"Mom, none of them look nervous."
The one where I tell you about OCD
My newly minted twelve-year-old anxiously observes from the back seat, “Mom, none of them look nervous.”
My face smiles.
My brain screams.
My heart breaks.
It seems to still be human nature to assume our internal chaos is a unique and isolated event. She looks out her rainy January window as we pull up to her middle school for the first time after Christmas break. “See, Mom. They’re fine.”
A new trimester schedule awaits her inside and even though she’s had four months under her belt at this new school, her body has other things to say about how this day is unfolding.
I squeeze her tight, as if I could fill her with confidence through my fingertips. She turns to head inside, looking back once or twice to see my smile and nod. “You’re doing a hard thing. You’ve got this.” After she disappears into the side gym entrance, I sink into my front seat chair in our van and let a deep sigh escape. Something about that sigh aches to rescue a 12-year-old and a 41-year-old who are more scared than they ever want to admit.
Alphabet soup
When I unfolded into 2023, I never intended on adding more diagnosis letters to my medical history. But, turns out the more your curiously pull the threads in your life, they lead somewhere, ready or not. The work began in earnest in 2017. First up — anxiety & panic. Then ADHD stepped out from stage left in 2022. Autism followed closely behind in early 2023. I delighted in the truth. Honestly. Sure, I had to work through the stigma and internalized ableism I’d picked up in our neurotypical world. But once I realized there was a reason for the way I moved through life, all the shame dissolved. I wasn’t broken. My brain has incredible strengths and challenging difficulties in a world designed for one specific type of brain. Knowing has made all the difference in every single area of my life.
I’d rather live inside my truth than suffer by denying what my body knows has been true all along.
The more I learned about autism, the more I learned about comorbid conditions that often overlap. Humans are complex. We aren’t isolated beings with one pattern our brain follows. One thing can cause another to roar to life as a way of managing the confusion. I kept seeing one thing listed next to autism on every piece of research: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It didn’t register in my brain for about six months because I don’t wash my hands a million times a day or keep things in perfect order. “That’s not me.” Then I came across the data that OCD is far more than an obsession with cleaning.
Shoot.
I’ll tell you more about my new OCD diagnosis sometime soon but this is about how my daughter’s words dropped me into my soul right there in the drop off line.
“Mom, none of them look nervous.”
No one can tell
You should have seen me when I first found out OCD is highly treatable. It might come and go during times of stress, but I can gain skills and practices to put it into remission so I can live my life outside its grip. I swear every part of my body grinned that day. Especially after realizing the autism would always be with me. I threw myself down the OCD rabbit hole, determined to treat this debilitating aspect of my life.
There is an electrical current of terror to OCD that’s particularly menacing. When I’m stuck inside it, it’s ridiculously real and consuming. I cannot access other scenarios or possibilities. It feels life or death.
But no one can tell.
It’s such a lonely place to be. Feeling terrified on the inside, but they only see my smile.
OCD is an invisible heavy blanket of dread that wraps itself around everything I care about. It steals my ability to be present to my favorite people. It fills my mind with “what ifs” that make life smaller and smaller. My brain is just trying to keep me safe but it makes me miserable in return. OCD drags me away from my values. Those things are never as interesting to my brain as abject terror.
Researchers estimate 1 in 100 people navigate life with obsessive compulsive disorder. The good news? It’s highly treatable and I’m proof. Once I learned that OCD is far more than a cleaning obsession, I saw the compulsions, rituals, anxiety, and relief with deep hope that I won’t always live under the weight of these patterns. The one thing that clued me in? The compulsions and rituals aren’t just physical things someone does. We perform mental compulsions too. I thought I was “just anxious.” Turns out I’ve been stuck in very real OCD loops for decades. That learning broke open the entire thing like a glorious sunrise over the mountains.
I surveyed my life from childhood to now and saw it clear as day.
OCD is how my brain coped with the confusion of autism and ADHD. If I could just find certainty in the key areas that mattered the most to me, then I could feel safe.
People are deeply confusing to me. So I set about learning as much as I could about them. Honestly, autistic humans should get honorary degrees for how much research we’ve done to figure out how to operate in a world not made for us.
OCD came along and thought it was helping me gain certainty in a confusing world. Instead, it buried me alive.
So when my daughter pipes up from the back seat saying no one else looks nervous, I get that on a soul level.
I used to believe that. That all of you walked around full of ease and calm. That you didn’t struggle with anxiety and fear.
Now I know better. We all navigate worry and fear in different ways.
Some of us push it away and live in denial.
Some of us tremble at the surface with its constant presence.
Some of us wade through seasons of thick anxiety, only to see it fade in other seasons.
Some of us live with highly-anxious humans and their stuff triggers our stuff.
Some of us are getting help and solid tools to embody a life we can love.
Some of us are working to dismantle the larger systems that contribute to our mental health crisis.
Me? I’m a writing pastor. I’ll keep doing my part to normalize how fear shows up through my life lens. And each time I do this, a few more of you tell me how fear (and hope) crawl through your life in ways no one would ever guess. Which only solidifies the gift I’m able to give my daughter.
“I hear you. I see how it might look and feel that way. But I guarantee you a lot of them are feeling a bit how you are this morning. You’re not alone in what you’re feeling. Maybe you all can get through a hard thing together.”
Maybe this mental health alphabet soup that seems to be my life is why I so fiercely believe in hope and possibility and love. Maybe it’s why the Jesus story uniquely captures my imagination. Maybe it’s why I keep writing about healing and courage.
I need this.
My fear needs it.
My brain needs it.
My heart needs it.
Maybe you do too.
So glad we’re in this together.
With fierce hope,
Jenny
I am convinced that it is our deepest vulnerabilities that God adores and where we can meet wild and pure Grace.Some are called to be utterly transparent in sharing their angle of the Gospel story lived and seasoned. You are one of those messengers joining the ancients of a holy tradition.
Jenny- You unpack this so well for those of us who don't fully grasp the grip that OCD can have on someone. I know you have done lots of personal work to get to the point where you can articulate and illustrate it so well. Clearly, there is a lot of fear gripping people all around us. Keep nudging us to look through new lenses and consider our relationship with fear. Love, Mom