Scary content—whether that’s horror movies or true crime—is loved by many. Horror films regularly break box-office records, and millions of people tune in

Alegra Kastens, M.A., LMFT

How to tell when scary content is fueling OCD vs. helping you face your fears

Working out can be a great stress-reduction tool, a fun challenge, or a rewarding way to feel embodied. If you live with obsessive-compulsive disorder

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These incidents continued to happen throughout my fifth-grade school year. I felt compelled to do many things, many seeming completely random, but they stuck and made day-to-day tasks almost impossible. “Write directly on the line, if you write over it you will fail the test” resulted in papers with holes in them from erasing so frequently. “Wash your hands every time you see a sink, or you will get yourself and others sick” meant I was developing eczema on my hands. “When you are in the car you have to say ‘That’s a cool car,’ or that car will hit you,” this meant I stopped leaving the house. “Count your steps. Make sure that you get somewhere in 4 steps or a multiple of 4 steps, or you will die” made me cry walking room to room in our house. I was only eleven years old.

How having OCD helped me help others

The Struggling Warrior is a 26-year-old Electrical and Electronics engineer with OCD. Throughout his experience with this detrimental disease, he found himself and his passion, to raise awareness of OCD and help people who suffer from it on a daily basis. He believes that through knowledge, education, and understanding of the sheer nature of the disease, people will jumpstart their recovery process and reclaim what OCD took away from them.

The story behind the struggle

The biggest thing I’ve learned with therapy is that you cannot unlearn all that you have already learned. OCD will always come up with one more “What if?”, “You HAVE to”, “I demand you do this or XYZ will happen”. You will have the tools in your toolbox to know how to deal with it. You will know how to be one step ahead of it. If it trips you up, it's not a failure. A lapse is not a relapse and recovery isn’t linear. You are not a terrible person and even thinking about wanting to get better shows how strong and courageous you really are. OCD will always want to keep you stuck. ERP is how you become unstuck.

I’m a mom living with POCD

I feel like people living with this disorder are the most resilient, strong, and compassionate of people. That makes me happy and hopeful. The biggest lesson I have learned so far from this journey, and this is something I have to give all the credit to my therapist Tara for, is that I can truly deal with all these difficult emotions. I don't have to run away, I never needed to run away. 

Looking fear in the face and not running

My mind, like many others with OCD, works like a sticky fly trap: it catches every little thing that floats by, even when (especially when) it’s not beneficial to my mental well-being. This means that every insult from a classmate growing up, every melancholy tale I accidentally read, and every scary movie I sneak-watched as a preteen has clung to the walls of my brain until this very day. But what makes the disorder so unbearable at times are cycles of severe intrusive thoughts that bring up those memories, presenting themselves as words, phrases, or images that play in my head. 

Idiosyncrasies: Navigating an Obsessive-Compulsive Mind

I recently became a NOCD community Alumni Member. I volunteer and help others who are struggling with OCD to regain control of their lives. I am spreading education and advocacy about this disorder. I am realizing that so many others struggle with similar problems. I am not alone. I am surprised by how quickly I was able to recover. I attribute this to allowing myself to truly give ERP a chance and throwing myself into treatment wholeheartedly. I want others to know that OCD can play the worst head games with you. I try and help friends and family understand what OCD is really like and how much of an impact it has had on my life. OCD is chronic and I want to spread awareness. Even though it is often chronic that doesn’t mean that you will always suffer or be debilitated by it. There is hope. There is help.

OCD is just radio static in the background

Slowly, more and more parts of my life became affected to the point where I was weary about what I was doing and avoiding those parts of my life to the best of my abilities to avoid this distressing feeling in my chest. As my life became more and more engulfed in this, I knew I needed help. This led to a diagnosis of OCD and eventually ERP.

Distressing the Distress

At first, OCD started as a way to provide relief, a means to control things that were out of my control. But then it morphed into something that took over my life and does the opposite of soothing me. I was stuck on my compulsions for 15 minutes, then 30, then an hour. It just kept growing and growing into something bigger and far worse.

OCD felt like a death sentence

I spent my childhood thinking that everything needed to be perfect. This manifested in a variety of areas in my life, but the largest, most debilitating area by far was education; straight A’s were my ticket to perfection.The importance of A’s had been drilled into me from a young age – not from my parents or teachers, but from my OCD. I worked tirelessly to be a stand-out student. Anything lower than 93% would send me into a full panic and meltdown. 

My journey with ERP and Santa Claus

For the longest time, I thought that OCD was this ‘big and bad’ thing that couldn’t be stopped. But now I know how to break the cycles and fight back. I have a lot of support and I am thankful for that. ERP no longer seems as daunting to me. It became easier with time, practice, and commitment.

Putting OCD in the backseat

OCD wants you to doubt yourself and isolate yourself so that you interact with your intrusive thoughts, obsessions, and compulsions to keep feeding them and make them stronger and stronger.  Recognizing that is what your OCD is doing and trying to break the cycle, not once, but repeatedly is the hardest part. This is not something that I recommend that you should try to do alone. I was stuck on the hamster wheel of doubt and rumination and had been pulling farther and farther away from my friends and family, choosing to withdraw into my shell and distance myself from those I cared about the most. I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what was happening. Until I found NOCD. That is when things changed.

OCD recovery is more of an endurance race

 I want other people to understand OCD better, that it isn’t a fun quirk like it’s often shown in TV shows. It’s exhausting and time-consuming and it can break you and lock you into its invisible cage.  Healing requires a lot of patience. You will fall and you’re going to get back up again. You will take one step forward, only to take two steps back. And that’s okay. It’s a part of the whole healing journey. But there is a way out. You can get better. The storm will pass. And even though it will still rain from time to time, you can learn how to keep living your life. 

One step forward and two steps back

Starting around age 9 is when this thing became noticeable in my life. I would do such things as make sure that I never walked around an obstacle without walking back around it in reverse order (e.g. If I walked a lap around my house, I would do a subsequent lap in the reverse direction, as if I were untangling an invisible bungee cord that was attached to me during that first lap.) I would ritualistically perform tasks, whether these tasks were mundane or significant, a specific number of times (e.g. If I inadvertently touched or grazed the dining-room table while walking past it, I would then go back and touch it again a given number more times so as to have a nice even number of touches, before moving on.) 

My battle with OCD

One key tactic I learned in ERP was to live your values. These past few years really put me in an identity crisis and made me forget who I really was as a human being. During the ERP sessions, I am often reminded to move toward my values even when uncertainty strikes. I started to think about what I like to do and how I like to live my life. Bit by bit I learn more about myself and my desires in this world. 

Be kind to yourself

OCD had Gabe feeling like he was living in a dark cave. A cave of despair and uncertainty. Until he found NOCD. For the first time, I felt like what I had been struggling with was understandable and shared by others, and the conversation gave me hope that with a scientific treatment methodology, there was a way out, a way to leave behind the cave and step into my life. The recovery journey wasn’t easy, and many parts of ERP were incredibly frustrating, but looking back, a year after having started this journey with NOCD I couldn’t be more grateful. 

The cave, the boy, and the outside world

 My mom used to say “what's the value of money if you're not going to spend it to live life to the fullest?” This sticks with me, it is so true, especially as a metaphor for living with OCD. Living life to the fullest is about not letting OCD control what I do. It’s about me being in the driver's seat and taking back the control that OCD tries to take. I have decided to live my life to the fullest and move toward my values, not my fears. 

Living life to the fullest

Prior to being diagnosed with OCD, I had remained silent about that part of me. I simply didn’t understand it. I wanted to figure out everything first, on my own. Ironically I wanted to solve the problem before I asked for help. Analyzing is what I do, it's who I am. I didn’t like experiencing anxiety and uncertainty. I have always been very self-aware. I knew early on that the diagnoses didn’t fit everything I was going through. At the same time, this only played into more OCD fears. 

The search for control

I had a truly life-changing experience with NOCD and my therapist, Jessica. I’m happy to say just a few months ago, I was successfully discharged from therapy with her. Jessica was a lifesaver and was a perfect fit for me. When I started, it felt like ERP and the goals I set with her were unattainable, but I can say with certainty that it is doable and worth the hard work.

How my children’s OCD diagnosis led to my own

I was always outgoing, and friendly, not someone you would think struggles with anxiety or perfectionism. I was social and had a lot of friends. I made it through my school years pretty easily. It wasn’t until I started college that I started to struggle. I have since learned that this is a common time in an individual’s life when OCD either presents itself or worsens. It was my first time on my own, away from the familiarity of family and friends. I felt trapped like I couldn’t escape from it. Everywhere I turned there were intrusive thoughts and feelings. I couldn’t explain what I was experiencing to anyone, at least that is how it felt at that time. 

Getting comfortable being uncomfortable

The OCD community needs to come together to talk more openly about taboo themes. These themes are far more common than anyone realizes and people are suffering in silence. Hearing others talk about their experiences can save lives. I wish my 13-year-old self could have learned about it sooner. I wish she could have been a part of the OCD community that I have today.

Living with OCD