OCD and real life

 

When real life is totally unsettling and saturated with negativity and inflammatory rhetoric, what effect does this have on someone with OCD? There are days when I find it difficult to think of anything other than the livestreamed genocide being perpetrated by Israel and supported by western governments including my own. I think about how much suffering and horror one nation can be expected to endure while those of us fortunate enough to have been born in wealthy countries have the luxury of being able to turn away from the horror and go about our lives. I wrote in my last blog post about the strange nature of OCD and the way it's total grip on my mind made me feel almost nostalgic for news of the invasion of Iraq. To me, this is the difference between the private hell of OCD and our collective experience of world events.  

I think if I've learned anything from my years of living with OCD, it's this:

Reality can be terrible and it can feel hopeless and pointless and empty. But for me, possessing the clarity of thought to engage with this horrible reality is infinitely preferable to a life lived in the grip of OCD obsessions and compulsions.

As human beings we can come together in communities to act and reflect and share the burden of facing up to terrifying truths and realities. We can work together to improve our local areas. We can set our own problems aside for a while and work hard to help others. When we face up to brutal reality, we do so in the knowledge that other people sometimes find life just as cruel and pointless and baffling as we do. 

Look at the streets of cities across Europe and the whole of the western world for examples of the power of collective action. Every weekend people come together and peacefully protest the crimes against humanity being committed around the clock by Israel. This collective action sends a clear and pure message to governments. There's something so fundamental about the right to peaceful protest. It's fundamental because it has nothing to do with self-interest or money or status. People protest Israel's genocide because they know in their hearts the difference between right and wrong. No lies, no propaganda, no both-sidesing a genocide. Just what's right and what's wrong.   

This kind of protest is positive and communal and an antidote to the messages of hopelessness that permeate social media and mainstream media. A collective hopelessness seems to be what governments and their client media aim for, and their message is something like this: Accept things as they are because they can be no better. Colonialism and imperialism and genocide are simply facts of life. Get used to it. Keep quiet. Keep your head down. It's not your children being starved to death by Israel, is it. 

Collective action gives people strength and agency. It's important to maintain hope that beyond corrupted political systems that are compromised by greed and Zionism, real democracy exists in the purity of a collective expression of humanity. Collective action is how we draw strength from each other to face threats to everyone's human rights. We're not the ones facing the horrors of genocide on a daily basis. What we can do is speak out and speak up in whatever way we can. We can also draw upon the knowledge that many millions of people around the world feel the same way.   

This is real reassurance and a sense of wellness - not the fake and sinister OCD variety. One thing I have always found to be the case with OCD is its tendency to isolate me from those around me and from the things I love and enjoy doing. For me, depression is always the end point of unchecked obsessions and compulsions. Depression leads to total isolation. It leads to that state of being unable to engage with the world (the world that is so often unbearably cruel). I wonder how people with mental health problems in Gaza can possibly cope with what's being done to them by Israel. I hope that one day they will have the time and space to receive the support they need to process their trauma.  

I hated being in the grip of OCD and I hated not being able to engage with the world. My journey with OCD has taught me that facing the horrors of the world with an open heart and the strength of community and humanity is always preferable to the numbness and isolation of OCD and depression. OCD can't and won't handle experiences of common humanity or feelings of empathy towards others. My OCD wants my full attention at all times. When it got its way, back in 2003, it pushed me into a depression that saw me hospitalised. I know now where going down the OCD rabbit hole will lead me: it's frightening and it's cold and it's extremely lonely. The aim of my OCD is to remove all that is human about me; to remove all concern for other people, and in fact all concern for my own wellbeing. My OCD wants all of my energy to be focused on its obsessive thoughts of rape and murder. It wants to be the only thing that my mind can focus on. It wants to terrify me with the obsessions and then trap me with the false promise of its ultimate deception: the compulsion. OCD is a double-headed snake: it's total fear that the obsessions are somehow real and are telling us something truthful about ourselves; followed by the subtle dagger of a fully formed path to immediate relief from the fear. OCD is a quite elaborately conceived con-trick. When it acts like it's offering you salvation, what it's really offering you is a lifetime with only it for company.

The theme of enclosed mental isolation versus full engagement with a world that is harsh and cruel is one frequently explored in the realms of science fiction. The Matrix films address the difficult question of whether we are better off living in an unpleasant and war-torn reality or in the sleek, wish-fulfilment trance of the Matrix that is used by machines to keep human beings superficially happy and docile. The ending of Inception also raises the question of whether or not it matters if the central character Dom Cobb has indeed returned to "reality" at the end of the film. Cobb looks happy and he is reunited with his children at the film's conclusion. The film makes us ask whether is matters if this is merely another dream like the dreams we have seen throughout the film. As people, we like/need sometimes to escape from reality. What we definitely don't like is forced removal from reality. One of the many devastating effects of mental illness is to take us out of alignment not only with our own minds, but with the world and the universe around us. Mental illness reduces the universe to the limits of your own mind. Your own mind that isn't working properly.          

People in Gaza are being denied community and comfort as their family members are murdered by Israel. Those of us who have the luxury of time and space to think and reflect and discuss must speak out against Israel's crimes. We can't afford to follow the lead of the UK's institutions and mainstream media and turn a blind eye and act like the crimes being committed in Gaza have nothing to do with us. Every child murdered by Israel is an attack on the rights and freedoms of every human being.