college essays about ocd

OCD is so much more than handwashing or tidying. As a historian with the disorder, here’s what I’ve learned

PhD Candidate in History, University of Sheffield

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Eva Surawy Stepney receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH).

University of Sheffield provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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Readers are advised that this article contains explicit discussion of suicide and suicidal and obsessional thoughts. If you are in need of support, contact details are included at the end of the article.

At the age of 12, “out of nowhere”, Matt says he started having repetitive thoughts concerning whether he wanted to end his life. Every time he saw a knife, he would ask himself: “Am I going to stab myself?” Or, when he was near a ledge: “Am I going to jump?”

Matt had heard a lot about teenage depression, and thought this must be what was going on. But it was confusing, he says: “I didn’t feel suicidal, I really enjoyed my life. I just had an intense fear of doing something to hurt myself.”

Shortly afterwards, pre-empted by hearing about a notorious banned film, Matt began questioning whether he, like the central character, might be a serial killer. These thoughts “kept coming and coming” and he would lie in bed running over scenarios, trying to work out whether he was “going crazy”:

I really needed help. I didn’t know who to talk to. But it wasn’t on my radar to think about this as OCD.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a significant mental health diagnosis in the 21st century. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists it as one of the ten most disabling illnesses in terms of loss of earning and reduced quality of life, and OCD is frequently cited as the fourth most common mental disorder globally after depression, substance abuse and social phobia (anxiety about social interactions).

Yet everything Matt knew about OCD, he tells me, came from daytime talkshows where “people were washing their hands 1,000 times a day – it was all about external and really extreme behaviours”. And that didn’t feel like what he was going through.

Across the world, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of mental illness at all ages, from children to the very old – with huge costs to families, communities and economies. In this series , we investigate what’s causing this crisis, and report on the latest research to improve people’s mental health at all stages of life.

A similar experience is recounted in the 2011 book Taking Control of OCD by John (not his real name) who, after a colleague had taken their own life, became “inundated with thoughts” about what he might do to himself. Every time he crossed the road, John thought: “What would happen if I stopped moving and was run over by a bus?” He also had thoughts of murdering those he loved. John recalled:

Try as I might, I just couldn’t chase the thoughts out of my head … When I tried to explain what was going on to my girlfriend, I couldn’t find a way of articulating what was happening to me … At the time, I thought OCD was all about triple-checking you had locked the front door and that your drawers were tidy.

Despite the prevalence of OCD in contemporary society, the experiences of Matt and John reflect two important features of this disorder. First, that the stereotype of OCD is one of washing and checking behaviours – the compulsions aspect, defined clinically as “repetitive behaviours that a person feels driven to perform”. And that obsessions – defined as “ unwanted, unpleasant thoughts ” often of a harmful, sexual or blasphemous nature – are viewed as obscure, confusing and unrecognisable as OCD.

People who experience obsessional thoughts are therefore frequently unable to identify their symptoms as OCD – and neither , very often, are the experts they see in clinical settings. Due to mischaracterisations of the disorder, OCD sufferers with non-typical, less visible presentations usually go undiagnosed for ten or more years .

When John visited his GP, he was diagnosed with depression. He recalled that the GP concentrated more on the visible effects of his distress - a lack of appetite and disrupted sleeping patterns. The thoughts remained invisible. As he put it:

I don’t know how you’re supposed to tell someone you don’t know that you have thoughts about killing people you love.

Even for those with “textbook” OCD such as my friend Abby, “the compulsion is just the tip of the iceberg”. Abby was able to self-diagnose at the age of 12, when she experienced handwashing and locking door compulsions. She says people still think of her as “Abby [who] likes to wash her hands a lot”.

Now, she tells me, “I realise that I have no interest in washing my hands – I’m a pretty messy person, and I don’t mind other people being messy.” Rather than a love of cleaning, her acts were related to the altogether scarier obsessional thought: “What if I am going to hurt other people?”

Clinical guidelines, such as those provided in the UK by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence , define OCD as being characterised by both compulsions and obsessions. So, why do the difficulties encountered by Matt, John and Abby – of recognising the internal thoughts that dominate their lives – appear to be so common ?

My experience of OCD

From the age of 16, I have also suffered with thoughts that I later came to associate with OCD, but which began as invisible and tormenting. An article I wrote in 2014, entitled The Unseen Obsession , described my experience of having left university midway through my studies due to a single thought that gathered “such power that I even ended up attacking my body in an attempt to eliminate its force”. I wrote:

I have suffered with obsessional thoughts for the last four years, and can safely say that [OCD] is far from being about clean hands.

My obsessions have taken many forms since my teenage years. They began with me wondering whether things really existed, whether my parents were really who they said they were, and whether I wanted to harm – and was a risk to – my family, friends, even my dog.

Many of us know what it is like to ruminate about a person, a conflict, or something else we feel anxious about. But for those with obsessional thoughts (diagnosed or otherwise), this is quite different to simply “overthinking”. As I attempted to explain in my article:

Conversations falter as the thought leaps through your mind. Other topics seem less important, and time to yourself provides space to assess, analyse, and look for evidence of the thought being ‘true’ … [Obsessing] is like fighting: you push and shove your thoughts away and they come back with twice as much force. You spend time trying to avoid them and they pop up everywhere, taunting and mocking your failed attempt at running away.

It took me six months of weekly therapy sessions before I felt able to voice my obsessional thought to my therapist – someone I had known for a number of years. My unwillingness to be open about it was not only tied up with feelings of shame about its taboo content, but also my inability to see such thinking as part of a recognised disorder.

The question of what constitutes OCD, why we understand – and misunderstand – it as we do, as well as my own experience of living with it, led me to study how OCD became recognised and categorised as a mental health disorder .

In particular, my research shows that there are important insights to be gained from the research decisions made by a group of influential clinical psychologists in south London in the early 1970s – shedding light on why so many people, myself included, still struggle to recognise and make sense of our obsessional thoughts.

The origin of the concepts

Categories of mental illness are not stable across time. As medical, scientific, and public knowledge about an illness changes, so does how it is experienced and diagnosed.

Prior to the 1970s, “obsessions” and “compulsions” did not exist in a unified category – rather, they appeared in an array of psychiatric classifications. At the start of the 20th century, for example, British doctor James Shaw defined verbal obsessions as “a mode of cerebral activity in which a thought – mostly obscene or blasphemous – forces itself into consciousness”.

Such cerebral activity could, according to Shaw, arise in hysteria, neurasthenia , or as a precursor to delusions. One of his patients – a woman who experienced “irresistible, obscene, blasphemous and unutterable thoughts” – was diagnosed with obsessional melancholia, a “form of insanity”.

The symptom arose from what Shaw defined as “nervous weakness”, an explanation that reflected the broader 19th-century view that obsessional thoughts were indicative of a fragile nervous system – either inherited, or weakened through overwork, alcohol or promiscuous behaviour (described as “ degeneration theory ”). Notably, Shaw did not mention any form of repetitive behaviour in relation to these verbal obsessions.

At a similar time to Shaw’s writings, Sigmund Freud, the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, developed his psychoanalytic category of “ Zwangsneurose – translated in Britain as "obsessional neurosis” and in the US as “compulsion neurosis”. In Freud’s writings , the “Zwang” referred to persistent ideas that emerged from a repressed conflict between unresolved childhood impulses (those of love and hate) and the critical self (ego).

Freud’s most famous case study , published in 1909, featured the “Rat Man”, a former Austrian army officer who possessed a variety of elaborate symptoms. In the first instance, he had become obsessed that he would fall victim to a horrific rat-based punishment that had been recounted to him by a colleague. The patient also expressed that if he had certain desires such as a wish to see a woman naked, his already-deceased father “will be bound to die”.

The Rat Man was described by Freud as engaging in a “system of ceremonial defences” and “elaborate manoeuvres full of contradictions” that have been read by some as the behavioural aspects of what would become OCD. However, there are crucial differences between the “defences” of Freud’s client and the compulsions of OCD, including that the former largely involved thinking rather than acting, and were by no means consistent or stereotyped.

This article is part of Conversation Insights The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.

The psychoanalytic category of “obsessional neurosis” was adopted and modified in Britain during the first world war, and became a staple – but inconsistently defined – diagnosis in British psychiatric textbooks of the inter-war period. Up to the 1950s, the terms “obsession” and “compulsion” were being used interchangeably in psychiatric writing. The complexity surrounding their meaning is demonstrated in the writings of Aubrey Lewis , a leading figure in post-war British psychiatry, who referred to “obsessional illnesses” as being made up of “compulsive thoughts” and “compulsive inner speech”.

Like Freud, Lewis mentioned the “complex rituals” of the obsessional – such as the patient “who is perpetually putting himself in the greatest trouble to ensure that he never steps on a worm inadvertently”. But he cautioned against “the dangers of associating any kind of repetitious activity with obsessionality”, writing that “it certainly cannot be judged on behaviourist grounds”.

Defining OCD by visible behaviour

OCD began to emerge in the form we recognise it today from the early 1970s – and was established as a formal psychiatric disorder through its inclusion in the third and fourth editions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (commonly known as DSM-III and DSM-IV) in 1980 and 1994.

The centrality of visible and measurable behaviours in the categorisation of OCD – particularly washing and checking – can be traced back to a series of experiments conducted by clinical psychologists in the early 1970s at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital in south London.

Under the direction of South African psychologist Stanley Rachman, the complex array of symptoms contained in the categories of obsessional illness and obsessional neurosis were divided into two: “visible” compulsive rituals, and “invisible” obsessional ruminations. While Rachman and his colleagues conducted a large research programme on compulsive behaviours, obsessions were relegated to the backburner.

For example, in their investigation of ten psychiatric inpatients diagnosed with obsessional neurosis, “compulsions had to be present for entry into the trial and patients complaining of ruminations were excluded” – a statement reiterated throughout subsequent experiments.

Indeed, this study did not merely require patients to exhibit some form of visible compulsion. The ten patients included were exclusively those with “visible handwashing” behaviour, which was viewed as the “easiest” symptom to experiment on. Likewise, the second round of studies only included patients who engaged in visible “checking” behaviour, such as whether a door was unlocked.

In a 1971 paper , Rachman offered his rationale for taking this approach, explaining how “obsessional ruminators raise special problems for the clinical psychologist because of their subjective, private nature”. This, he argued, was in contrast with “the other main feature of obsessional neurosis, compulsive behaviour, which can be approached with greater ease. It is visible, has a predictable quality, and many reproducible analogies in animal research”.

Rachman viewed compulsions as “visible” and “predictable” in large part due to the way clinical psychology had developed as a new profession in Britain, at the Maudsley Hospital in particular, in the decades following the second world war. To differentiate their practice from the existing mental health professions of psychiatry (medically trained doctors specialising in mental health) and psychoanalysis (talking therapy derived from Freud), these early clinical psychologists presented themselves as “ applied scientists ” who brought scientific methods from the laboratory to a clinical setting. Their conception of science was rooted in empiricism – with an emphasis on visibility, measurability and experimentation.

As part of this commitment to empirical science, these clinical psychologists adopted a model of anxiety derived from 20th-century behaviourism. This focus on observable behaviour was viewed as having much greater scientific value than psychoanalysis, which dealt with the “ unverifiable ” and “unscientific” realm of thoughts and thinking.

So, when obsessional ruminations gained a renewed focus in the mid-1970s, it was through this lens of visible compulsive behaviours. Rachman and his colleagues started talking about “mental compulsions” (such as saying a good thought after a bad thought) as “equivalent to handwashing”- rather than focusing on the importance and content of these thoughts in their own right.

In the early 1980s, clinical psychology came under pressure from cognitive psychologists (those concerned with thinking and language) for its reductive focus on behaviour. But despite this move to include cognitive approaches , the centrality of visible behavioural compulsions has continued to characterise perceptions of OCD in cultural and clinical domains.

This is perhaps most evident in media portrayals of the disorder – a critique taken up by cultural scholars such as Dana Fennell , who look at representations of OCD in TV and film.

The archetypal portrayal of OCD has not been helped by the recent publicity given to David Beckham and his extensive tidying . When I ask Abby what she thought about the attention that Beckham’s OCD was receiving in the media, she replies: “It’s so boring. It’s the same presentation that always gets thought of as OCD.”

Limitations to the ‘gold standard’ treatment

This archetypal portrayal of OCD also relates to how it is treated. The “gold standard” treatment in the UK today is the behavioural technique of exposure and ritual prevention (ERP), either on its own or combined with cognitive therapy. ERP gained acceptance from the experiments of Rachman and colleagues in the early 1970s, when they were exclusively working with patients with observable behaviours.

One of their key studies involved patients from the Maudsley Hospital who repeatedly washed their hands. They were told to touch smears of dog excrement and put hamsters in their bags and in their hair, while being prevented from washing for increased lengths of time.

Such experiments were again governed by observability and measurability. The “success” of ERP treatment – and its perceived superiority over psychiatric and psychoanalytic methods – was demonstrated by a reduction in the patients’ visible handwashing behaviour.

Today, if you are diagnosed with OCD by a psychiatrist and given OCD-specialist treatment via the NHS, you will most likely be told to undergo the same kind of ERP procedure that hospital inpatients were experimentally given in the 1970s: touching a set of items that you fear (exposure) while being prevented from engaging in your usual compulsive behaviour.

An identical method is also used when it comes to obsessional thoughts. Patients are asked to identify their worrying obsession, then either expose themselves to provoking situations or repeat the thought in their mind without engaging in “mental compulsions” – such as counting, replacing a bad thought with a good thought, or trying to “solve” the content of the obsessional thought.

It’s certainly true that this form of behavioural therapy can be hugely helpful in the treatment of OCD symptoms. Abby, after undergoing ERP for 14 years, said she had “developed a lot of practices around not giving into my [washing and checking] compulsions”.

I also found the approach beneficial in reducing the threatening quality of my obsessional thoughts. Repeating “I want to hurt my family” or “I don’t really exist” to myself over and over again, without actually trying to solve these issues, reduced the time I spent ruminating.

However, while being a huge advocate of ERP, Abby also observed that “sometimes when I get rid of a compulsion, it doesn’t mean I just get rid of the obsession.” While the “outward compulsions” disappear, “it doesn’t mean my mind stops cycling and mental questioning”.

Some contemporary clinicians have referred to ERP, designed around visible symptom reduction, as a “ whack-a-mole technique ” – you get rid one symptom (obsession or compulsion) and another pops up.

ERP is frequently accompanied with cognitive therapy techniques, such as cognitive restructuring (identifying beliefs and providing evidence for and against them), or being told that obsessions are “just thoughts”, that they are meaningless, and that you do not want to enact them.

Despite the success of cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) and ERP in scientific trials, a major review of evidence in 2021 questioned whether the effects of the approach in treating OCD had been overstated – reflecting the high proportion of OCD cases that are designated as “ treatment resistant ”.

I also believe there are some crucial limitations to contemporary treatments for OCD. Exposure (ERP) techniques stem from a period in which thoughts were not being considered at all by clinical psychologists, while CBT designates the content of obsessional thoughts as unimportant. Matt, like me, has found that CBT “can only take you so far”, explaining:

Part of this was that [CBT therapists] are so committed to the idea that thoughts don’t have meaning … [They] treat your symptom and once those are gone, you should get on with your life. I didn’t find that there was a way of thinking about [my] ruminations in the context of my whole life.

Experiences of alternative treatments

So much of my understanding about OCD has changed since I first wrote about it for Rethink Mental Illness almost a decade ago. Thinking about the historical development and categorisation of OCD has, it turns out, given me a greater sense of ease regarding this widely misunderstood condition. I feel less bound by our current conceptual frameworks, and more able to reflect on what I think is helpful in terms of how to successfully manage my obsessional thoughts.

For example, despite being warned away from psychoanalysis from a young age (my mum is a clinical psychologist, and psychologists are often fervently anti-psychoanalytic!), I have found psychoanalysis incredibly helpful in becoming comfortable with my thoughts.

This is because CBT typically focuses on present symptoms without looking into their meaning or how they relate to your personal history, and this comes into tension with my desire, as a historian, to think about the past. In contrast, psychoanalysis locates obsessional thoughts in history – pointing to childhood as a crucial point of psychic development. I have been able to understand my obsessions as the result of a deep childhood fear concerning the death of my loved ones, from which I developed a rigid desire for control.

As a young teenager trying to determine what was going on with him, Matt went to the public library and took out a Freud reader . He describes this as “the worst possible thing for a 14-year-old to read”, as it made him believe “that I did really have all these [murderous suicidal] impulses and all my fears are true”.

Despite this experience, while training to become a social worker, he “got into psychoanalysis as an alternate way to think about therapy and think about my own experience”. For him, psychoanalysis revealed the opposite to the image of “OCD as handwashing”.

Instead, he says, it focused on the aspects of “obsessionality that are internal”, showing him that the “mind is so powerful that it can produce a lot of imaginary fears”. It also allowed him to see “OCD symptoms as wrapped up with my whole life”.

Particularly profound in psychoanalytic thought is the acceptance of the complexity and unknowability at the heart of human experience. As Jaqueline Rose, professor of humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, wrote: :

Psychoanalysis begins with a mind in flight, a mind that cannot take the measure of its own pain. It begins, that is, with the recognition that the world – or what Freud sometimes refers to as ‘civilisation’ – makes demands on human subjects that are too much to bear.

This idea of “a mind in flight” has helped me think about my obsessions – whether my parents are really who they say they are; am I going to hurt those I love? – as part of a battle for certainty and control that is both unattainable and understandable, considering the world we live in.

The aim of psychoanalytic treatment is not to eradicate symptoms but to bring to light the difficult knots that humans have to deal with. Matt refers to psychoanalysis as acknowledging “a sort of messiness of the mind … I’ve found the psychoanalytic view of accepting your own messiness extremely helpful”. Rose similarly describes psychoanalysis as “the opposite of housework in how it deals with the mess we make”.

In the UK, psychoanalysis has been rejected within NHS service provision. And I believe this is, at least in part, a result of historical critiques levelled at it by clinical psychologists as they developed behaviour therapies to treat OCD in the late 20th century.

‘A lot of emotion and sadness’

While compulsive behaviour such as handwashing and checking is widely perceived as “representative” of OCD, the tormenting experience of having obsessional thoughts is still rarely acknowledged and discussed. The shame and confusion attached to such thoughts, coupled with the feeling of being misunderstood, make this an important issue to address, particularly when misdiagnosis of OCD is so high.

My PhD on the history of OCD has also showed me the ways in which psychological research shapes how we conceive of diagnostic categories – and consequently, ourselves. While psychology’s commitment to objectivity, empiricism and visibility has provided tools that are tremendously useful in the clinic, my research sheds lights on how the often-exclusive focus on visible symptoms has at times trumped the appreciation of the complex experience of having obsessional thoughts.

I first met Matt in 2019 at the first OCD in Society conference, held at Queen Mary University of London, where he was giving a presentation on the “multiple meanings of OCD”. We discussed our own experiences of the disorder, and what we thought that history, psychoanalysis and anthropology could contribute to understandings of OCD.

Matt was 34, and he told me this was the first time he “had ever voiced the internal stuff out loud, and heard other people talk about it”. Recalling how this made him feel, he continued:

I felt a lot of emotion and sadness. The isolation had been such a big part of my life that I had stopped noticing it. Then being out of the isolation was such a relief, it made me realise how bad it had been.

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts and need support, you can call your GP, NHS 111 , or free helplines including Samaritans (116 123), Calm (0800 585858) or Papyrus (0800 068 4141).

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here .

For you: more from our Insights series :

How to solve our mental health crisis

How music heals us, even when it’s sad – by a neuroscientist leading a new study of musical therapy

Unlocking new clues to how dementia and Alzheimer’s work in the brain – Uncharted Brain podcast series

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97 OCD Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best ocd topic ideas & essay examples, 🥇 most interesting ocd topics to write about, 📌 simple & easy ocd essay titles, ❓ ocd research questions.

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Navigating college with OCD

Posted November 26, 2018

By Paul Robert Pasalowicz

This story is part of our blog series called “Stories from the OCD Community.”  Stories from the community are submitted and edited by Toni Palombi. If you are interested in sharing your story you can view submission details at  www.iocdf.org/ocd-stories .

College is a swimming pool of deadlines, targets, expectations, and stress for everyone that chooses to go through the process. With obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), these stressors can cause a world of suffering. College was completely and utterly overwhelming for me at first; my OCD flared up terribly. However, this flare up at the beginning of the most important stage of my life taught me to approach the situation in the exact opposite way I previously thought to, which was by letting go and embracing uncertainty. As a result, I changed the way I handled problems and managed my health, and began to excel in class.

This is what I learned about navigating the college experience:

Mental health comes first: Before all scholarly activities, you should set a strict self-care/mental health plan. While everyone’s plan will be different, you need to make sure that you come before any deadline, target, or grade. Good action plan examples could include regularly meeting with a psychologist/psychiatrist, or working out every day before class to decrease your anxiety levels. Most colleges offer student counseling which is a great resource to turn to in times of distress. If you feel like you’re suffering at all in college take a step back and redevelop your OCD action plan. When you take care of your mind first, the rest of your academic career will be much easier to manage.

Identify your passion: The topics of majors, minors, and careers are gold for the OCD monster. It is important to keep your path very simple: study and follow what attracts you; in my experience, you can never go wrong with this strategy. College is about you, not your parents, grandparents or anyone else. If you take the time to understand yourself, your passions, your values, and your goals, college can bring you great success. If we are pursuing something we are interested in, and striving to learn each day, what more can we do?

GPA/career track insights: The grade point average (GPA) you maintain can set you apart from the pack in college, and it is a very healthy target to worry about in moderation. If you’re not feeling engaged in your courses, or you’re trying but are unable to maintain a satisfactory GPA, you may want to consider a different track. When I was struggling, being proactive and talking with advisors about my interests of study right away helped me to choose a new field of study in which I could excel. Colleges offer majors and courses for people with different types of skills, talents, and interests. Once I was engaged in learning about a specific topic that interested me, obsessions about deadlines, targets, grades, and expectations fell by the wayside, because I was passionate and focused on my work.  Remember: college is simply a personal learning experience about what you are interested in, so you can develop the tools to pursue those interests in the world.

Let go and dance with uncertainty: In my opinion, this is the key to excelling in college for students living with OCD. Many outcomes that occur in life are out of our control. Striving to learn what attracts you can be stressful, but it can also lead you towards discovering your passion. Enjoy the ride!

Paul Robert Prasalowicz is a student at Temple University

I was diagnosed and it has been a thorn in my side. I am taking meds for it and over the years it has helped me. The doc that diagnosed me was not very sympatric. Said there was nothing she could do. Catholic Charities helped me very much. through therapy and referred me to a doctor who prescribed Prozac.

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This Is What It's Like To Live With OCD

By Cecelia Scheeler

Courtesy of the writer

I am not shy about having OCD. On the contrary, I am obnoxiously vocal about it. I talk about it, I write about it, and I laugh about it. Constantly. When I applied to college, OCD was the topic of my personal essay. I joked that OCD is a lot like Netflix in that, as soon as you send one symptom back to the distributor, you get a shiny new one in the mail. (Yeah, I wrote that essay in 2010 and it’s already ridiculously dated. Netflix once sent DVDs through the mail . Those were dark times.)

I don’t talk about my OCD with anything even approaching sincerity. I handle most of my problems through a thick veneer of sarcasm and mockery. It provides a comfortable distance from something that can otherwise be overwhelming. I feel much less like I’m whining when I’m joking. And humor makes it easier to share with others.

I was diagnosed with severe OCD (and ADHD) when I was four years old, so I don’t really remember what it’s like to live without it. That’s right; my psychiatric history is now old enough to vote. That sort of makes it easier—it’s hard to miss normal when you’ve never known it. And I was fortunate enough to have what many people don’t: access to superb mental health services, and a mother who recognized the symptoms when I started washing my hands until they bled and when I began edging around the pile of dirty clothes in the laundry room like I was afraid it would swallow me whole. Despite the severity of my obsessions and compulsions, I’ve been successful because of this support.

This sort of germophobia is what most people think of when they hear of OCD, but the symptoms of OCD vary greatly over time and from person to person. Some of my obsessions weren’t so easy to recognize as such—in kindergarten, I would spend story time straightening my socks, unable to get them in the exact position I wanted. I had to change my underwear multiple times a day because I was constantly convinced that it was wet. I remember going to Disney World a few months before I was diagnosed—my father walked around the amusement park with a bag full of little girls’ panties. (That would have been fun to explain to security: “No officer, I’m not a pervert; my daughter’s just crazy.”)

By Julia Sullivan

By Katie Camero

My parents have done so much to help me overcome my OCD. As I grew up, they encouraged me to be open with them about my struggles with mental illness . It was expected that I would share my problems and go to them for support. Outside the house, however, the message was clear: don’t talk about OCD. Don’t talk about mental illness. It’s weird; it makes people uncomfortable; it’s not socially acceptable. But I couldn’t have hidden my OCD if I tried, and, oh, I tried.

In middle school, as I hit puberty and my body chemistry changed, my medication stopped working. Entirely. My symptoms skyrocketed, but still I tried with everything I had to hide them. Some of my compulsions were easy to cover up. When I had to spin the dial of my combination lock four times before I could open my locker, I could pretend that I’d gotten my code wrong and had to try again. But it’s pretty noticeable when the girl sitting beside you in math class has to bang her chair against the ground eight times before she can sit down. (Particularly if she came in halfway through class because she was busy spinning her combination lock.) And there was no good excuse I could think of to cover that up. So I stopped trying.

I started talking about my OCD all the time, to explain my actions, to try to make people understand.

I started with my peers: tweens with no filter who had never seen a person beat her chest like Tarzan or hold up an entire line full of kids by stopping in the middle of the hallway to hop on one foot. They rudely demanded to know why I freaked out whenever I smudged ink across my paper or why I sometimes shook my head like a wet dog. I did my best to explain my disorder in simple terms that even a ten-year-old could understand. But at that age, my peers still lacked the emotional if not the general intelligence to understand my condition. (Tweens and sociopaths have that in common.) I decided: If they wanted me to shut up and sit down, I was gonna stand and shout from the mountaintops. Never let anyone tell you that spite is a poor motivator.

High school was better. I applied and was accepted to a writing program at Carver Center for Arts and Technology, where my peers were understanding and empathetic. My medication stabilized and I began cognitive behavioral therapy. I exchanged my more noticeable compulsions for subtler ones. I didn’t hide my symptoms, but I learned to control them for my own benefit. Part of controlling compulsions is acknowledging and accepting the consequences of not performing them: “If I don’t proofread my English paper a fifth time, the worst case scenario is that I miss a typo.” This sort of reasoning helps bring my obsessions into perspective—a few points off an essay for a typo is not the end of the world. I’ll survive.

The summer before I went to college, I went to see a specialist in tic disorders, who informed me that my specific type of OCD is called Tourettic OCD, which is basically Tourette’s Syndrome and OCD slammed into one diagnosis. The Tourette’s was not a new development. It had always been there, lurking in the shadow of my OCD. In medicine, comorbidity is the simultaneous existence of two or more disorders in a patient. For most people, it’s a word that means life just got a lot more complicated. But I was elated—this doctor had given me more words, new language, to describe my experiences. I learned to differentiate between compulsions and tics and went off to college with new strategies for handling my mental illnesses.

Despite this, my first semester was still like getting thrown into the deep end without floaties. OCD hates changes in routine. College meant roommates, living away from home, and sharing a bathroom with an entire hall of strangers. But there’s nothing quite like trial by fire, and after a few nervous breakdowns, I settled into a new routine and my symptoms abated. I went through the same ordeal just this past year after graduation—transition periods are always rough for me, but I get through them with a lot of lorazepam and a mantra of this, too, shall pass .

Cecelia, front-center, with her college fencing teammates.

I still have my daily challenges. The cough I developed during a recent bout of illness has stuck with me in the form of a tic. It takes me a long time to get ready in the morning when I have to check and recheck my backpack to make sure I have everything I need. The skin of my knuckles is rough and calloused from trying to crack them too often. I still spend way too much time worrying about climate change.

When someone asks me why I exhibit some strange behavior or another, or so much as casts a curious glance my way when they see me blinking sporadically, I talk them through my diagnosis. I tell them about my evolving understanding over the years as I gained more information and science progressed. Then I talk them through my ever-changing symptoms and my treatment. (I have been on, at various points in my life, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, Prozac, Buspar, Lexapro, Ativan, clonazepam, Concerta, Focalin, Adderall, Strattera, and Daytrana. My psychiatrist has also been trying to talk me into testing out antipsychotics for years). Most difficult to explain are the urges that cause my tics. There are really no words for it, but I imagine it’s similar to the feeling of thousands of ants crawling across your skin. What can you do but try to shake them off? I explain to curious parties how OCD can manifest differently in different people. And I make jokes about it. I refuse to be ashamed of my condition. In public, I don’t surreptitiously slip my medication past my lips between sips from my water bottle—I toss a Zoloft into the air, throw my head back, and see if I can catch it in my mouth. I don’t mean to brag, but my mouth-eye coordination is unparalleled.

I’ve come a long way from the terrified little girl who cowered around dirty laundry, as my psychiatrist frequently reminds me . “I’m so proud of you,” she told me just the other day. “Just a few years ago, you couldn’t touch the sink faucet in your own bathroom.”

“Yeah, and now look at me,” I said. “You know, I was at the mall earlier and I dropped part of my cookie on the floor, and I just picked it up and ate it.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said. “Don’t do that again.”

I am not my OCD, but my OCD has played an enormous role in shaping who I am. So I can’t talk about myself without talking about it, and I really like talking about myself. Talking about OCD got me into my first-choice school. Talking about it got me here, on SELF.com. And I hope talking about it can also do others a world of good.

When we talk about OCD, we raise awareness of mental illness. We disseminate information so that people can recognize their symptoms and get a diagnosis, get treatment, get help. We open doors for those who’ve always known that something is wrong with them, but who have never had the words to articulate it. We deepen understanding and reduce stigma among the general public. We increase the chances of getting funding for research that could lead to better treatments. And we make life a little easier for people like me.

For information on OCD and treatment options, visit the National Institute of Mental Health website .

This Video Shows How Some People With OCD Feel Everyday:

Photo Credit: Daniel Grizelj / Getty

SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.

Overcoming OCD – The College Student’s Guide

This site is for you if you:

• Have been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
• Worry that you might have OCD
• Think you might be going crazy because of confusing fears and worries that won’t go away.
• Have strange intrusive thoughts you don’t understand and feel compelled to perform certain actions in response to these thoughts

You’re not alone, and there is an effective treatment for OCD — so you can look forward to relief from OCD and getting your life back.

You’re not alone. Approximately 1 in 40 U.S. adults has OCD. With Cognitive Behavior Therapy, relief can be just a couple of months away.

You’re Not Crazy

It’s normal to be concerned about your symptoms and maybe even a little afraid of what is happening to you.  But you’re not “crazy” or any other label that makes you feel worse.  OCD is a fairly common disorder that is neurobiological in nature.  Researchers have found that certain areas of the brain work differently in individuals who have OCD compared to those who don’t.  There is absolutely no reason to be ashamed of having this disorder, but it’s important that you understand it and learn how to control it.  With effective treatment, you should be able to do whatever you want in life and be whatever you want to be.

What Exactly IS OCD?

OCD is a disorder that has a neurobiological basis.  It interferes with how the brain functions, and its effects can actually be seen on brain scans. With OCD, a person has two specific symptoms:

Obsessions — disturbing, recurring thoughts, fears, doubts or urges that won’t go away. It’s as if your brain got stuck in the “worry” position and can’t restart.

Compulsions — repetitive actions, or “rituals,” that you feel compelled to do to feel better.  These actions can be done overtly, like washing your hands, or covertly, like saying mental prayers.  Unfortunately, you feel better only temporarily.  The more you perform the compulsions, the stronger and more frequent the obsessions become.

Learn more about OCD and its symptoms

You’re Not Alone

When you consider that one in 40 adults and one in 100 children has OCD, it’s obvious that you are certainly not alone.  This is a fairly common disorder and it is treatable.  OCD sufferers come from every age group, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic background.

Why Haven’t I Heard of OCD Before Now?

OCD isn’t a new disorder, but it was not well understood — and little was published about its symptoms and treatment — until the past few decades. Even today, not all physiciians, psychologists, educators or campus administrators recognize OCD when they see it.

Learn more about the rise in awareness today.

What is the Treatment for OCD? How Fast Does It Work?

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), sometimes accompanied by medication, is the gold standard treatment for OCD.  It is recommended by nationally- recognized institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School.  Some studies show that more than 85% of people who complete a course of CBT experience significant relief from OCD symptoms.  Relief can be just a couple of months away.

In some ways, OCD is like other health conditions such as asthma, allergies or diabetes.  When properly treated, these chronic conditions are manageable, and are actually managed by millions of people around you. Like these other conditions, OCD requires a commitment to treatment. While there is currently no cure for OCD, CBT can help you get better and teach you how to keep your OCD under control.

Learn more about CBT.

What About Medication? Can’t I Just Take Some Pills?

Today’s easy answer for just about everything seems to be to take a pill.  But for OCD, medication alone isn’t the best treatment.

Find out why CBT is the clear treatment recommendation.

Why is OCD happening to me now?

Illness can happen at any time, and college life is a stressful time that can be vastly different from your pre-college life at home.  In fact, it’s not unusual to first have OCD symptoms at college. Read more about why college can “trigger” OCD.

Could My Symptoms Be Some Other Mental Disorder?

A number of conditions frequently co-exist, or “partner” with OCD.  Disorders that can occur with OCD – referred to as “comorbid” disorders – include depression, bipolar disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, tic disorders (including Tourette Syndrome), eating disorders and anxiety disorders.  And there are several other disorders related to OCD that may also be comorbid with OCD.  As a result, it can be confusing to try to sort out what your particular symptoms actually are.

Learn more about related conditions and disorders of the “OCD Spectrum”.

What’s Wrong With Doing My Compulsions? It Makes Me Feel Better.

Continuing to perform rituals in response to your obsessions can actually make your OCD worse.

Learn more about why you need to overcome OCD through treatment.

Where Can I Go For Help?

Start with your college or university’s student health center or counseling service.  Tell them you think you might have OCD and want to see a cognitive behavior therapist.  If your counseling center doesn’t have a cognitive behavior therapist on board, ask them to help you find one.  If the staff doesn’t have information about cognitive behavior therapists for OCD, you can contact Beyond OCD to discuss therapy options for OCD.  Your goal is to get relief from OCD as soon as possible.

Can a Support Group Help Me?

A support group can provide information, encouragement and emotional support for people who have OCD.  It can play a very important role in OCD recovery, but it’s not a substitute for treatment.

Learn more about support groups.

When Money Is A Problem

If your student health center or counseling service is able to provide Cognitive Behavior Therapy, it may be covered under your student health insurance.  If you need to go to a cognitive behavior therapist in private practice, it could be more costly.  When money is an issue, it can present challenges to getting OCD treatment, but don’t give up.

Learn more about finding financial help.

Frequently Asked Questions about OCD and Its Treatment

Of course you have questions about OCD. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions by college students:

• What causes OCD?
• Is OCD inherited? Can stress cause OCD?
• Why can’t a person just stop their OCD?
• Is there an online test I can take to see if I have OCD?
• What’s the best treatment for OCD?
• Can you guarantee I’ll get better with treatment?
• Do I have to be hospitalized to treat my OCD?
• What if I don’t get treatment for my OCD?
• My college “doesn’t treat OCD”. Now What Can I Do? Should I change schools to get OCD treatment?
• What are my options if my school offers CBT but limits the number of visits?
• Should I take a leave of absence to get treatment?
• Are there accommodations available through disabilities services?
• Should I tell my family I have OCD?
• What Is OCD?
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy

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How to Write A College Essay on OCD: Intro to Conclusion

Writing a College Essay on OCD

Mental illnesses are common. Over half of Americans are diagnosed with a mental disorder during their life. Mental illnesses are disorders that affect a person’s thinking, mood, feelings, and behavior.

The diseases may be occasional or chronic. They can affect the patient’s ability to relate to others and their daily functions.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is increasingly gaining recognition in recent years. As more people become aware of the psychological illness, the affected are increasingly inclined to seek care.

A person diagnosed with OCD is likely to find it challenging to cope with their symptoms and lead a regular life. It can be very challenging to Stop or cope with obsessive thinking and manage compulsion.

What is OCD

OCD is a mental health condition that affects people of all backgrounds and ages, including children and the elderly. It is characterized by unpleasant thoughts, anxieties, or obsessions that result in compulsions or repetitive activities.

Obsessions and compulsions create severe distress by interfering with daily activities.

When OCD develops, the person becomes trapped in a loop of obsessions and compulsions.

Obsessions are unwelcome, intrusive thoughts, ideas, or desires that cause severe distress.

Compulsions are acts that a person engages in to banish obsessions or reduce distress.

The person recognizes that their compulsions are absurd and unreasonable. Yet, they refuse to give up because they fear the repercussions.

How to Write a College Essay on OCD

Writing a college essay on OCD involves:

1. Starting with a Plan

The initial step in any essay should be to create a documented plan. Start formulating a plan as soon as you receive your OCD essay question and give it some attention.

2. Initiating your Research

After considering the question and establishing an initial approach, gather information and evidence.

3. Create a Point of Contention

Every good OCD essay has a strong and well-supported argument. Contention refers to your essay’s core topic or argument. It serves as both a response to the query and a focal point for your writing.

4. Outline your Essay

Start penning down a possible essay format once you have completed most of your research and have a strong argument. This doesn’t have to be complicated.

A simple outline will do.

5. Create a Captivating Introduction

The introduction is the pivot of your essay. It is also where you give an overview of your work. Have a short, confident, and punchy introduction.

It is essential because it is the reader’s initial experience with your writing. It is also your first answer to the question and explanation of your viewpoint.

6. Compose Complete Paragraphs

Write 100 to 200-word long paragraphs that are mini-essays in themselves. Avoid the mistake many students make of writing short, one- or two-line paragraphs.

7. Conclude with a Strong Statement

Restate or emphasize your essay’s main point in the last paragraph of your essay. Aim for a solid, polished, and smooth ending.

8. Cite and Reference your Sources

Use Citations or references to credible sources to back up the facts, ideas, and arguments in your essay. This is one of the ways to avoid plagiarism in your essay.

9. Proofread, Edit, and get Feedback

Proofread, edit, and redraft your essay, if necessary, before sending it for evaluation.        

OCD is a well-researched subject. There aren’t a lot of new studies that you can include in your OCD essay. As a result, you can use the following plan to organize your OCD essay.

1st point in OCD essay

You can describe how OCD develops. According to scientists, psychological and biological variables are thought to induce OCD.

OCD Essay Point 2

Then, in your essay about OCD, discuss the disorder’s symptoms. Focus on Obsessions or intrusive thoughts, and compulsions. Compulsions are mental acts or compulsive behaviors that a person feels compelled to engage in owing to an obsession.

Usually, the practices help lessen or prevent pain due to an obsession. Common compulsions include:

• Repeated cleaning of household items
• Counting to a specific number repeatedly
• Seeking acceptance or reassurance all the time
• Putting items in a particular order or arrangement
• Checking switches, locks, or appliances regularly
• Ritualized or excessive hand washing, tooth brushing, showering, or toileting

OCD Essay Point 3

Finally, discuss OCD treatment options, including pharmacological, behavioral, and cognitive approaches. A patient can concentrate on learning to manage symptoms under the supervision of a skilled therapist and through behavioral therapy.

Explain that a person can learn to effectively manage symptoms and regain function in their lives if they are committed to this treatment.

If you find this method for writing an OCD essay to be too broad, your essay could narrow your focus on symptoms, for example. You can explain how obsessions influence a person in your OCD essay.

Also, you could discuss the typical items that people are obsessed with, the negative repercussions of compulsions, and so on.

Besides, you can interview someone with OCD to make your essay more informative and engaging. Remember that it takes up a lot of time in a person’s life and creates significant impairment.

Also, keep in mind that patients can get help irrespective of their ideas and behaviors or the severity of their symptoms.

Best Sources for Your References on OCD Essay

OCD-related organizations and resources include:

Mental Health America

International OCD Foundation

National Alliance on Mental Illness

Anxiety Disorders Association of America

National Institute on Mental Health. OCD

The American Psychiatric Association (APA)

The Top 100 Cited Articles on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

OCD – MedlinePlus https://medlineplus.gov

OCD – NCBI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › books ›

9 Examples of OCD Essay Topics

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder essay topic examples include:

OCD In Children

Living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

OCD- Psychiatric Disease

Research on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

OCD: Causes and Treatment

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in The Aviator

Outline and Evaluate Psychological Explanations For OCD

Clinical Psychology OCD treatment and approaches

Outline and evaluate Two Biological Explanations for OCD

Other Info on OCD in School

Many people who do not have OCD also experience troubling thoughts or actions. However, these thoughts and habits rarely cause problems in everyday life.

OCD patients have persistent thoughts and strict habits. Failure to engage in the behaviors creates a lot of distress. Many people with OCD are aware or suspect that their obsessions are irrational or unreal.

Ignoring Compulsions can lead to severe manic episodes. Students with OCD may find it difficult to concentrate in class or finish projects.

They feel compelled to undertake routines such as hand washing, rewriting sentences, or reorganizing notes. Intrusive thoughts can be both distracting and disturbing to the learning process.

Others may believe they are, which is known as limited insight. People with OCD have a hard time disengaging from their obsessive thoughts or stopping their compulsive behaviors.

It persists even when they are aware that their obsessions are unrealistic. In the United States, OCD affects two to three percent of the population. It is slightly more prevalent in women than men.

Typically, OCD starts in infancy, adolescence, or early adulthood. The average age of onset is 19 years old. An OCD diagnosis requires obsessions and compulsions that last more than one hour a day.

These cause significant discomfort and interfere with work or social functioning.

Obsessions are recurring and persistent ideas, impulses, or pictures that elicit unpleasant emotions like worry or revulsion. Many people with OCD are aware that their thoughts, impulses, or images are excessive or irrational.

However, logic and reasoning will not be able to alleviate the anguish caused by these unwanted thoughts. Most OCD patients try to distract themselves from the obsessions by performing compulsions, or suppressing or ignoring the obsessions.

James Lotta

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Indiana University Indianapolis

University writing center, university writing center blog, nitpicking: writing with ocd.

by Sage Justice

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can affect writers much in the same ways as a learning disability. I was diagnosed with OCD along with severe anxiety in elementary school when my repetitive compulsions became so disturbing to my school life that I was falling behind the other kids my age. When reading, I compulsively re-read every passage three times, leading to a much slower reading time than others. I had to read every word on every page as well, from copyright statements to the header at the top of the page. When first learning to read, I could only read out loud, which was disruptive to my classmates during silent reading time. These are just a few of the ways that my OCD manifested and affected my learning from a young age. Despite the difficulties I faced in learning, I was an avid reader, and a lover of stories and poetry. I always wanted to be a writer.

At the writing center, we strive to make a comfortable space for people of all backgrounds, including those with learning disabilities. After having my first appointment with a consultant, I knew I felt welcome here and wanted to work here as well. My OCD affects my learning in such a way that typical approaches to revising don’t always help, and finding the right approach to revision was the most important part of my journey in writing. Revision is an integral step in the writing process, which I had been neglecting for the longest time before coming to college and realizing its importance. I used to just turn in first drafts, refusing to engage with my writing more in-depth. After all, I had already been obsessing over every word I had just typed.

So how do you get over it? How do you stop editing in the middle of your sentences and allow your writing to flow out of you? Then how do you revise it without getting hung up on every word? What helped me was taking a less traditional approach to writing that allowed me to get words out on the page. It seems I had tried everything until I got to this point, with nothing working for me. I had to find my voice, and in order to do that, I had to write the way I speak in my head. My head is a messy, confusing place with OCD. In therapy, I learned to lean into my compulsions and intrusive thoughts; to explore them, turn them inside-out, and back again. I decided to write everything that came into my head in a blank document and allow myself to repeat words and phrases as much as I needed to with only one rule: don’t delete anything.

It may seem counterproductive to eliminate the backspace button from your writing. However, for my OCD brain, it helped me to make sense of the thoughts rushing through my head. I would type in long, run-on sentences with some fragments and repeated phrases, and this allowed me to get over my fear of starting and just word-vomit onto the page. I also refused to let any thought go untyped. Anything that came into my head during the writing process went straight to the page, whether I thought it was good or not. At some point, I ended up with something that was like a paper, but was more of a documentation of my racing thoughts. By keeping all of it in the first draft, you are telling yourself that every thought you have is worthy of being written, every sentence has potential. As a consultant now, this is what I tell my writers to do: write down every single thing that comes into your head during the brainstorming process, even if it’s about how much you don’t want to write. Eventually you’ll fall into actual coherent sentences that take off into a whole paper. For those who have trouble just starting and hate outlines as much as I do, this is a way to get your ideas out onto the page without passing judgement on your own writing before it’s even started.

Write loose, revise tight. This is what I learned from my study of poetry, and it can apply to all kinds of other writing as well. Revision was easier now that it was more obvious what needed to stay and what could be changed. Over time, it became a sort of routine. I would write out everything that came to mind in a document, then get to work on the individual sentences. Writing everything that popped into my head reinforced the idea that every word was worthy of the page, every sentence had some sort of notability to it, and I could write in my own voice without trying to force it to conform to some academic standard version of English I was told to write in for so long. Thus, I stopped being overly critical of everything I wrote and saw it through a completely different lens. Before using this technique, I was hung up on every word I wrote and obsessively deleting and retyping for hours. Now I have the freedom and ability to write without the paralyzing fear of imperfection.

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How Does OCD & GAD Affect College Students?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) have a lot in common.

Perhaps this is why the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) lumped them under the “anxiety disorders” category for so long.

But while OCD and GAD overlap in many aspects, they’re two fundamentally different illnesses.

In reality, OCD and GAD have vastly different symptoms, diagnostic processes, and treatment options.

Hence, this post will discern between the two seemingly similar but verily distinct mental illnesses and how they can affect college students:

What is OCD?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a highly debilitating mental and behavioral disorder. It is characterized by two overarching symptoms— obsessions and compulsions:

• Obsessions are repetitive, intrusive thoughts, ideas, mental images, or urges. These thoughts are “intrusive” because the sufferer does not want to have them but has no control over when they come and go.
• Compulsions are repetitive, borderline ritualistic behaviors that the sufferer performs to soothe the obsessions temporarily. If the sufferer does not act on these compulsions, they can experience a lot of anxiety, discomfort, fear, or even guilt.

Interestingly, the subject matter of the obsessions and compulsions differ from person to person.

For example, one student with OCD may obsessively wash their hands, while another person couldn’t care less about germs or dirt. Instead, they experience unwanted taboo thoughts.

Hence, different subtypes of OCD exist, with each subtype corresponding to the subjects and objects of our obsessions and compulsions.

What is GAD?

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a chronic mental illness that causes you to feel excessively anxious about a wide range of situations instead of just one issue.

Sometimes, the sufferer feels anxious even when there is seemingly nothing to be anxious about.

Hence, someone with GAD is always anticipating disaster in all aspects of their life.

GAD typically affects the way a student thinks, which can manifest as physical symptoms as well.

The symptoms of GAD vary from person to person but boil down to the following mental and physical symptoms:

• A constant feeling of worry over nothing in particular
• Difficulty concentrating on everyday tasks
• Difficulty handling uncertainty
• Indecisiveness and overwhelming fear of making a wrong decision
• Constant restlessness, nervousness, or being “on edge.”
• Trouble sleeping
• Trembling and twitching
• Nausea and diarrhea

Many college students can relate to some, if not all, of these symptoms. GAD is one of the most common mental health diagnoses among college students.

Furthermore, almost all college students report experiencing various forms of anxiety, including test anxiety, social anxiety, and separation anxiety.

Is OCD an Anxiety Disorder?

For a long time, the DSM lumped together OCD and GAD under the general category of anxiety disorders. Hence, OCD was originally considered a type of anxiety disorder.

But our understanding of OCD has significantly improved over the years. Mental health experts realized that while some symptoms overlap, OCD is vastly different from GAD.

Hence, the fifth and most recent edition of the DSM moved OCD to a different section altogether.

OCD now resides in a section called “Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Conditions.” In addition to OCD, this section includes hair-pulling disorder, skin-picking disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, and hoarding disorder.

Still, GAD and OCD are heavily interrelated. In fact, research suggests that many people who suffer from OCD also suffer from GAD.

However, GAD still remains in the anxiety disorders section of the DSM-5. Hence, the DSM-5 now considers OCD and GAD as entirely different ailments.

But on what basis did the DSM-5 make this distinction?

Key Differences Between OCD and GAD

OCD and GAD both involve intrusive thoughts which engender a great deal of distress, fear, and shame. However, the subject matter of these intrusive thoughts is vastly different.

Moreover, OCD involves the presence of compulsions, whereas GAD does not.

Obsessions vs Worries

Both OCD and GAD sufferers experience intrusive thoughts that take over their lives. But these intrusive thoughts can take on the form of either obsessions or worries.

Someone with GAD tends to worry excessively about their real-life circumstances.

For example, they might worry about their college studies, health, finances, relationships, work, and other major life issues.

Additionally, they may also experience concern about everyday things, such as making a phone call or giving a presentation at school .

However, OCD gives rise to obsessions about one or two unrealistic and far-fetched situations.

For example, a person with relationship OCD will become obsessed with the idea of “true love” and cast doubts on their relationships if it doesn’t live up to their unrealistic standards.

In contrast, the symptoms of GAD might leach into the sufferer’s relationships, but their relationship won’t be the sole subject of their fears, doubts, and worries.

Likewise, someone with relationship OCD won’t have doubts, fears, and worries about anything other than their relationship.

Compulsions

The most significant distinction between OCD and GAD is the presence of behavioral or mental compulsions. These compulsions are a defining symptom of OCD but are absent in GAD.

As mentioned previously, compulsions are behavioral or mental rituals an OCD sufferer performs to pacify or soothe their obsessions.

Hence, compulsions are a form of coping mechanism, providing temporary relief to the sufferer. In the long run, however, these compulsions only perpetuate the OCD cycle.

Let’s take someone with contamination OCD, for example. Due to their overwhelming fear of germs (or obsession with cleanliness, in other words), one of their compulsions is to wash their hands excessively.

Hence, the diagnosis process for OCD involves the additional step of identifying these compulsions and their severity.

Treatment for OCD vs GAD

If you are a college student suffering from OCD and/or GAD, there are treatment options but their respective treatment options differ.

However, both OCD and GAD can be treated using a combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and medication.

However, the specific form of CBT and types of medication differ.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is a psychotherapeutic treatment involving efforts to alter unhelpful thinking patterns and the resulting destructive behaviors.

However, the specific form of CBT differs between the two illnesses:

• OCD treatment involves a form of CBT known as Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP). It involves exposing OCD patients to their triggers in a safe and controlled environment.
• GAD treatment involves a form of CBT known as Cognitive Restructuring, whereby the patient learns to identify, challenge, and change the thoughts that engender anxiety.

CBT is the most common and successful form of treatment for both OCD and GAD. The medication acts as a supplement to CBT but is never a standalone treatment option for either condition.

On the surface, OCD and GAD seem like very similar illnesses. Both these conditions involve intrusive thoughts and excessive worries, doubts, fears, and anxieties .

However, the difference arises in the subject of these intrusive thoughts. Moreover, OCD involves the presence of mental or behavioral compulsions, whereas GAD does not.

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Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder College Essays Samples For Students

6 samples of this type

Do you feel the need to check out some previously written College Essays on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder before you get down to writing an own piece? In this free collection of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder College Essay examples, you are given a thrilling opportunity to explore meaningful topics, content structuring techniques, text flow, formatting styles, and other academically acclaimed writing practices. Using them while crafting your own Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder College Essay will definitely allow you to finish the piece faster.

Presenting high-quality samples isn't the only way our free essays service can aid students in their writing efforts – our experts can also compose from scratch a fully customized College Essay on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that would make a genuine basis for your own academic work.

Allyson: A Sample Essay For Inspiration & Mimicking

According to the DSM-5-TR 300.23, my diagnosis is that Allyson is suffering from social phobia, which is a co-occurrence of substance dependence (Hsiung, 2015). Allyson’s social phobia can be seen in her abuse of the drugs prescribed to her. Social phobia is also evident in Allyson since she does not want people around her in case she says or does something that would embarrass her.

Understanding Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Essay Example

Obsessive compulsive disorder, good obsessive compulsive disorder essay example, introduction.

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Example Of Essay On Abnormal Psychology

Video reflection exercise 1-obsessive compulsive disorder.

Description of Video:An 8 minute documentary on an individual's struggle and recovery from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Includes interview footage with a clinician who practices cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Filmed in London (Ontario, Canada) and produced by Michael Woods. Question Submission Procedures and Deadlines:I suggest that you keep these questions nearby and answer them during the video. You will be able to pause and rewind the video if necessary. Your final submission must be typed. You may use this as a template to type in your answers.

Questions: Please answer the following questions after/while viewing the video.

1. How does the patient define “obsessions” and “compulsions”?

Obsessions:

Example of essay on memoirs of a born shlepper, memoirs of a born shlepper: never give ocd a third thought., free essay on diagnoses, introduction to the review.

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Essay about overcoming OCD?

My daughter is considering writing her Common App essay about her struggles with (and eventually overcoming) OCD.

To be clear, her grades and scores are outstanding (4.6 weighted GPA, 35 ACT, all 5s on her AP exams), so the point of the essay is NOT to explain away an erratic record or anything but rather to talk about her success in overcoming it. She hasn’t been on medication for several years now, and has also “graduated” from the cognitive behavioral therapy that gave her the intellectual tools to recognize and cope with OCD.

My own view is that it could be a dynamite essay, in that it shows both her moral courage and fortitude in successfully managing this condition. But I am aware that others (and possibly admissions counselors) may see it as a red flag and think it best to avoid the topic altogether – especially where, as here, it is not needed to explain away a spotty academic record.

Any thoughts on the topic welcome…

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/2028137-is-ocd-a-bad-topic-for-a-college-essay.html#latest

^^^ Is that your daughter?

My advice is this. Avoid mental illness on an essay. One of my friends has bipolar disorder, and another had PTSD (she has overcome this). They are both hiding this to the best of their ability for fear that colleges wouldn’t want to deal with students that have any kind of disorders. I myself also have things that I hide because God forbid they think that there’s any chance that I’m not stable.

I totally agree that you should not raise OCD to admissions because what you submit contributes to the admissions decision. Also, you would have an extremely difficulty time proofing OCD factored into an adverse decision. Finally, you could not challenge a negative decision based on disabi!ity when you were the one who introduced disability.

Now, OCD is generally a chronic condition that waxes and wanes through life depending on circumstance. You have been successful before and should expect to be successful in the future. Success in the future is quite different from being cured of OCD. If symptoms recur, then find practical solutions. Also, you may want to see a doctor and consider medication for this medical condition.

Best wishes on achieving your goals.

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Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder If you or someone you care about has been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), you may feel you are the only person facing the difficulties of this illness. But you are not alone. In the U.S., 1 in 50 adults currently has OCD and twice that many have had it at some point in their lives. Fortunately, very effective treatments for OCD are now available to help you regain a more satisfying life. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder where a person has recurrent and unwanted ideas or impulses (called obsessions) and an urge or compulsion to do something to relieve the discomfort caused by the obsession. Compulsions are behaviors that help reduce the anxiety surrounding the obsessions. Worries, doubts, and superstitious beliefs are all common in everyday life. However, when they become so excessive such as hours of hand washing or driving around and around the block to check that an accident didn’t occur then a diagnosis of OCD is made. In OCD, it is as though the brain gets stuck on a particular thought or urge and just cant let go. People with OCD often say the symptoms feel like a case of mental hiccups that won’t go away. OCD is a medical brain disorder that causes problems in information processing. It is not your fault or the result of a “weak” or unstable personality. The thoughts and behaviors a person with OCD has are senseless, repetitive, distressing, and sometimes harmful, but they are also difficult to overcome. OCD is more common than schizophrenia, bipolar disease, or panic disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Yet, it is still commonly overlooked by mental health professionals, mental health advocacy groups, and people who themselves have the problem. Many people still carry the misconception that they somehow caused themselves to have these compulsive behaviors and obsessive thoughts. “Nothing could be further from the trut...

Essays related to OCD

How to Write a Perfect College Essay About OCD

The “perfect” college essay about OCD: it doesn’t exist.

Yet, somehow, in the back of our minds, we have a gnawing perfectionistic demon that can’t accept it. We’re not willing to accept that our essay can’t be perfect. We can’t!

Isn’t that ironic?

A guide on writing your college essay about OCD, telling you that perfectionism is impossible.

Now, here’s the truth: Yes, you can write about OCD in your college essay. You can also talk about its negative impacts on your life (with limits). But, to write the perfect college essay about OCD, you need to suspend the illusion of perfection.

Now, we’re going to explain this more in depth below. This guide is going to cover quite a few points, as writing about OCD is a bit complicated.

So, grab some popcorn —or whatever your preferred choice of snack is. Let’s get to the guide step-by-step!

Table of Contents

OCD is a Stronger College Essay Topic Than You May Think.

You can’t talk about everything..

• Suspend the Illusion of Control.

Consider Nuances to OCD That Neurotypicals are Blind to.

At the end of the day, the essay is about you and your strengths., unpopular opinion: you can be positive and cover sad topics at the same time, college essay about ocd example..

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Just to clarify, let’s get definitions out of the way. Psychiatry.org defines OCD well. We’ve paraphrased it below for brevity.

“ Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)  is a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions). To get rid of the thoughts, they feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions). The repetitive behaviors, such as hand washing/cleaning, checking on things, and mental acts like (counting) or other activities, can significantly interfere with a person’s daily activities and social interactions. …For people with OCD, thoughts are persistent and intrusive, and behaviors are rigid. Not performing the behaviors commonly causes great distress, often attached to a specific fear of dire consequences (to self or loved ones) if the behaviors are not completed. Many people with OCD know or suspect their obsessional thoughts are not realistic… Even if they know their intrusive thoughts are not realistic, people with OCD have difficulty disengaging… …A diagnosis of OCD requires the presence of obsessional thoughts and/or compulsions that are time-consuming (more than one hour a day), cause significant distress, and impair work or social functioning…” Source: Psychiatry.org Defining OCD

Okay so what makes OCD a strong essay topic? Well, it’s versatile.

In OCD, there are a lot of ways your condition can impact everyday life. This condition often has a snowballing effect on other aspects of your life. But, how one person experiences OCD may be different from another. This gives every OCD applicant unique in their own background and experiences.

In addition, OCD is a very complex mental condition to cope with. It’s not easy to compensate for OCD without getting oneself in a twist. Coming up with ways to cope with your condition can demonstrate resilience, dedication, creativity, lateral thinking, and sometimes even a moralistic concern for others.

For instance, OCD may make you compulsively write notes about yourself to see if you’re truly acting like “a good person.” People with self-flagellatory thoughts riddled with guilt often struggle with this, as their obsessive mind becomes addicting. The guilt comes roaring in; then, they become addicted to the obsessive impulse of alleviating that guilt via notetaking.

Overcoming this would demand much metacognition, emotional maturity, and willpower. These are all very powerful traits for students looking to get accepted into university.

Think about the ways OCD has forced you to develop methods of self improvement. And, leverage this self improvement to show the positive attributes of your character. Chances are, its unique traits make it special and stand out from the rest of the admissions pool.

Yup, this is the sad part.

Unfortunately, while college admissions is more accepting of mental health and conditions like ADHD, Dyslexia, and OCD, admissions officers are not always the most knowledgeable about these. They’re admissions officers after all, not psychologists.

There are some nuances to mental health conditions like OCD that are difficult to explain. While some topics are fine to cover, others are just too complicated to discuss in detail without letting the admissions office have doubts. Sometimes, it just takes far too many words to truly translate these into normal sentences that put you in a good light.

If you have a difficult part of OCD to explain, consider wisely whether to briefly cover this or explain in detail. Chances are, your college app essay prompt is going to range from 300-850 words; so, you likely won’t have the space required to truly articulate the complicated nuances surrounding troubling topics in OCD.

If you wish to cover certain controversial and complex OCD topics, consider writing about it in the additional comments section. The additional comments section is specifically for students to elaborate on unusual problems that can’t be articulated in a limited word space. So, use that to your advantage to explain your OCD.

Of course, this can be quite difficult. For, navigating the wording can be dangerous. If you need help with writing your college essays about OCD or explaining it in your additional comments section, speak with us for a free consultation. We’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

Note: Every institution has a different set of “additional comments” instructions. The University of California has them at the end of the essay section in the application portal, while other schools may require you to send them to their official website. Follow directions accordingly to publish your additional comments.

You Must Suspend the Illusion of Control.

Alright, here’s the hard part: if you really want to write your college essay about OCD, (or include it in your additional comments section) the most important rule is to suspend your illusion of control.

In particular, you must learn how to let go of the illusion that you can control what your admissions officers think of you.

It is common for the mind to delude itself into thinking it can control the outcomes of what other people think. This is false.

The best analogy for this is a street market. Think of the times you’ve visited popup markets on the street. Local farmer’s markets, the 626 night market, etc. Vendors are not there to force you to buy their cupcakes. And, no amount of persuasion can force you to buy $12 cookies. The fact of the matter is that vendors are responsible for making their food enticing. And, it’s the customer’s responsibility to make a decision based on said information.

The same principle applies for college application essays. You don’t force everyone to accept you (eat your cookies.) Instead, you just make yourself look as good as possible (within honesty) and don’t try to bend or twist your words to force an outcome.

It’s actually in letting go of control that you’ll open up a lot more. And, this is exactly what admissions officers are looking for in a successful application essay. They want to know you can be yourself whilst also showing the best of you —not the you that’s trying desperately to control the narrative and sway the decision.

When you do this, you’ll have much more control —ironically enough— over what you say in your essays. Additionally, your organic and honest personality will bleed through your writing. And, this is one of the biggest things to consider when trying to stand out to admissions officers —especially in a time when your readers are combing through applications for legitimacy.

Here’s an important thing to remember: people are NOT mind readers.

In particular, neurotypical people cannot understand what is going on in your mind if you don’t articulate it well enough. Just because you understand the nuances and peculiar difficulties of OCD does not mean others will understand.

It’s therefore your job to explain in simple terms what the subtler nuances to OCD are that they may not have considered. Your readers may have a rudimentary understanding of OCD. So, explain some of the things only other OCD students comprehend and make it digestible.

What is it like to have a compulsion? Why can’t you simply just “stop” the compulsion? How would you explain in simple terms why simply stopping the compulsion by force is not an option?

When you answer these questions and use language that is understandable for admissions officers to comprehend, they will have a better shot at empathizing with you. Additionally, you’ll be teaching them something about OCD that they may not have understood previously. You’re teaching them more about yourself, which may make them enjoy your character and leave a good impression throughout the admissions process.

For example, using coping mechanisms as an analogy to depict why compulsions are so second-nature can help your readers understand the nuances of OCD via extrapolation from their own personal experiences.

This is an important one people forget often. But, all essays circle back to being about you.

It’s about you, and how you would ultimately be a solid candidate to the university of your choice.

Now, don’t just outright blast to admissions officers, “this is why I’m the best candidate for your school!” That’s a bit too brash and uncreative.

Rather, it helps to be subtle with your messaging. So, weave throughout your text themes and motifs that highlight your strengths and characteristics. Make it such that, when admissions officers read your college essay about OCD, they can infer what kind of person you are.

Showing how you’ve overcome or learned to cope alongside OCD may help demonstrate your perseverance in tackling this condition. Or, it could also depict your ability for lateral thinking, especially in the context of conjuring creative ideas to cope.

Whatsoever positive character trait you choose, be sure to weave it throughout the text. Don’t just say, “that’s why I’m so smart,” or “that’s why I’m a very determined person driven by grit.” Make it subtle and show grace by integrating it via subtext! After all, it’s the admissions office’s job to understand you. They can do a character analysis of you without you feeding it to them!

This is a bit of a controversial opinion in the college admissions industry. However, here at PenningPapers, we’re dedicated to standing our ground here.

You can cover sad topics in your college essay about OCD. You’re not exempt from negative or sad events. And, you can even twist it to eventually being positive.

Why? Well, it’s because sh*t happens in life. Duh. Your readers aren’t stupid; and, they’re not going to cower away just because you share some sad topics. Now, some topics like doing drugs, suicide, etc are probably left outside the college admissions sphere. But, other than that, many people go through tragedy. It’s not all that uncommon for the everyday students to get cut below the knees at least once in their life. And, admissions officers are not naive to that.

They’re not focusing on how perfect and happy your topic is. Instead, they want to see how you wrestle and tackle the problems life has to offer you.

In fact, challenging and controversial college essay topics can sometimes work in your favor. For, they show admissions officers that you can battle against problems that have no clear solution.

Here’s an example below. Which of the following topics would you find more interesting?

• How OCD really isn’t all that bad, and you learned to overcome it with therapy.
• How OCD is a lot more complex than most students in your school understand; and, their attempts at being diversity-friendly and inclusive of people with the condition is predicated on a naive misunderstanding of the symptoms and their impact on everyday social interactions.

While the second one is certainly a scarier topic to write about, it’s infinitely more fascinating and “juicy.”

Most students are averse to those with OCD because they’re accepting of mental illness until symptoms begin to show. It’s an unsavory reality of many schools that claim to be in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion: they love the moral superiority that comes with fighting the good fight, but can’t handle the responsibility it entails.

Now, if you use this difficult and depressing topic and show how you can still draw positivity from it, then you’ll truly shine. There’s no use writing a college essay with no challenge. But, writing about how you can create compelling positive perspectives despite adversity is infinitely more interesting.

”There’s no use crying over spilt milk… or, is there? Maybe, in some epistemological, philosophical sense, there’s a reason why spilling milk, even by mistake, makes me a horrible, terrible, unworthy person. Perhaps 3 hours of rumination and endless circling around this miniscule guilt will reorient me through this mental Bermuda Triangle. Hint: it doesn’t. This is my experience with OCD. Well, there’s a lot with OCD. But, beyond the stereotypes about needing everything to be orderly, there’s also the obsessive —the ‘O’— element of OCD. It’s the mind’s proclivity to wrestle with guilt and self-deprecation. It’s this delusion of believing falsehoods about oneself, in this case my horrible character due to spilling milk, and endlessly ruminating on its validity even whilst knowing (in the most sensible and logical sense) that it’s false. The more I think, the more anxiety exacerbates. I’ve struggled with these obsessive thoughts all through high school, pilfering precious time out of my hands: what could’ve been extra time dedicated to meaningful extracurriculars and studying became endless circles of baseless guilt. After careful observation of when and what triggers my instances of compulsive guilt, I discovered I had to stop “feeding” the mental architecture I’ve created over time. Specifically, I “gave in” to obsessive thoughts as a way of temporarily inducing peace from anxiety and stress over intrusive guilt. Thus, I let the mental architecture I’ve created “decay” with unuse. But, simply forcing obsessive thoughts away wouldn’t work. Instead, I allowed the obsessive thoughts of guilt into my mind whilst not engaging with them. Whenever an impulse to write notes of my thoughts occurred, I denied. Whenever I wanted to play games to cope, I denied. I simply reoriented my thoughts at anything but playing with the thought itself. And, this “starving” of the obsessive thoughts eventually led it become manageable. Interestingly, this technique of disengagement also assisted me throughout multiple mediums including motivation, work ethic, creativity, and a whole host more. And, I’m excited to exercise these fascinating psychological strategies at the University of California.” UC Essay Prompt 5, Significant Challenge Essay About OCD

If you’re still struggling to write your college essay about OCD, or you don’t know if you should elaborate on it in the additional comments section, don’t fret! It’s a difficult topic, but certainly a worthy one! Consider speaking with us for a free consultation . Our college admissions experts will get back to you within 24 hours.

Our expertise has helped countless students write unconventional essays that have helped them get accepted into some of the best schools in the nation including UPenn, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, NYU, and more!

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Advice on writing my college essay? Is mental health an alright topic? Answered

Hello! I am a rising senior and have starting writing my college essay. I have an idea but I just wanted to make sure that it was doable and not too cliché.

I have OCD and have been diagnosed since I was four years old. As I child, I had compulsions such as washing my hands until they were dry, cracked, and bleeding in order to avoid germs. This led to my diagnosis and furthermore the first of many prescriptions.

The prescriptions and the difficulties I faced as I struggled to find one that worked are the main point of the essay as I discuss how I saw them as magic and never questioned how they worked. When I finally decided to ask a psychiatrist how they worked I was shocked when he said that they didn’t know. He explained that some medication, particularly mental health medication worked but doctors were unsure why. This sparked a desire in me to understand the medications that had been such a big part of my life and find out how they worked. This has led me to want to study medicinal chemistry. This way I could help people in the future to have access to medicine that would work for them and their brain. This way I could prevent them from having to play the same prescription guessing game that I did.

I’m worried mental health is too cliché of a subject or this will read as a sob story. Any advice? Should I write my essay on this topic?

Thank you so much!

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I think it can depend on the admission officers reading your essays because I heard from some admission officers that mental health could be a "red flag." But that is not to discourage you from writing about mental health as it could be a great essay if you can write it well and translate to a great story. The reason why mental health could be seen as a "red flag" is because colleges have a large load of coursework and many students dropout due to inability to handle such classes with stress, mental health, etc...

It really depends on the mental health problem cause in my personal college essay I wrote about how my mother was deployed for 13 months and it affected my mental health (like depression, anxiety, what not) but I improved my academic profile as a result to make her proud so my "sob story" was positive. I like the concept of this considering you did have a spark and it seems overall positive so I think you should write about it! They eat stuff like this up, why you got into it and stuff similar to that. It would only be a problem for colleges if the work in school messed with your OCD which resulted in poor behaviors since colleges typically have a lot of work but I think you should do it! If you don't wanna go with this you should definitely just alter the view of mental health, but make sure is true to you.

Hi @abbieeidda !

This sounds like a good personal statement idea which also has a nice tie-in with your intended major. That said, writing about mental health in college applications is risky: it might raise doubts (valid or not) about your ability to perform lots of rigorous coursework.

The way to get around this is making sure you have a clear arc in your narrative. Your essay should lay out your difficulties with OCD, but then also show how you've learned to manage it and become a highly effective person. It could then also move on to you deciding to study medicinal chemistry.

This format will help prevent assuage concerns about your ability to succeed with a college-level course load. It will also help you avoid the "sob story" trope by focusing more on your journey with OCD and ensuring you have a more complete narrative.

So, in short, I think it's a good idea. You just need to be careful in how you go about it.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you Shane! Do you know if there is a place where I ask someone to review my essay? I think I have finished it but I was just wondering if there was a resource where it could be checked by an expert. I am kind of worried that colleges won’t want to accept me bc of my mental illness as you stated. I don’t want them to think that I can’t handle rigorous course work. Thanks again!

Hi @abbieeidda , we actually have two ways you can have your essay reviewed with CollegeVine. The first is a peer-reviewed, which works kind of like Communities in that your essay will be reviewed by a student in exchange for Karma. The other option is a professional review, where you select and pay an expert to give you professional feedback. You can find the links to both options here: https://www.collegevine.com/experts/essay-review

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