Returning to Normal Means Recalibrating My Brain
Brushing my teeth is a struggle. I brush so hard, and for so long, that sometimes my gums bleed. I can’t spit until I’ve touched each tooth carefully with the tip of my tongue. I open and close the medicine cabinet repeatedly, pressing my palm into the pointy corner of the mirror, until it feels like enough. I can’t leave the bathroom until I’ve flipped the light switch on and off a dozen times. Some nights, the routine takes 30 minutes. Some nights, I lean over the sink and cry.
My obsessive-compulsive disorder manifests in rituals: small, repeated behaviors that my anxious little brain demands., my brain explains, Fear of contracting a deadly virus, combined with the total disruption of my work and social life, has multiplied my compulsions, which now require much more of my time. The same is true for others living with OCD, many of whom are preoccupied, but people with anxiety and an intolerance for uncertainty are not entirely optimistic. “The majority of people who don’t have OCD—their life will go back to normal,” Elizabeth McIngvale, the director of the McLean OCD Institute in Houston, told me. For many people with OCD, returning to “normalcy” isn’t as simple as eating indoors at restaurants again. It means recalibrating their brain.
