The struggles of OCD at university

By Nina Bryant, News sub-editor

In honour of OCD awareness week, News sub-editor Nina Bryant discusses her personal experience with contamination obsessive-compulsive disorder and how it has affected her experience as a student.

It is no secret that living with a long-standing mental illness at university is challenging at the best of times. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is no exception to this.

Having OCD is a constant battle between two distinct mind-sets: one which torments you with distressing thoughts and images, and one which allows you to act, talk and think like a completely rational human being. Despite an OCD sufferer’s perspective of the world being overwhelmingly tainted by the former, it is the existence of the latter which prevents people from seeing just how ill someone with OCD might really be.

Do you need to talk to someone about your OCD in confidence? Or are you worried about a friend of family member's OCD? We can support anyone worried about OCD and related disorders at the OCD Youth e-helpline. Contact youthhelpline@ocdaction.org.uk

— OCD Youth (@OCDYouth) July 3, 2018

Contrary to popular belief, OCD is essentially extreme fear of uncertainty, whatever the obsessions may be. The thought processes or behavioural patterns are what define the disorder, rather than the content of the thoughts themselves. For instance, somebody can have a preference for cleanliness without thinking the same way as someone with contamination OCD. Also, someone troubled by intrusive sexual or violent OCD thoughts will mirror the same controlling and neutralizing thought processes, despite the content being completely unrelated.

One of the hardest things about living with OCD at university is the secretive nature of the illness. Making friends and living with new people can be difficult if you spend every other minute obsessing about contamination after your toothbrush or food gets unintentionally moved, or beating yourself up for being bombarded with deeply traumatizing thoughts or images. You want to show people you can be yourself - the ‘real’ you that gets squashed by the avoidant nature of this illness - but you also know that you can only push your obsessive thoughts so far before the compulsions take over.

Contrary to popular belief, OCD is essentially extreme fear of uncertainty, whatever the obsessions may be.

Raising awareness amongst students is important because, from my experience, it can often be hard for people to see OCD as an illness. People might assume that these strange beliefs are due to personal preference for organisation; that you simply like things a certain way, dislike eating, socialising, going out or doing anything spontaneously. The worst part is that people might see someone with OCD and assume they are happy with their life as it is. Unfortunately for sufferers, nothing in life can ever be 100 per cent certain, meaning compulsive behaviours often feel like an impossible quest for reassurance, only leading to greater distress.

It is important to remember that fear is not the same as dislike and that, at its core, OCD cannot be understood by the rational mind. Compulsions provide no basis in reality or logic. These irrational thoughts just seem compelling to those who suffer from it and ludicrous to those who do not. I am not in control of my intrusive thoughts and if I was I would most definitely not be opting to watch the same horror film that repeats in my head all day and most nights.

My experience with OCD first emerged as contamination OCD. Due to lack of knowledge, even amongst health professionals, I found my OCD hard to recognise when it cropped up again in my life. The themes were so different and the nature of the compulsions so abstract compared to any symptoms I had experienced before.

Photo by Epigram / Luke Unger

Due to high levels of stress, my supposedly ‘treated’ disorder crept back into my life in weird and nonsensical ways. My compulsions were seemingly so uncommon so I could not see them for what they were. I started to have intrusive thoughts about bad things happening to people around me, and intense fears that I was going to be unintentionally responsible for harming my loved ones in some way.

I became fixated with confirming that this was not the truth. I spent most of my time wrapped up in my own mind, analysing my own words, thoughts and behaviours over and over. Social interaction became horribly draining because of the amount of time I spent reliving it in my head, analysing, counting and checking.

Soon anything in the media about anyone doing anything immoral led to a sick feeling in my stomach and hours of researching and checking. To me, it was not merely a trigger, but perceived as a sign. It was as if every time I heard about any harmful act, I thought that the person relaying the information was actually talking about me. This led to a never-ending train of thoughts about whether or not I deserved to be punished for the same crime. I was in constant pain knowing that there was no way of being 100 per cent sure that I would never harm anyone.

Making friends and living with new people can be difficult if you spend every other minute obsessing about contamination after your toothbrush or food gets unintentionally moved.

My distress and feelings of shame were so intense that I developed anorexia, an illness commonly associated with OCD. This seriously affected my ability to work or socialise. Starvation causes serious mental and physical suffering, but I believed only such a level of punishment could neutralise my intrusive thoughts. There was no obvious way to rid myself of my intrusive thoughts as there had been when I had an irrational fear of germs: this time the fears were about me.

Whilst it is of the utmost importance that people do not belittle the horrifically debilitating nature of this seriously misunderstood disorder, it is also important to stress that over-validation of irrational fears is not in the best interest of an OCD sufferer. OCD’s biggest fear is a sense of safety and contentment, and will always find a reason for why that feeling is wrong. That is not to say that believing this is easy by any means, but if you or someone close to you suffers from OCD it can be helpful to know that these fears are not reflective of reality.

Featured Image: Epigram / Jasmine Burke