How Getting Older Has Made It Easier to Accept That I Have OCD

Name: Meghan Ross

Age: 26

Occupation: Marketing coordinator

Diagnosis: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

I’ve had these weird tics and habits since I was 6 or 7 years old, but no one in my family was very aware or knew enough about OCD. I didn’t know about it until later on, when I was college-aged. It had become more recognizable—there was someone with OCD on MTV’s True Life—and people started talking about it a little more. That’s why I never came out about my symptoms until I was much older and could accept it and realize that what I had doesn’t make me a weirdo, it just makes me someone who has OCD.

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I didn’t start going to therapy until after college. But during therapy, I realized that I had been suffering from OCD, and anxiety would trigger it. So sometimes symptoms come back here and there, but not to the extent it was when I was younger and I felt like I had no control over it.

As far as obsessions go, I was afraid of death, whether it was a family member, cancer…it could have been anything. I was afraid that if I didn’t touch the knob a certain amount of times, that the chances of that happening would increase. What’s frustrating is that you hear a lot of people throw around the phrase, ‘I’m so OCD.’ They don’t realize the seriousness of actually having it.

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I wrote an article about my OCD last year, and I felt like I had a safe group of friends and family that respected me. I got a positive response to it. It was hard for my family because we’re not the type to start admitting that one has problems. So I don’t necessarily talk to them about it as much, but they have, for the most part, come around to acknowledge that that was what was going on when I was a kid.”

Pick up the May 2016 issue of Women’s Health, on newsstands now, for tips on how to help a friend who has a mental illness, advice on how to disclose a diagnosis at work, and more. Plus, go to our Mental Health Awareness center for more stories like Meghan’s and to find out how you can help break the stigma surrounding mental illness.