Worst Sitcom Ever | Living With OCD And Intrusive Thoughts
CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of self-harm and suicide.
NOTE: LMAO you actually believed me when I *promised* to post on Thursday? Sorry, made a promise I couldn’t keep. But seriously, I am trying to find a comfortable posting schedule. Thank you for your patience.
Thank you, everybody, for being so patient. It’s been a while since I’ve written, and hopefully I do a good job of explaining why, conveying what I’ve been going through the past month.
So I am in extreme pain as I write this.
Not of the physical variety, although I can certainly feel some of that setting in due to the lack of sleep I’ve been getting.
No, I’m talking about mental pain. I didn’t spend all my past articles mentioning my various brain abnormalities for nothing.
More specifically, we’re here today to talk about the OCD aspect of my rapidly-deteriorating psychology, as well as intrusive thoughts.
OCD is a mental disorder characterized by a pattern of unwanted thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Intrusive thoughts are defined as unwanted thoughts that can pop into your head at any time without warning, often repetitive — the same kind of thought cropping up again and again — and sometimes disturbing in nature. They’re a little different for everybody. For me, intrusive thoughts manifest in an… unusual way.
I started writing here on Medium so I would have a way to put on paper the thoughts that were bugging me. And by “bugging me” I meant that they, against all logic, gave me heart palpitations and kept me up at night. Every time you see an article of mine, that’s one of my intrusive thoughts or sources of anxiety. I currently have over 50 unfinished drafts, and I add to them whenever I need to vent more of my feelings on a particular subject.
The Past:
I’ve had OCD for a while, as well as intrusive thoughts, on and off for several years now. In 2016 it got so bad that my parents scheduled a visit with a psychiatrist, who prescribed me Prozac. It didn’t feel like it was working at first, but after some time of allowing it to build up in my system, along with some changes to my lifestyle, I began to get over it. For a couple of years afterwards, I was considerably more functional. Life was pretty good, for a while.
Present’s Past:
But something happened a bit over a year ago that sent my thoughts into a consistent obsessive downward spiral, taking my sanity along with it.
Remember the opening of “Campfire Stories”, where I alluded to a cataclysmic event in July 2020 that shook the Smash Bros. Community? I, like everybody else involved with the community, was shocked and saddened at the news of dozens of respected figureheads turning out to be complete monsters. However, among the several people announcing that they were done with the community as a result were others who saw this not as an ending, but a beginning, that the community was now better off having gotten rid of these people, and that this would inspire more openness and awareness of behind-the-scenes goings-on like sexual assault. It was a shaky time, but those still left in the community (the hundreds of thousands of casual players watching on the sidelines) became stronger, wiser, and more vigilant as a result.
I, however, did not.
That night was the beginning of a nightmarish brain worm awakening in my subconscious. Instead of my stream of consciousness slowly muting itself as I drifted off to sleep, this is (just a fraction of) what I heard instead (with italics indicating my obsessive, intrusive thoughts and normal text indicating me responding to said thoughts):
Spotlight: A Brief Look Into My Internal Dialogue From July 2–5, 2020 (I apologize in advance for what you are about to see)
You really are selfish, you know that?
Okay, what did I do?
Dozens of sex offenders were just exposed and you’re over here worrying about people giving up on the community? Like, do you even blame them? Why are you so defensive over the Smash community when you barely interact with it?
First of all, I’ve been to actual Smash community functions, and to several of its Internet communities, and most of the people seem very nice. Second, of all, it’s not “defensiveness”, it’s hyper-empathy. It’s part of my autism; it’s an actual phenomenon that has a name.
Sure, keep telling yourself that.
Oh, shut up.
And you’re more concerned with the community’s reputation than the victims?
No, also I’m not a therapist. I have no idea what I would say to the victims if I managed to reach out to them, and I ESPECIALLY don’t know what you expect me to do about it at midnight.
If that’s not enough, here you are staying in your own little bubble. Aren’t you dying to know what the rest of the Internet is saying about the Smash community right now?
(Here’s where my thoughts get intrusive and I start losing control of my actions.)
Uh, no, not really. They’ve been one of the most hated fandoms for a long-ass time now, and I can’t imagine that this will fix anything.
Just a quick Google search. C’mon.
No.
You know you want to.
No. No!
(At this point, my thoughts are an itch I can’t scratch unless I obey my subconscious)
Aren’t you curious to see what Gaming Circle Jerk is saying?
What the fuck? Of course not! All their jokes are about hating gamers and they never break character. I know what they’re going to say.
(Against my will, I ended up giving in and scrolling through r/GamingCircleJerk. It was exactly what I thought it would be. And flash forward to the future, it never stopped.)
Well, the least you could do is go there and let them know that they’re being total assholes for hating a whole community for the actions of a few. You should make a post calling them out.
That’s a terrible idea.
(I ended up making it anyway, but I received too much dogpiling and harassment from the GCJ users for it so I took it down a few days later.)
Well, that was pretty stupid. You really thought you could win them over with some “Not All Men” bullshit? You’re pathetic.
Hang on, this was YOUR idea.
But I am you.
That’s not my fault, dipshit.
But all of this is your fault, getting hung up over a scandal you have no part in just because your were worried that some people would say mean things about your precious fandom. You’re so selfish and pathetic and-
Oh, SHUT UP!
Needless to say, I did not sleep at all that night. It was like that the whole damn time.
This might seem like a silly example of intrusive thoughts, and I’m aware of that. In fact, the reason this took me so long to speak up about is that I didn’t think it would make sense to anybody except me.
From that moment on, I was a slave to my own mind. I had completely lost control over what goes on in my head. It’s like being possessed by a demon, except you are the demon and you are possessing yourself.
And it wasn’t just this. My first major article, titled “Oops, The Mask Slipped” was the end result of a random thought manifesting in my head about “doesn’t it bother you that people think a game you’ve never played is problematic?”. I have myself convinced that if I’m not educated on every single issue that exists and I haven’t heard every potential piece of shit somebody wants to talk about me, then I’m living a lie and being irresponsible and “not educating myself”. Therefore, the only way to alleviate these feelings is to purposefully enter videos and articles- and their accompanying comment sections- discussing subject matter that I know bothers me, but that I can’t help reading about anyway. For more on this, look up “digital self-harm”. From there I choose random comments and start leaving rebuttals even though I know they will not respond and will probably just call me “butthurt”.
I’ve discussed this with my mom, and she suggested seeing a therapist, but how would you even explain such a thing? Where would you even begin?
“Hello there, medical professional who is being paid to care about my mental well-being. Today I am here to tell you about how having a spree of sexual assault allegations I have nothing to do with triggered an OCD flare-up that has continued for over a year, and led to an endless cycle of entering fights I know I can’t win with random strangers on the Internet!”
It sounds even dumber now that I’m saying it out loud.
The Present:
Recently, it’s been difficult to not spend every spare moment sleeping. At least when I’m asleep, I’m not bothered by the same things that bother me when I’m awake.
Unfortunately, my intrusive thoughts have not been limited to petty stuff like Internet disputes. They’ve spiraled out of control and taken a more… traditional form.
For instance, whenever a person says “sorry” to me in a “sorry, we’re out of that flavor” kind of way, my thoughts start getting irrationally angry at the person for being “insincere” and I get the urge to punch them in the face and-
And I’m like, whoa, where did THAT come from? There’s nothing they can do, they’re just saying “sorry” because they can’t help us!
Sometimes, intrusive thoughts directly weave themselves into the obsession- and- compulsion pattern of OCD. For instance, sometimes before I went off to college, I was convinced that my parents had planted secret security cameras around the house to spy on me because they didn’t trust me. I knew that this was pretty stupid, and that they probably couldn’t afford to do that, but every time I got home from school and had the house to myself for a few hours, I would check every corner of the living room for cameras because I was sure that if my parents saw me on a video feed slacking off instead of working every single second, I would be punished. Even on back-to-back days, when the previous day had turned up on sign that I was being spied on, I was still obsessed with the idea that I was being spied on by my parents who secretly hated me.
Sounds stupid, I know, but at the time it made perfect sense to me. And if that sounds like an intersection between OCD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, that’s because it most likely is. I just *love* how mental illnesses tend to be package deals.
The thing is, compulsions demand to be carried out. If you stand still for too long, you have to move around eventually. If you feel an itch, you eventually have to scratch it. OCD works the same way. It’s not quite automatic, but it can’t really be controlled.
Living with OCD in this day and age sucks. We have endless fountains of knowledge and information at our fingertips, which often does more harm than good. People like me end up falling into obsession- and- hyperfixation- associated rabbit holes, never satisfied until we have all the answers, and maybe some semblance of hope that the world isn’t as bad as it seems and that there’s something we can do to fix it.
But you can’t control other people’s minds. I can barely control my own.
ADDITIONAL CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSIONS OF SELF-HARM AND SUICIDE BEYOND THIS POINT
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Alright.
As some of you may know, when your thoughts start to overwhelm you, you will often end up seeking a physical release.
Some turn to exercise, which in moderation does work. But surely you remember me saying that I was a COMPETITIVE athlete, and competitive sports training like mine gets so intense that it tends to negate the benefits of exercise.
Some turn to meditation, which didn’t work for me because clearing my mind was, and still is, impossible.
And some turn to… pain. Inflicting physical pain on themselves.
I previously told you about my (ongoing) habit of digital self-harm. But for a time, it didn’t stop there. It wasn’t anything too serious, though, because I was too scared to do anything that would potentially leave visible marks. Mostly I would drag sharp objects across my skin without breaking the skin, the momentary flash of pain being enough to disrupt my mental static, temporarily.
But no matter what I did, I couldn’t regain control over my thoughts. And that devastated me. Part of OCD is knowing that your compulsive rituals won’t do anything to solve the things you’re worrying about. Another part of OCD is worrying about things that are either completely trivial or that you couldn’t do anything about. Being a slave to your own mind, feeling yourself losing control, it’s enough to make you feel helpless, then hopeless.
And sometimes, that hopeless feeling gets to be too much.
I remember my first (and only) suicide attempt. It was a Saturday evening last October. I was tired of feeling pathetic for feeling and thinking all the wrong things. I wanted a way out. But as was the case with my brief stint with self-harm, I was scared. I didn’t want to feel pain as I died.
So I decided to overdose on Hydroxyzine, but in a cowardly manner. I decided to not take all the pills at once. Instead, I would take dosages that were much higher than the prescribed dose, and much closer together than intended. I swallowed the first eight pills, then another eight the next hour, ready to slowly put myself down like the rabid mutt I had led myself to believe I was.
But then, two phases into my plan, I stopped. I couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t know if it would work, and… well, I got scared.
I didn’t get physically sick, but I did end up feeling and thinking practically nothing for almost a full twenty-four hours. It was oddly peaceful, but I knew it wasn’t healthy and, more importantly, wouldn’t last forever.
Eventually I told my dad what happened. We both broke down in tears at the thought of what almost happened. I swore that there had to be another way to deal with how I was feeling, and that I would do anything in my power to find it.
The Future:
As I sit down to write this, I am in a haze of barely-coherent internal dialogue. This took so long to publish because my thoughts are extremely difficult to transcribe.
I previously mentioned that there are many ways to relieve yourself from an unstoppable stream of consciousness. For me, as I have previously stated, I eventually turned to writing. Being able to publish analysis and opinion pieces on things that I think about, getting those thoughts on paper, is extremely liberating. Every time I spend two hours writing on a piece and finally get it published, I feel a sense of bliss. Even if the article ends up being seen by nobody or poorly received, it’s better to just let it out.
If you’re reading this, and going through something similar to what I’ve described, I just want to let you know: You’re not alone. There’s almost always something you can do to help yourself. You’re not less of a person for not being able to control what goes on in your head.
Thank you so much for reading. See you next weekend!
