I Must Have OCD!
A lot of people seem to have “come down with” OCD lately; it’s a joke on social media everywhere. All this hand-washing is essential! they say. I must have OCD!
Even though Shane really does have OCD, and I probably do, too, the jokes really don’t bother me. In fact, it’s kind of nice that people know how it feels to be obsessed with avoiding germs.
Shane and I both wash our hands ridiculously often, and we have since long before we heard the term “coronavirus.”
The other day, Bill was – quite seriously – trying to tell me how to get gas from the pump, that I should use hand sanitizer before and after touching the pump. If he hadn’t been so dead serious, I would have laughed. I’ve been using hand sanitizer three or four times during the course of getting gas, and using my sleeve to open my car door, for as long as I can remember.
But Shane doesn’t have “typical” OCD.
Shane’s disorder, in fact, is Responsibility OCD. Basically it tells him that his thoughts can trigger tragic or catastrophic events: anything from the death of a loved one to the end of the world.
It’s akin to when I was a child, with my own OCD symptoms. I constantly looked down at the ground when I walked, partially to avoid stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk.
This was because I once heard, “Step on a crack, break your mama’s back” – and I didn’t want to hurt my mother. So I didn’t step on a crack for about ten years.
When I finally did, around age 23, my mom’s back was fine. Go figure!
But here we are, having a global pandemic. And Shane has Responsibility OCD, where he sometimes feels responsible for catastrophic things that are entirely out of his control.
The world is (hopefully) as close to ending as it will be in our lifetimes and less than a year ago, Shane was overwhelmed by the feeling that he was able to cause horrible things to happen, just by thinking random thoughts.
I didn’t want to mention this to Shane, because he’s been doing well in therapy and he has been pretty good at taking care of his own problems. But sometimes he doesn’t talk when he really should.
So, finally, I asked Shane if he felt like the pandemic was his fault.
“What do you mean?” he asked. There was a slight flicker in his eyes.
“Do you think you caused this with your thoughts?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all.” And since Shane doesn’t lie, I believe him.
Then, before even a minute had passed, I started to worry that, with my question, I’d caused Shane to believe that he caused the pandemic.
And a few days later, I was still worried about it. I had to write Shane a note, to make sure he knew that there’s no way he could have caused anything to happen with his thoughts, let alone a global pandemic.
Which one of us has the worst case of OCD, I wonder?