My OCD Made Me Pray to a God I Didn’t Believe In
By: Rachael Woodman
Tags: Disability, Ocd, Psychology, Mental Health, This Happened To Me

Even at the time, I knew that it didn’t make sense. And I didn’t understand myself why I needed to touch every item made of wood three times and roll over twice before I could settle. But this is what having OCD can be like. It often doesn’t make any logical sense.

There is no such thing as ‘being OCD’

I regularly hear people exclaim “Oh I’m so OCD” whilst they make something look a bit neater than it was, or talk about how tidy they are or how they enjoy cleaning.

“I’m so OCD, I always have to make sure my house is tidy”

“I just need to put that pen the right way up in the pen pot, I’m so OCD”

“She’s so OCD sometimes, she always washes her hands …”

OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and it is a serious, life-altering mental health condition. A person may have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but they can’t be OCD. It’s not an adjective. If someone uses the term to describe a themselves or another persons ‘quirks’, they are trivialising what can often be a very severe illness.

Another very common misconception about OCD is that it’s only ever to do with cleanliness and arranging objects in a certain way.

Don’t get me wrong: that can be exactly how OCD presents for some people, and it can be incredibly debilitating. But for others, OCD manifests itself in a completely different way —with the above account of me at aged 13 being just one example. There are so many more ways that OCD can affect someone’s life than making them obsessive about cleanliness and orderliness.

The disorder is also much more debilitating than many people realise: OCD was once ranked by the World Health Organization as being within the top 10 most disabling conditions in the world, when judged by lost income and a decrease in the person’s quality of life. It has since moved out of the top 10, likely because of better treatment options being available, but the fact it was ever so high up shows how the disorder can incapacitate those who suffer from it.

OCD causes me to behave in strange ways

When I was younger, I often blamed myself for things that realistically could not be my fault. I struggled to be rational about my worries. For example, if someone I knew became unwell, I convinced myself it was because I didn’t ‘pray’ for them properly the night before, despite not even believing in God. If a disastrous event happened in the world where people got hurt — such as an earthquake or a hurricane — I would get incredibly worried that it was all because of me.

I was convinced that I had to be loyal to a God that I didn’t actually believe in. If I was ever asked if I had a religion, I thought I had to say yes — because my OCD made me believe that if I ever told someone I was an atheist, then terrible things would happen to me and the people I loved.

The behaviours associated with my own OCD have changed a lot over time. They have evolved as I’ve grown up and gained adult responsibilities. They can be just as debilitating now as they were when I was a teenager, but in a completely different way.

Nowadays, my OCD-related behaviours revolve around the household. Leaving home to go to work or to see a friend can be a nightmare for me, and I often get into work much later than planned to because of my OCD. I spend a long time checking and re-checking that the locks are secure, making sure all the windows are closed and all the electricity switches are off. Me and my partner have just bought our first house, so it’s the first time we’ve had a mortgage. The reality of this responsibility has hit my OCD quite hard: I am constantly — and I do mean constantly — fearful that the house might burst into flames because I didn’t switch the cooker off, or get broken-into because I left the back door unlocked, or get flooded – and that it would all be my fault because I didn’t carry out my OCD-rituals properly.

Whilst some of my obsessions have remained the same for the last 12 years, others change regularly, which makes them even more challenging to work on or ignore, as well as making it difficult to explain the nature of my OCD to anyone else.

Hardly anyone knows that I have OCD

I can count on one hand the amount of people in my life who know that I struggle with the demon that is OCD. To be honest, I doubt very much that many people would guess that I have this condition either. I am one of the messiest people I’ve ever known, and so those who assume OCD is all about tidiness wouldn’t have a clue that it affects me daily. Additionally, my OCD is quite mild compared to that of other people I know who have the disorder, so it’s comparatively easy for me to hide it. I am very open and honest about the fact that I suffer with anxiety, so I can — and often do — mask my OCD-related symptoms as ‘just my anxiety’.

I think for me, the absolute worst thing about having a bad patch of OCD-related behaviours is that I know that my obsessive beliefs are irrational – I know that they can’t be true. As a kid, I knew that whether or not I ‘correctly’ prayed to a deity that I didn’t believe in couldn’t possibly have an effect on the world’s happenings. And now, as an adult, when I go to check whether I locked the door for the seventeenth time in a minute, I know it will be locked.

And yet, somehow… knowing these things doesn’t make those feelings of fear any less real, nor does it loosen the grasp that my OCD has on me.