Credit: Imy Brighty Potts
Frame Of Mind
“I thought living in fear of death was normal – it took years for me to discover I had OCD”
11 months ago
5 min read
In a piece for Processing, a Stylist Frame Of Mind series, Imy Brighty-Potts shares her story of learning to live with OCD.
I wrote my first emergency escape plan for my home when I was five years old, my Baby Born pink and white emergency bag stashed under my bed with clean knickers, a notebook and a packet of sweets inside. I tucked a list of every number for every family member I had committed to memory in the front pocket and planned which stuffed animal I would realistically be able to carry in a rush. Lullaby Lamb, my ratty wind-up singing lamb, didn’t make the cut, and I felt guilty for months.
Before I went to sleep every night, I prayed. I wasn’t religious, and I had never been to church, but I knew that bad things happen to people who don’t anticipate them and that plenty of people on TV and in movies prayed to God to ask for what they wanted. So I would pray for my safety, for the wellbeing of my friends and family and tick them off my mental list of people I loved one by one. I was stopping the worst from happening to any of us. That was my responsibility.
I spent my whole adolescence fearful of going to sleep and not waking up because people just die in their sleep. Someone could break in; I could wake up and they could kill me. Even at boarding school, possibly one of the safest environments to be in, I slept with a hockey stick by my bed ‘just in case’.
“So some days you just can’t get on the Tube? But the chances of something bad happening are so slim…”
Credit: Imy Brighty Potts
Conversations with bosses used to go a little like this. A split second of a ‘what if’ thought left me completely debilitated. I’d need to change carriage on the train four times or find myself unable to leave the platform, staring into the void, considering what would happen if someone came up behind me and pushed me on the tracks. I’d step back, thinking I’m safe if my back is against the wall.
According to the mental health charity Mind, “intrusive thoughts can become obsessions. And the things we do to try to get rid of intrusive thoughts can become compulsions.” My obsession? Death, risk, harm. My compulsions? Mental rituals or ruminations.
If I think about it, it won’t happen.
Bad things happen to people who don’t expect them.
These are sentences that replay in my head. Or they used to anyway, constantly. That bus might hit me, but now I have thought about it it can’t happen. My mother has cancer… nope, as long as I’ve thought about it, it can’t happen.
I wonder how much of my life I wasted worrying
That’s how you start anticipating risk in every area of your life. Mind defines my kind of OCD like this: “When compulsions are internal and don’t involve physically doing something, some people refer to this to as Pure O.”
Being scared of dying is normal, but when you cannot live for fear of what might happen, forcing you to perform constant, rumbling mental compulsions to put your mind at ease, that is no way to live.
When things got really bad, my compulsions became physical checking behaviours too. The gas, the water, the plugs, everything was a risk. I was back to checking where emergency exits were at all times, like the little girl with her emergency bag under her bed.
Credit: Imy Brighty Potts
So, why did it take until I was 22 to get the OCD diagnosis that would help me live without being scared of dying? Simple. Because we all think our specific neuroses are normal, and if it wasn’t for concerned friends and housemates seeing how debilitating my mental health was becoming, I may never have sought help.
With a diagnosis and the right balance of medication and an intensive 16-week course of cognitive behavioural therapy, I can honestly say I only think of my own inevitable demise maybe once a day (twice if the news is particularly depressing).
I’m 25 now. I take the Tube, I swim in the sea (something that once was terrifying), I drive in foreign countries, I get on planes without four glasses of wine to ease my stress and I don’t bolt my bedroom door at night. There is no emergency bag, no hockey stick by the bed and there are no knives secreted away around my room in case someone breaks in and I needed to defend myself (yes, really). I don’t pray, mostly because I’m not religious, but also because I know now that it is not my role to keep everyone safe.
Bad things happen to people who anticipate them just as much as they happen to people who don’t. It’s all luck of the draw. Worrying myself into an early grave and becoming consumed by a need for control in this wildly unpredictable life was never going to save me or those I love from the inevitable. We will get sick, we will be injured and there will be events that leave us devastated that are totally out of my control.
Sometimes I wonder how much of my life I wasted worrying about all of this. Sometimes I feel hopelessly sorry for little me and her emergency bag. What if I died tomorrow and all I did was spend two decades in a state of anxiety? But wallowing and ‘what ifs’ get you nowhere. I’ll take living over preparing to die any day.
Frame Of Mind is Stylist’s home for all things mental health and the mind. From expert advice on the small changes you can make to improve your wellbeing to first-person essays and features on topics ranging from autism to antidepressants, we’ll be exploring mental health in all its forms. You can check out the series home page to get started.
Images: courtesy of Imy Brighty-Potts
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