Before and after the move to Florida, I was not the most sociable character, nor was I very happy. In truth, I had a very negative attitude that only worsened as time progressed. I faced a significant presence of hopelessness in my life. I was very depressed and anxious, and a large cause for most of these feelings was OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
What is OCD? It is a mental disorder that causes excessive anxiety in the sufferer, arriving in two parts, obsession and compulsion, whereas the obsession is a nagging thought that will not go away, and the compulsion is the action you take to relieve the discomfort brought upon by the nagging (obsessive) thought.
OCD is most popularly associated with being a neat freak and a compulsive hand washer, but it is so much more than that. I had repetitive compulsions that severely impeded my function as a human being. I would repeat words and get stuck with thoughts that would not go away. My heart would race and I would need to sit down and breathe. I would re-write my sentences even if I so much as breathed on my hand whilst writing them. Everything needed to be done in the right order and with perfection. I was kept up many nights trying to complete a ritual that had no feasible benefit. Something in my brain told me I “needed” to do it, or I would not be able to go to sleep.
I also had a severe contamination fear. I was afraid of touching everything because everything was “dirty”. Even if I touched the sleeve of my own shirt, I had to respond by washing my hands; I couldn’t touch my face or mouth because, if I do, I will have to wash it lest I be letting a foreign body inside of mine. It terrified me what I would do next to keep me safe and comfortable: I didn’t let anyone touch anything in my room; I made my own bed and could not let anything fall on the clean half; I sanitized everything often; I never touched food with my hands unless I hadn’t touched anything after the time I washed them, not even my own skin or it was back to the sink. I washed my hands around 30 times a day, often rubbing pieces of skin clean off my hands. I washed even after I came out of the shower because I might have touched something dirty after I got out. I needed to be immaculate before I climbed into my bed, so if I touched something, I needed to go back and wash. This would continue for about 20 minutes on a good night, 2 hours on a bad one. I went to sleep very late, and got up in the morning with deep disgust of myself and of life.
Every morning when I got up, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for anything I did in the past. If I said hi to someone the wrong way, it would follow me to bed, and after I woke up. So I started to close up from people. I found myself hating people, and myself, and I thought the worst of every situation. It was torment. I will admit that I wanted to die. And my Mom feared me killing myself when she was not home. I read the Bible, I prayed to God, but I wasn’t doing something right, I wasn’t feeling remission. Instead, everyday felt worse than before.
At this time I was going to a young adult group at my church. But my attitude and skewed perspective made me want to quit going. Everyday when I determined to stop going, I went, and I was encouraged to go one more time, and it cycled on like that. The topics were about being united in Christ, reaching out to one another, being vulnerable, and showing love and compassion. It helped me realize how sick and tired I was of being depressed and anxious, but even more sick and tired of being lonely, so I reached out and told someone my problems. And they reached back with love and compassion, the opposite of what I was expecting since I was so negative. But it was stage one in a healing process.
Soon after, my spirit had found a bottom below my lowest point. And so, reaching out again, I found no one. I called/texted everyone I could think of, but I could not find relief, for I was screaming inside. The guilt was tremendous, and I knew the cause: my self-destructive lifestyle, my negativity, my OCD. I sought psychiatric help with a therapist that ultimately told me that it was up to me to change my behaviors, and that every bolt of sadness, every pain endured was motivated by choice, my own personal will, conscious or not. I was my own worst enemy. I had to change my insides to change my outsides and my situation. This is the way God had set forth for me to escape from my mental prison.
Finally, after a year of acute sorrow began a revelation of freedom. I had everyone I could think of praying for me, including my new friends at the young adult group, and my mother (who played a big role in my healing process). But I realized that God wasn’t biding His time on healing me. He wanted to heal me; He was just waiting on me to take the first step, that step I knew I had to take from the beginning, but was too terrified to take. The first step was to acknowledge the feelings that filled me, but not to feed them. Sure, I felt it, I couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming in, but I could change my attitude and my response to them. Immediately I started seeing remission. And it came so suddenly that it was, without a doubt, God.
I started feeling an odd sense of elation, when I refused my compulsions, these things that would terrorize me. That is not supposed to happen! I was supposed to feel agony, but less need to do it the next time. But I didn’t feel the need to quarantine myself from “dirty” things as much; I took off my shoes and walked barefoot for the first time in a long time, and I decided I really liked it; I stopped repeating things as often; It felt okay to leave things imperfect; I started to feel happier, liberated, loved, and I was much more open to people. I stopped caring about what I thought people thought of me. I started loving myself. It felt like God was coming down and hugging me. And to this day, I don’t feel a fraction of what I felt before. Before was a horror, a nightmare. Now I am so much freer. Years stuck in this pattern of negativity and it was undone in under a month.
I am not completely healed though. I still have a few repeating compulsions, lonely days, sad days, but these are normal for humans to experience. I heard OCD cannot be cured, only managed and suppressed, but I know God can do anything (and he may have a purpose for it still). I do get those thoughts that “maybe that is ‘dirty’”, or I feel some strange need to touch something again, or rewrite a perfectly fine sentence. But this will soon fade too, because God is good.
I can say I have just recently seen the last of my “depressive loneliness thoughts”. I am looking at a brighter future for myself, and do not wish to ever go back to what I was before. Before I was so immature, but I’ve learned a lot now. I learned that we need fellowship in our lives; we need to reach out to other Christians and receive good godly council. I learned that happiness is a choice just as sorrow can be. It is very comfortable to stay in a place of negativity, but know that your thoughts can envenom you and break your physical and mental strength. The battle of life is fought mostly in the mind, guard your thoughts and focus on God, not the problem. A life that prioritizes God first and foremost is a life on the right track.
I am so thankful that I have changed since those dark times, and am still changing, but sometimes I take what I have for granted. I underestimate the luxuries I enjoy, for I was very much aware that my suffering was meager in the face of the substantially more severe suffering going on in the world. I still cannot fathom the strength some people have to endure these disabilities all their lives. I am blessed beyond measure. What I have is not mine; it is God’s.
On a final note, do what you do to fulfill His will, not your will. I was like that. I wanted everything perfect. I wanted healing without taking the necessary steps. We are all imperfect, and we all stumble, but by the grace of God we keep moving. And know that no mountain is too colossal or unmovable. God can make it happen, He can do anything! And who knows, maybe God’s will is not to move the mountain out of your way, but rather to put you on top of that mountain so you can proclaim victory in Christ whilst atop your greatest hindrance. It won’t come without you taking the first step.
God really is good!
