I Don’t Know How to NOT Do It.
One evening, late, Shane texted me: Can you come upstairs, please?
Shane rarely asks me to visit him. In fact, this may have been the first time. I went straight into his room without knocking. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t respond, but he was lying quietly on his bed, clearly upset. Shane was not okay.
It took awhile, but finally he started to talk. He talked about how he was struggling with reading, that it felt like he could never get through a paragraph. He talked about an obsession with crimes – and how to be sure he wasn’t committing any. And he talked about his phone, which he kept under his sheets.
“Do you know why I keep it there?” he asked.
“I thought you didn’t want to be distracted by it,” I said.
“It’s because I think somebody can see through the camera lens,” he said. “I know they can’t, but I can’t keep the camera on top of the sheets because I’m worried that someone could be watching me.”
And that’s when the light bulb went on over my head.
“You know nobody is watching you, but you do it anyway?”
“Yeah,” Shane said. “And I don’t know how to not do it.“
Never before that moment had I suspected Shane had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). And then, just like that, I knew he did.
I gave him some suggestions: things he could do right away to alleviate the stress of feeling horrible about doing things that didn’t seem “normal.” He could concentrate on some positive things, make a gratitude list, take deep breaths and be proud of himself for talking about what was bothering him.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I’m going to find a quiz online for you to take, and one way or another, we’ll find someone who can help you learn how to handle what’s bothering you.”
I found a quiz on PsychCentral, and Shane took it immediately. With 12 being the lowest possible OCD score, Shane scored 19. The site said:
Based upon your responses to this screening measure, you are most likely suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder…. This is not a diagnosis, or a recommendation for treatment. However, it would be advisable and likely beneficial for you to seek a professional diagnosis from a trained mental health professional in your community immediately.
We talked a bit more, and Shane felt comfortable moving forward to find a therapist. I started looking and found someone within a couple of hours, so we were able to set an appointment pretty quickly.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d always thought Shane’s obsessive thoughts were – well, normal. I’d been just like him growing up, and what he did was an awful lot like what I did. In fact, sometimes my obsessions were a bit more extreme.
So before I went to bed, I took the OCD quiz for myself. I got a 17.