I was in Hull, reporting a feature for Prospect, when I decided to sing my thoughts to myself for a whole day. As I pounded through the city’s old town, I barely registered the magnificent buildings around me, as I was consumed by replaying my every passing thought to the tune of “Happy Birthday”.
Why? I hear you ask. Why would someone decide to do something so strange and distracting, particularly on a day when they need to concentrate on the quite sensitive work of interviewing members of the public? Well, unless this is your first time reading my column, I doubt you will be surprised to learn that madness—in fact, the specific kind of madness that is obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)—is the answer.
Over the last six months I have experienced a slow decline in my mental health, catalysed by a particularly unpleasant depressive episode. However, I am not a bona fide depressive by nature—my depression is almost always secondary to my battle with OCD.
My depression lifted quickly when I started working with a new therapist. But the underlying OCD has revealed itself to be of a rather tricksy and slippery variety—as evidenced by the thought-singing. It is quite difficult to explain why I would engage in this kind of nonsense to so-called “normals”—but I will have a go!
OCD is characterised by having obsessive thoughts that cause anxiety and the urge to perform compulsions to get rid of them. Unfortunately, while doing the compulsions provides temporary relief, eventually it causes the obsessive thoughts to come back stronger. The only way to break the cycle is to experience the anxiety without performing the compulsions.
So why would someone with OCD, like me, resort to musical thoughts? This is because the process of singing the thought allows me to accept it for what it is, just a string of text, not a holy command. This interrupts the cycle of compulsions and allows me to be present in the moment, rather than stuck in a debate with my worries.
That was until six months ago, when I had the urge to repeat such mindfulness techniques over and over. Though I didn’t realise it at the time, in a horrible irony, the techniques had become the compulsion. This was tremendously destabilising. I had managed this notoriously unwieldy disorder by using a selection of trusty tools—and now they were trusty no more. They weren't only failing to make me better, they were now making my illness worse.
It turned out that my mindfulness techniques had been undermined by a form of OCD that is known as “meta-OCD”, which is obsessive thinking about the disorder itself. The difficulty with these kinds of “meta” worries is that they are very challenging to identify, both for the person suffering and for anyone else in their life who is not a trained professional.
While with some of my other obsessions, my family and friends can spot them a mile off, it is very difficult for someone without a detailed understanding of OCD to notice someone becoming “meta” about their own thoughts. As a result, this compulsive behaviour slipped past my own radar and torpedoed my psyche.
As one of my best friends said when I had her over for dinner a few weeks ago, “I feel like this thought has robbed you of six months of your life.” Because don’t be fooled by people saying they are “obsessed” with a handbag or a new TV show; true obsession swallows your life entirely. Being obsessive doesn’t mean thinking about your worry a lot, it means thinking about nothing but your worry for every waking moment.
My friend’s compassion and validation made me cry. It broke my heart to lose the “recovered” status that I was so proud of. It knocked my confidence to accept, yet again, that however adept I become at managing my OCD, I will always live my life with the vulnerability that comes with having a lifelong, chronic disorder that has an endless ability to shapeshift.
It has been hell to fall back into the vortex of total obsession after five years of relative peace. But it has also been a useful reminder of what people living with this insidious disease, but who have not yet received the treatment they need, are going through. I am slowly regaining the ability to tell that pesky OCD to fuck off—and not, thankfully, in a sing-songy way.
