What It Feels Like to Have OCD

A busy mom (who asked to remain anonymous) reflects on living with obsessive-compulsive disorder—and overcoming her darkest days.

- Alyssa Shelasky

i can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t tapping things—like doors or locks—and counting how many times I tapped them, or making up other types of magical, superstitious behaviors to help me control the universe. It’s just always been this way. My brain will decide that something is a lucky number, and whenever something is not that lucky number, alarm bells go off, and suddenly it’s the worst thing ever.

Allow me to give you an example: We have six people in my family, so as a child, I’d have to tap something at least six times. If I didn’t, someone in my family would die, and we’d be left with five of us. The number five was really bad luck. But it wasn’t only about the lucky number six, or the unlucky number five. When you have OCD, the rituals change. Sometimes I’d have to step out of the room with my right foot only, and if it was my left foot, I’d obsessively worry that bad things would happen to my family. The worries were always, specifically, about them. Your brain might tell you to touch something, like a computer keyboard, 500 times so that everyone will still be safe. It doesn’t stop. Until you do the ritual. And then you feel better.