OCD is Houdini-level good.

I experience a lot of self-revelations in therapy. Today, I've never felt wiser.

I would tell you all to try and find when I was first diagnosed with OCD in one of my previous posts, but that would only be for the views. I'll save you the trouble and recap:

I was clinically diagnosed with OCD during my Sophomore year of undergrad. But, as the boomers like to say, "Dr. Google" diagnosed me well before then.

After being clinically diagnosed, I felt like OCD symptoms became more intense for me- I felt like OCD was worse than ever. And up to this day, I still thought it had gotten more severe as time went on.

Nah.

OCD was not getting worse, I was just becoming more aware of it.

See, like, up until the clinical diagnosis, I had been living in OCD's world. Unaware of OCD's manipulative games and power, ritualizing and engaging in compulsions was my 'normal.' I simply did not know how to live any other way.

When I started treatment, I learned to recognize the aspects of my behaviors and routines that are OCD-driven. This newfound awareness cued me in to just how intensely OCD affects my life on a daily basis. You start to realize just how debilitating it is. You

start to see how it dictates every aspect of your life. And this... this sudden realization is jarring. And it feels as though OCD has gotten so much worse as time went on.

But hey, this is kinda cool. Let's do some cognitive reframing:

Becoming aware means that you're taking back control of your life. You're debunking the disorder by realizing its tricks. At first, OCD seemed like a really damn good magician, like, Houdini-level good. Now, I'd say it's a cruise ship-level magician; occasionally impressive, but typically mediocre (no offense to those cruise ship illusionists reading this).

Now that I'm familiar with OCD's game plan, my defensive line is absolutely off the chain. I went from living in a world completely dominated by intrusive thoughts and one where I did not have any control, to living in a word (still flooded by intrusive thoughts) now having a good bit of control back and the skill-set to manage the OCD and everything that comes with it.

And as always, happy not-even-close-to-the-end-of-the-week.