G is for Guilt
A doozy of a topic for today, huh? From the time I was 15 till about a year into my OCD treatment – so about 5 years total – I was plagued by horrible guilt from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. (And sometimes in my dreams, too.) And let’s get one thing straight, I am not a serial killer or somebody who steals candy from babies. I am no better or worse than most people. (That’s a phrase I learned in therapy.) The thing is…OCD hits you right in the guilt button and makes you feel like you’re a bad person. At least, that’s how my particular brand of OCD works.
OCD functions by sending intrusive thoughts your way. Every brain does this. However, OCD brains are unable to filter out the important thoughts – the ones you WANT to be having – and the unimportant thoughts, which are the intrusive ones. OCD thinks that all the thoughts are equally important and that the thoughts you have say something about you. So, if I look at a baby and think, “What if I dropped that baby?”, my OCD will take that thought and run with it.
Instead of thinking, “What a weird random thought” and moving on with my day, my brain catches the thought and goes “Oh my gosh, why did I have that thought? I must WANT to drop the baby. Otherwise, why did I have the thought in the first place?” I then conclude that I am a horrible person and spend the rest of the day feeling guilty as if I actually had dropped the baby. But all I did was have a thought. And I didn’t even intend to have the thought!
As you can imagine, this is exhausting.
It is not much fun to live like this. Every morning I would wake up, open my eyes, and have one blissful moment of peace before the guilt came crashing down upon me. Guilt that I didn’t deserve to be feeling, because I am just a regular person who doesn’t do horrible things. It was so freeing to learn that it was OCD talking and not me. That I am NOT a horrible person. I’m not even a bad person. (Therapy also made me consider the thought: What even IS a good or bad person? It’s awfully subjective.)
So: Guilt. Not necessarily something you associate with OCD, right? There’s going to be a lot of that this month. Also, this one was not much fun to write, so if you feel like sharing, it would be much appreciated.