Greetings bugs and worms!
This comic is a little different than what I usually do but I worked real hard on it—Maybe I'll make more infographic stuff in the future this ended up being fun. Hope you learned something new :)
If you are still curious and want to learn more about OCD, you can visit the International OCD Foundation's website. I also recommend this amazing TED ED video "Starving The Monster", which was my first introduction to the disorder and this video by John Green about his own experience with OCD.
The IOCDF's website can also help you find support groups, therapy, and has lots of online guides and resources as well if you or a loved one is struggling with the disorder. It is very comprehensive!
Reblog to teach your followers about OCD
(But also not reblogging doesn't make you evil, silly goose)
Oh please, please spread information about this. It's so goddamn important.
I was diagnosed with OCD in December 2021, and it was a living hell. It's nothing like the pop culture representation of it. It was, without question, the worst experience of my life. OCD is a nightmare to have.
Those feelings you have when something horrible happens? Imagine having those feelings day in and day out, because in your mind, those horrible things are being constantly thought about as a very real threat. Your mind tells you to do the compulsion, or they'll come true.
The compulsions aren't something we like doing. The comic is so right about this. You could be rearranging your room a hundred times to get it exactly right because it makes you happy, and still not have OCD. The compulsions are born out of fear, that started rational and then devolved into things that don't make sense at all.
Because I was a psychology student and I'm someone who pays close attention to my mental state, I noticed the horrifying change in my behaviour and forced my family to take me to see a psychologist within a couple of months of symptom onset.
It's been more than two years of medication and therapy, and the OCD doesn't paralyse me anymore the way it used to. Most days, I barely remember it's there, sleeping in my brain and dormant. Treatment is possible, and I'm proof of it.
This is because I saw something was wrong and got help.
But even being a psychology student, until I got the diagnosis, I didn't even consider it might be OCD. I just knew something was off.
Why didn't I think of OCD? Because of the sheer volume of misinformation that's spread about this disorder.
I don't want other OCD sufferers to not seek help simply because of this popular misunderstanding about what the disorder is. So yeah. Please go through the comic, it explains it wonderfully.
Thank you for sharing your story and I’m so glad to hear you are doing better
It really is so insane (haha) to me that such a common mental illness is so widely misunderstood by everyone. Its insane that even as a psychology student, you had trouble considering that.
And knowing what OCD is…is so goddamn important to fight it. Before I understood how obsessive compulsive thinking worked, I didn’t even attempt to resist my compulsions. I just walked right into spiral after spiral not understanding why I developed these irrational fears. I knew there was something wrong with me, and left to my imagination, my paranoia had me diagnosing myself with every possible illness before I ever considered OCD.
Simply learning what it was improved my life so dramatically it was almost comical.
And ya wanna know where I learned about it?
Randomly scrolling through Wikipedia
Not because someone explained it to me, not because I saw it on TV. Just because I click random Wikipedia articles sometimes.
So yeah, spreading awareness of OCD is so important. Shutting down misinformation about the disorder is so important. The amount of reblogs this comic has gotten with people in the tags just going “uh oh…” and “I think I need to talk to a psychiatrist” and “this describes my last few years of misery holy shit” and quite a few “wait I thought I did these things because I had autism/ADHD? Are hyperfixations not fear related?” and Y’all. It’s literally hundreds. Hundreds of you.
I also want to note that OCD is frequently misdiagnosed as ADHD and Autism—which is bad because the treatment for both conditions are not only super different, treatment for one often actively harms the other. Stimming is helpful, autistic rituals are benign, and accomodating sensory needs is a necessity. Compulsions are harmful to the one doing them and accomodating fear makes fear worse.
Of course, it’s possible and even common to have OCD AND Autism/ADHD (they are frequently comorbid.) So that complicates things as well…
I wish the neurodiversity movement talked about OCD more, and a lot more other things, for that matter.
To all of you that figured out you have OCD because of my silly little comic, Godspeed. If you are in the spiral right now, there is hope, even if your OCD tells you there isn’t any. There will come a time that you are not afraid.