on my emetophobia - the main source of my picky eating when I was a kid - I’m now willing to try more new foods than before, although I’m still a picky eater. I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t eat a good number of vegetables because I find them distasteful (looking at you, broccoli’s texture and brussels sprouts’ taste) and I still have many picky preferences.

In other words, I’m a picky eater whether or not I’m concerned that a certain food will make me throw up, and that really only gets me about a few foods (specifically, hummus, cuisines from regions of the world that I haven’t tried before, and any accidental exposure to meat because I think my stomach isn’t used to it).

I wanted to see if there was a biological reason for my picky eating for one major reason: Even though I’ve gotten to the point where my main source of obsessions and compulsions as a child is not a big part of my life, I am still very ashamed when I’m out with my friends (in non-COVID times) and still eat like a stereotypical child. I felt like it was part mental illness, part habit, and part something else I couldn’t quite identify. But for many foods, like tofu, it’s not that I’m afraid of the food - it’s that the texture and taste bother me to a degree that my friends and family don’t notice.

So I ordered the test strip, and since it’s genetic, I offered my mom the spare strip that came with the kit. We tried them in the kitchen one night before dinner because, if you are a supertaster, the paper tastes very bitter, and it would be nice to wash it down with something different. Mom put hers on her tongue first, and said she noticed no taste at all, no aftertaste, nothing.

As I looked down at the paper in my hand, I wondered what I really wanted. I wanted to be a supertaster because it would help explain some of my food quirks that aren’t OCD-related and might give me a fun fact to share at the dinner table instead of feeling ashamed or embarrassed about my food preferences. On the other hand, if I wasn’t a supertaster, that would take away an excuse and might spur me to try even more foods.

It didn’t take me long to identify the taste of the paper - which tasted, to me, like the most bitter mixed greens I’d ever had - and promptly spit it out. After chugging some water to get rid of the taste, I was happy. I even took a smiling selfie with the soggy test strip and the sheet of facts about supertasters because it made me feel like I was a picky eater for something other than my fault - something I’d never felt before.

Even with all the work I’ve done here over the last couple of years and the therapy I’ve gone through my whole life, I still saw a physical reason for disliking certain foods as being more valid than a mental one. It’s part of the stigma that’s become internalized inside me even though I try so hard to be positive about mental health. Even so, I still saw the last time I accidentally ate meat and panicked for hours as less legitimate, as if some part of me still saw that as a choice.

I thought I could be stronger than that, but with something like taste buds or a food allergy, I have no control, so I don’t feel weak.

I don’t see it as a character flaw to find the taste of mixed greens too strong to eat, especially if it means I can get some of my favorite Caesar salad with plain lettuce. It feels like a harmless preference to choose milk chocolate over dark or pick broccoli out of my lo mein. It’s like my nut allergy - I didn’t choose it. But whenever I see myself as giving in to an obsessive thought, I see it as a choice, even if it’s not - and then I see a negative reflection on both myself and my strength.

Taking the supertaster test - and finding my gustatory “superpower” - has been an interesting thought experiment in addition to the actual scientific test.

It made me realize how much I’ve held onto the idea of a “physical” condition like being a supertaster having more legitimacy even though OCD is technically a physical condition of a chemical imbalance in the brain.

It made me rethink how I try new foods - if I try something and hate the taste instead of fear it, I don’t have to do exposure therapy on myself to try to make myself like it.

And I’m allowed to be picky without being ashamed of myself, because if I look at how far I’ve come from the days of only eating plain cereal for breakfast, plain bagels for lunch and plain pasta for dinner, I’ve made tremendous changes to my eating habits that have really helped my quality of life.

Ever since I was little, I’ve known I’d never be an adventurous eater. But as an adult, and with these new results in hand, I feel more confident eating the foods I’ve learned to love and not doubting my validity as a person for having preferences in addition to obsessions.

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.

THEY DRIVE ME

They Drive Me

Earlier this week, a friend asked me an interesting question: why do I heartily prefer one video game character over another in a situation where both are facing extremely similar traumatic pasts and current problems?

My friend asked because she knows about my struggles with mental illness and thought that I’d have equal sympathy for both sides of the story. And I do - but for me, sympathy isn’t what determines a favorite character. It’s that one character lives a life I’d dream of, and another lives a life of my greatest fears.

Both characters, D and E, experienced a traumatic event at about the same age. Both characters lost their families and navigated the world basically alone. But while D lived in the past, E was aggressively forging a path to her future.

It helped me associate with E even more that her trauma was more medical than violent. It also helped that there was a madness in D’s eyes that frightened me - not because it was alien to me, but because I’d seen that look in my own eyes. Thankfully not for many years, but it was there at one point, and for years after, I was afraid of seeing it in the mirror instead of myself. And even more frighteningly, he had no desire to get rid of that madness.

When I read a comic about these two characters comparing their experiences, that solidified for me the major difference between them and why I so heavily favor E over D. They discuss their differences over a battlefield, and D says that the voices of his past are disgusted with her and urge him to kill her. E then tells D that she had a very similar experience to him, which he never knew, and illuminates the difference between them succinctly and beautifully:

“I hear their voices too. But they don’t control me. They drive me.”

The image accompanying the words is even more powerful - D being dragged backwards by the hands of the ghosts he can’t or chooses not to fight, whether literal or figurative. And E charges forward, using the memories of things that hurt her to help her make a better future.

It instantly got me thinking. When I was little, I felt controlled by the voice inside me that told me I was going to throw up or break Mom’s back because I didn’t touch the wall a certain number of times or got germs in my mouth or sat next to a kid on Monday when he’d thrown up on Saturday (yes, of all the things that happened in my childhood, I still remember that one).

I remember hoping and praying that one day, I’d be able to wake up and the thoughts would all be gone. I never prayed for a day when I could live like today, where I still have obsessive thoughts, Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs), and other hallmarks of OCD. I never thought I’d be able to manage them - it had to be all or nothing.

I still have all or nothing thoughts today - they’re one of my most common type of ANTs. But I also know enough about thoughts to categorize them and work towards countering them. I still get overwhelmed sometimes, but the vast majority of the time, I am able to live my life the way I want it and use my OCD in ways that are helpful for me.

I use it to organize complicated projects at work and to inspire the “what ifs” of my story ideas. I use it to hit goals in games, win cutthroat Lord of the Rings trivia, and get joy from things like fandoms, conventions, and video games that I would likely not enjoy to the same obsessive degree otherwise. 

I hold the reins of my life tightly in my control. And although I have immense sympathy for people whose disease controls them, I am so afraid of falling into that pattern that I can barely stand to see it in the media. It reminds me of my childhood, my worst fears, and everything I learned about my paternal grandfather all wrapped up in a too-neat package.

To give both sides a fair chance, I played through D’s story as well as E’s. Even though I tried my best to give him a good chance, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated at making myself play a story that frightened me as he allowed the thoughts to rule his life and his world until everything fell apart. I’d only ever done something like that in a video game once before - a game that involved characters self-harm - but I still played it for the sake of fairness.

In the end, I knew for sure that I preferred the character who fought bitterly against her struggles was someone I identified with far more than someone who never tried.

Nowadays, I don’t pretend that I don’t take sides in the great debate of D and E. Among other fans of this game, I make my preference clear, and now, instead of not knowing how to express why, I bring back this comic.

There are so many times in my life when I could have chosen to get swept away on a tide of obsessions or trauma, could have surrendered any shreds of control I still possessed. But instead, I fought to reach a place where I could have the control over my life that I yearned for and deserved.

Inspired by the comic and the game that it is based on, I feel that I, too, am someone who does my best to let the past and the mechanisms of my brain drive me. They drive me to fight for my dreams, never give up, and encourage others who are undergoing similar fights to not fall into despair. Even if I didn’t know it when I was little, there is a world where negative thoughts can be kept under control and used in a positive way - and when I think of characters like E while I am on that journey, I feel encouraged, empowered, and ready to renew the fight for a good life.

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.

"YOU DON'T MATTER"

“You Don’t Matter”

TW: Suicidal thoughts

It’s not a phrase I say to myself or anyone else often. But earlier this week, I told it to myself over and over as I did the best I could to help save a friend’s life.

It started after my first Zoom call of the workday, when I checked in on a friend who told me the night before that she was going through an extremely hard time. When I read Sami’s (name changed for privacy) message, my heart began to pound.

She described a sleepless night filled with horrific nightmares that she’d tried to chase away with Xanax, painkillers, and muscle relaxers all at the same time. She didn’t sound like herself at all, and at the end of the message, she wrote that she didn’t know how to go on, or if she could go on.

I instantly felt myself thrown back years, to the point when I locked myself in the chapel bathroom of my college because there was nothing in there that I could use to hurt myself. I was terrified, thinking there was no way out for me either - and then I reached out to my mom, who called my psychiatrist in a three-way call and got me on the fastest path to treatment.

It’s a time in my life that I hate to think about, but it was my only reference for the situation going forward. It didn’t matter that I have spent so much time trying to forget - it mattered that I remember the suicide hotline, the way I felt, the things I needed from those around me.

Our experiences seemed similar the more she told me, even though they had completely different catalysts. I was even taking Xanax at the time, thankfully stopping after experiencing reactive anxiety. As I talked to her, I remembered waking up early after fighting so hard to go to sleep, running over to the gym even though I’ve never been a fan of working out, just to try to get some of the nervous energy out of my system. I remembered how disgusting food seemed to me, how my best friend sat on the floor with me and coaxed me into eating a bowl of Rice Krispies with no milk. I wished to be sitting on the floor with Sami, helping her in any way I possibly could instead of being hundreds of miles away, behind a computer screen.

The only thing I could think of was to reach out to the chat line of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/), which I could do while being on my next Zoom call. I paid just enough attention to not call attention to myself at work while I typed everything that was going on to a counselor.

In that moment, Sami didn’t need my platitudes or what had - or hadn’t - worked for me. She didn’t need to know my sordid history with Xanax or the fact that I was so terribly scared. Instead, she needed to hear the suicide prevention counselor’s words coming from my mouth, and in turn, that would help those of us not in her situation figure out what to do next.

One of the first things the counselor asked me to write to her was to ask, point blank, if Sami was considering hurting herself. No euphemisms, he said - that way, there’s no room for confusion. It had been a long time since I’d written something like that, instead preferring to use euphemisms and hide from what I’m afraid of.

But that day, it didn’t matter that I categorically refuse to watch TV shows or movies with suicide scenes and often choose to skip ones that even mention it at all. It didn’t matter that even just typing the word “suicide” scares me. What mattered was that she needed someone to ask her if she was thinking of hurting herself, no matter what that might look like.

Any answer that isn’t a “no,” to me, is an unequivocal sign of danger. She said “kinda,” and that she was feeling weak and worthless, too much to carry on. She said how easy it would be to just take some more Xanax and slip away into sleep, never to feel the pain again.

At that point, I typed frantically in the chat, conveying her responses to the counselor. He helped me figure out some followup questions - how much medicine she’d taken, how she was feeling physically, and after the questions, to just let her talk and show that I’m listening.

She told me more about what had been happening, and eventually told me she wanted to try to sleep again. I was worried, especially since she’d taken another Xanax while we were talking, but at that point there wasn’t much else the counselor could do. He told me to dial the hotline and get some local help over to her just in case, someone to talk with in person even during the pandemic. Someone with more training than me, even though I wanted to swoop in and fix everything myself.

Back when I was experiencing suicidal thoughts, I remember who came to help me: two police officers, kind but seeming a little out of their depths as they didn’t really know what to say. They gave me a survey that asked a bunch of questions about my mental state as they drove me to the hospital, and the only one I remember is whether I was feeling hopeless. It was a straight-up “yes” from me, but I realized I couldn’t picture Sami trusting a quiz from police officers or wanting to be taken to a hospital. She wasn’t quite in the worst danger possible, and I couldn’t just impose what worked for me.

As I picked up my cell phone to call the hotline, I could almost see my reflection in the chapel basement mirror on the blank screen - but that didn’t matter at all. I dialed the hotline, then contacted a local organization on their recommendation.

Someone from the local organization called Sami, presumably told her that I’d given them her number and some basic information, and the counselor agreed with me that she seemed like she needed in-person help. Even though I wanted to stay texting with her for as long as I could, even if just to feed my insatiable desire to control the uncontrollable situations in life, my needs didn’t matter. She needed someone who could be in her house and help her, and the counselor sent over a crisis response team to help.

It fell to me to get them there - I had two different records of her address, one of which came from a mutual friend who’d been to her apartment before. I never had, so I ended up asking him the things the crisis team asked me when they couldn’t find her apartment. It didn’t matter that I was getting increasingly frazzled and had yet another call in a few minutes, and this one, I was supposed to be leading. It mattered that I tell everything our mutual friend said to the crisis team, even though I got off the phone only moments before my call was scheduled to begin.

All that mattered, in the end, was that the crisis team found Sami - crying, panicked, but alive - and they were in her apartment with her.

Only at that point, once I knew Sami was safe, did I allow my own feelings to matter. After my last work call of the day, I took a long walk with my mom, played video games with my dad, and hugged my dog. I ate ice cream, made plans to see my Nana (socially distantly and masked), and let myself feel overwhelmed and panicked and everything that I thought needed to come out earlier. I even started to grieve for a torn-apart friend group that might be too far gone for me to fix, that will hurt my own life but thankfully not nearly as much as Sami is hurt.

As someone who’s been sharing my mental health story for over two years on No Shame On U’s blog, I have a lot of experience with making my history matter. But this experience has showed me that listening to what is needed by the most vulnerable person in a conversation can be exactly the right thing to do. What matters most is finding out what really matters - and what can help someone in need find the way forward.

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.