When you have OCD, there is a feeling that comes with it when you’re dealing with something that triggers your anxiety. The only way to describe the feeling is an intense wave of shame and feeling uncomfortable. It is a feeling I hated having to experience, and I had no idea it was OCD. I would have done anything to avoid experiencing that extreme wave of anxiety, so one of my compulsions has always been avoidance. Avoiding triggers that make me uncomfortable for a long time was how I dealt with my symptoms of OCD, and now I know that was not helpful. I should have been facing my fears instead of hiding.

Now that I know so much more about myself due to the fact that I have OCD, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my past experiences in life that I had with OCD. I was on the swim team since I was 7, and I absolutely loved it. So many of my childhood friends were from the swim team. When I got to high school, of course I knew I would be on our high school swim team. Somehow I started turning my favorite swimming event into something that caused me intense anxiety. My favorite and best event was the 100 yd. Freestyle (4 laps). That race is an all out sprint. Getting ready for the event, I would just get a vivid picture in my mind of me suffocating in the water or having a panic attack while swimming and needing to leave. That was the uncomfortable feeling of OCD, and I started hating that event and wishing I could avoid it. No one knew how much anxiety it caused me. I couldn’t eat before I swam just in case I would throw up; so on swim meet days, I ate nothing. It was horrible.

If there is anything that I have learned from my experience, it’s that OCD attaches to what is most important to us. I had no idea what I was experiencing with swimming was due to me having OCD. Truly, it never even crossed my mind. One of my worst OCD episodes happened when I was twelve. I was on the way home from visiting family at Thanksgiving with my dad and sister. We had made it halfway home, and I threw up in the car due to having a stomach bug. From then on, I had the most intense fear of being trapped somewhere and having to throw up like that again. I couldn’t go to school, in the car, or do anything other than obsess over my fears. I wanted to do anything to avoid that extremely intense uncomfortable feeling I had with that fear.

As I got older, I would experience that same intense fear and anxiety, but it would be triggered by different things. When I had postpartum OCD, I would get that extreme uncomfortable feeling anytime I saw something true crime related. I remember one instance when I was watching a documentary about the Murdaugh family with my mom, and I just felt this overwhelming sense of panic. I had no idea why I was feeling that way. All I knew was that I could not watch anything that would cause me that kind of fear and panic again, so I stopped watching all true crime.

If I never had postpartum OCD, I would have never learned any of this about myself. For that reason, I am grateful I had postpartum OCD. Avoiding those feelings of panic does not do someone with OCD any good. We have to face our fears and live with the uncomfortable feeling. Trust me, learning how to do that does not happen overnight, and it takes a lot of hard work. OCD tries to keep us safe by avoiding certain things that will trigger the feeling of panic, but it is lying. We can tolerate and survive uncomfortable feelings, no matter how much our OCD wants to convince us we can’t. The more we expose ourselves to the uncomfortable feeling, the stronger we get. We have to learn to live with the uncomfortable feeling that is OCD.