Role Playing for Real Life

Role Playing for Real Life

Last week, during my weekly Dungeons & Dragons session, I got proposed to.

Not by an actual boyfriend, or even for a real-life marriage. This proposal was for my D&D character, Kit, from her long-term boyfriend played by the Dungeon Master.

Still, though, before I started meeting with my current therapist, this would have been a terrifying scenario. Even though it’s not for real life, just the thought of roleplaying a proposal - especially one I planned for my character to say yes to - would have been too much.

Lately, however, I’ve been working with my therapist about how to get through scenarios from my past as well as my fears that haven’t happened yet, through roleplay. She sets the scene, just like the DM when I play D&D. Then, she asks me what the character (me at some stage in my life) is wearing, thinking about, and doing. Next, she brings in other characters - family members, a “protector” character I constructed in our sessions, or someone she’s invented for the scenario.

After all this preparation, we play out any situation I’m worried about like it’s D&D. She asks me, just like my DM does, where the different people and animals in the room are standing, who does what, who says what. She acts the other parts and as I try to act mine, I quickly find differences between the response I would want to say or do and the one that happened or that I think would happen in real life.

A lot of this requires living in the discomfort of the situation to figure out exactly what’s bothering me, then talking it out from there. Sometimes, the scenarios can take the whole time of the appointment; other times, we take a break from the scenario to discuss what happened, how I reacted, and what we can do moving forward.

I felt a little silly doing this at first, but after my first time going through a scenario, I realized how helpful it was. Additionally, it was wonderful to feel like she had developed this method for me based on my love of D&D, and found a way to communicate with me based on my interests to help me understand things better. It reminds me of the time I chose to read an analytical book about Middle-Earth instead of a particular textbook in college, and learned so much more because I was more familiar with the content and context.

Nowadays, my therapist and I are working on more scenarios about relationships. Ever since I had several bad experiences in a row, I’ve been very wary of getting in a relationship, even though I would love to have a boyfriend. Thanks to this method of therapy, I’ve been able to talk through the scenario of a first date before going on my first date in a very long time - and I was able to roleplay a new scenario of getting engaged outside of the context of therapy.

And I was able to have the reaction I would want to have if someone I loved proposed to me in real life - I smiled really wide, giggled into my hands as I held them over my mouth, and found a creative and cute way to say yes.

It’s not the same thing as a real-life proposal, but I was thrilled that after so much time working on this in therapy, I was able to experience what I would call a typical reaction to a proposal, and I didn’t overthink anything at all.

It used to be that, even in these roleplay situations, I would get overwhelmed with real-life feelings, thoughts, and implications. But this time, even though I wasn’t in therapy, I was able to just live in the moment, a skill I’ve been learning for years.

I don’t know when I’ll meet someone who I will want to propose to me in real life, but this experience gave me hope that I will be able to experience joy in this moment instead of intense worry, just like how I imagine it would be for someone neurotypical.

Ellie, 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.

Something To Be Thankful For

Something To Be Thankful For

This Thanksgiving, when I reunited with my parents, I didn’t expect to hear a story that reaffirmed something I already know - that my mom is an incredible ally for people living with mental illness - while also warming my heart at the thought of others doing the same.

As we took a walk in the not-so-brisk temperatures down South, she told me about something that had happened at work a few days before. One of her coworkers, Sandy (name changed for privacy), who is divorced and lives alone, was scheduled to work the night before Thanksgiving and didn’t show up. After several calls, three people - Mom, Mom’s boss J, and her boss A, started to get worried.

J stayed past the end of her shift to make sure there was someone at work, and she reached out to Mom to see if she could check in on Sandy because she lives in the same neighborhood. J and A kept reaching out to Sandy and the emergency contact she provided when she was hired.

In the meantime, Mom and Dad both went to Sandy’s house. They saw a silhouette moving around inside, but even after a while of calling her name and knocking on the door, they didn’t have any luck. They called J back and updated her; J and A initiated a 911 wellness check and then asked Mom to cover the night shift. Mom volunteered to do so and started to drive to work, about fifteen minutes away.

When she was almost there, J called her back, saying that she’d gotten in touch with Sandy. Sandy told J that she thought she was off that night and she was on her way; in response, J cancelled the wellness check and told Mom to go home.

But before Mom could get home, J called again. She said that Sandy had called, after pulling over on the side of the road, because she was crying so hard. She said she couldn’t go to work that night, and Mom turned right around to relieve J.

When she got to work, Mom found J on the phone with Sandy, who was crying so hysterically that she could hear her clearly even though J didn’t have her on speakerphone. Shortly after, Mom took over at work, J left, and the workplace stayed open when they thought they would have to close early.

In the end, A didn’t mind her employees being distracted, and didn’t hesitate to step in and help herself. J didn’t mind staying past the end of her shift, even when she had to be at the airport to pick up her daughter later that night. Mom didn’t mind all the driving or checking up on Sandy at her home. All three of them acted out of pure love and concern for someone on their team who was going through something, even during a busy holiday season when there was so much else going on.

When I heard this story, I was so proud of Mom and her coworkers for stepping up. As Mom said, “it was amazing to be part of a team where they were treating somebody with a depressive episode as seriously as a heart attack.” I wish this kind of story wasn’t so unusual to hear, but I am so thankful to hear it and know that there are people out there who care. There are so many people who find holidays hard, and knowing that there are communities out there who truly care means so much to me as I think about what I’m thankful for.

Ellie, 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.

Hurting to Help

Hurting To Help

This week, I finished my eleventh National Novel Writing Month - but this wasn’t like my usual NaNoWriMo experience.

This November, instead of writing a fantasy or science fiction novel like I usually prefer to read, I instead wrote the second draft of a memoir designed to educate people without OCD about what it’s really like - and help others who do have it to feel like they’re not alone.

To that point, the presence or lack of people who understand takes over a lot of the content. While writing, I had to remind myself that times are different now, I do have friends, and I am no longer the little girl who felt so lonely being the only person I knew with a mental health diagnosis.

I didn’t have the luxury of friends until I was much older, but when I was little, I wanted someone - anyone - to tell me that they also had something and their life was good, so mine was going to be good too. I designed the memoir to do that for others who might not know anyone else, who might find a friend in the book when they would otherwise not feel understood by anyone.

The tricky part was, I wanted to be as brutally honest as possible. I wanted to show the highs and lows in such vivid detail that people without mental illness would get a taste of what it feels like, and what some people go through every day.

Two problems quickly came up due to this approach: First, there is a lot of my own life that I don’t remember thanks to trauma, that I had to reach out to my family to ask about. It felt strange to be asking someone else about my own life, and yet I didn’t expect anything different. My psychiatrist told me a long time ago that the reason I was forgetting things like that was because of trauma, but it still bothers me that I feel like I’ve lost a part of my life to my head that I can’t get back, even by asking others. I can get their perspectives, but I can’t remember what I was thinking or feeling during these pivotal moments, which makes me feel like I’m missing something.

Additionally, I faced the problem of having to face that trauma head-on, especially in the case of my blood clot nearly ten years ago as well as the nervous breakdown two years after. I had written about both of these events before, but never in such explicit detail. In one of the essays in the memoir, I detail every single obsessive thought I had while I thought I was going to die in the hospital, from my fear of throwing up to my intense sadness of dying alone.

In order to make these essays as accurate as possible, I used the opposite of a therapeutic technique called “grounding.” Normally, people use grounding to remind themselves that they are in the real world and not in the middle of a traumatic incident, but I was using it in the reverse. I used the principles of grounding, including filling my head with sensory details, to make myself feel like I was there again. Although the writing turned out great, this greatly affected my mental health.

I’m so relieved to be done with this round of writing, and eager to hopefully share this book with the world sometime soon. In the meantime, I’m going to not think about the project for at least a month, to give myself time to heal. I was definitely hurting myself in the interest of helping others one day, and although I do agree with that principle, it was definitely too much all at once.

Even so, there was one positive side effect of writing about all these traumatic times: I was able to see how far I’ve come since I was first diagnosed, how I am able to live a successful life with a job and friends and financial independence, and that encourages me to keep fighting to improve life even more for myself and others living with mental illness.

Ellie, 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.

Dungeons & Dissociation

Dungeons & Dissociation

It’s rare that I experience something new related to my mental health, especially since I’ve been living with OCD for a full quarter-century and PTSD for nearly a decade. But last week during my Dungeons & Dragons session, I found myself experiencing a symptom of PTSD that I had never felt before.

I was sitting at the table with my friends, just like every week, when the DM told me that he wanted to turn off the lights, and I should pick a scented candle to illuminate the space. I picked a peach one and he set it in the center of the table, then explained that my character was going to have a dream scene.

This isn’t unusual in our campaign - multiple characters have either prophetic or interactive dreams - but I knew this one was different as soon as the DM leaned over the flame and started to yell at me that I’d done something wrong.

Instantly, I felt defensive. The DM was role-playing as a powerful devil, which I knew, but even so, I felt highly uncomfortable. He was up in my space, yelling, stern, scolding me for something that I had to do in order to keep the party together. Nothing I said seemed to make a dent in his anger, even though my character has very high levels of charisma and that usually works. He then had me roll a die to see if he could be persuaded, but I needed to roll an 18 or above on a 20-sided die to even have a chance.

I rolled a 10, and he explained that my character faced horrible pain before waking up transformed into a hideous creature.

As he detailed the changes, a strange feeling came over me. I felt like I had the urge to panic, but it was almost as if it was locked behind a glass wall. I could see it, but I couldn’t access it - or any other emotion. I just blankly stared ahead, feeling like my brain had left my body entirely and was just off on its own somewhere. This was extremely scary, but I couldn’t quite feel the fear - that was locked away too.

It didn’t take long for the DM to notice that something was wrong. He asked me if I needed a break, and I nodded, then finally spoke - asking him to turn the lights back on.

When the lights came back on, I felt like my brain came back to my body. The feelings of panic and upset returned in full force and I started to cry.

The DM said that we were going to stop playing for the night and just process this. I was afraid and ashamed - I don’t like to be mentally weak in front of my friends, in case they decide that I’m not worth being friends with if I’m too complicated - but I couldn’t hide it any longer.

I told him that I had been triggered by several of the things that happened in the conversation with the devil. The darkness and firelight accentuated the fact that he was looming over me, angry. I felt helpless not only in the encounter, but in determining the fate of my character. I felt like I couldn’t consent to what was happening, I had no agency as a player or as a character, and I started to spiral in a strange way I’ve never encountered before.

When I told my therapist about this, she told me that I had dissociated. This is an out-of-body experience when reliving certain types of trauma or experiencing too many triggering things at once. I came to realize that many of the physical changes the DM gave to my character were things that were directly tied to my medical trauma and also to the way I had been writing about childhood experiences recently, back when I thought that my OCD made me akin to a monster.

I reached out to the DM, who was deeply apologetic, and we spent hours talking through what would be the best way to undo the damage that had been done both in and out of the game. I was able to choose what changes I was okay with physically, as well as start my character on a new path to get out of the deal with this devil altogether. He also assured me that any further interactions would take place in normal lighting with no looming or yelling.

Even though I was ashamed of dissociating, I was so glad that I have finally found people who I could tell something like this to and they would want to help instead of run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. The whole group rallied around me and I felt incredibly supported.

My therapist described this as a “corrective experience” - I experienced a situation that was like something before (displaying mental illness openly around friends) but instead of being rejected, I was accepted for being exactly who I am, brain and all. This response enabled me to feel powerful both in and out of character and I believe my D&D campaign will continue to be the wonderful experience it has been for the last two years.

Ellie, 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.

Things I Can’t Quite Explain

Things I Can’t Quite Explain

After nearly two years of blogging, I’ve been able to explain most of the things going on in my head in a way that I hope is accessible to readers. However, there are still some things I find difficult to understand, let alone explain to someone else.

A few of these things have cropped up as my musical-writing team is working on edits. Writing a character with OCD in a fantasy universe has been fun but difficult, especially since there have been a lot of misconceptions to clear up.

One of these things, which I have experienced but don’t fully understand, popped up in the script the other day. As I edited it, I remembered all the moments I leaped into conversations in the middle of other people’s thoughts or sentences, so excited to get the words out that I could barely talk.

I remember having this feeling a lot when I was a child. When I had a thought I wanted to share, no matter how inconsequential it might have seemed to the overall conversation, I felt deeply desperate to share it. It wasn’t an obsession, but it almost felt like a volcano boiling inside of me, ready to explode unless I set it free myself. Over time, I learned to douse this inner fire, although in some circumstances - usually related to my deepest passions - I still feel the need to interject.

I don’t have any particular obsessive thoughts or compulsions about this. It comes on suddenly just like an obsession, but I don’t think anything bad will happen if I don’t say the thing. Instead, it feels like I have the perfect response for the conversation, something that will make me sound smart and desirable as a conversation partner, and in the moment, it is inexplicably urgent.

Another challenge of editing has been the need I feel to correct all spelling and grammar mistakes I see. Once again, it’s not like I think someone I love will get hurt if I don’t edit things correctly, like I thought in my childhood about a variety of daily tasks. But, just like if I know that my dollar bills don’t face the same way in my wallet, the thought occupies my mind, and I unintentionally tune out everything else until I can fix it.

This presented a problem during my senior year of college, where I took a class in the writers who inspired Shakespeare. Many of the class texts were written in Old or Middle English, and I had such a problem with the unusual shapes of letters and spelling of words that I couldn’t understand what I was reading. It was the first time I ever had problems with reading, and no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that it was something I needed to overlook, I couldn’t.

This problem bothers me more, as it seems like a link to the stereotype that all people with OCD have alphabetized bookshelves and arrange everything so neatly that things fit together perfectly. It reminds me of the online compilations of “pictures that will make your OCD happy” that depict objects lined up in a row or matching or somehow being organized. It bothers me that I fit the stereotype in this way, although all the negative sensation I feel from not editing things well is a general sense of malaise. With enough effort, I can ignore it and come back to it at a better time, and at work, I am often praised for finding typos that elude others’ eyes.

This week, as I edited the first complete version of the script, I came across something else that has escaped my understanding for a long time. The character with OCD, the one who I was so excited to see in a fantasy universe, was not supposed to be a loner, and yet everyone who wrote her wrote parts where she was completely alone emotionally. She didn’t just talk over people or have specific things she felt the need to do; she did all of these things alone and isolated herself from everyone, even when it was supposed to be a completely different character who was lonely.

Reading that hit home. It felt all too real. How many times had I “messed up” by showing my obsessions, compulsions, anxieties, and fears to others throughout my life, only to find myself alone? Thankfully, now, I feel like I have a loving and compassionate community of friends, but it’s taken me until my late 20s to feel this way, like many of my friends felt in elementary or middle school.

I have a theory that I was too busy fighting things in my head to be able to make deep friendships, but at the same time, I don’t know for sure if that’s accurate. Is there a component of loneliness to OCD? A component of too much introspection? A component that made me laugh at a Tumblr post showing some of my favorite characters living with mental illness captioned “‘Wow, you’re an old soul’ is a polite way of saying ‘wow, you’re only 12 and you’ve already used up all your serotonin’”?

In the end, I reached out to the musical project leader. I explained that even though I don’t know why certain behaviors happen, they’re not all that matters in the life of a person with OCD. And we went through the script together, line by line, not looking for typos but for ways to really, truly make this character a part of our world.

And when I heard the project leader’s first draft of this character’s song, I cried. It somehow took all these things I didn’t understand and made them feel right, almost as if this character was real and sitting next to me. As if I was speaking to someone else who also couldn’t articulate every nuance of their lived experience, but we matched, and we belong in the worlds we’re in.

Ellie, 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.