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1. Reblogged this on Little Wellness Things and commented:
   Yesterday, as I was writing about how my own misconceptions of OCD kept me from recognizing it in myself and led to years of hopelessness and misery, other OCD survivors took to Twitter to share what OCD really is.

   In so many cases, social media can do what the mainstream media does not, and this is no exception. Twitter users have been using the #OCDproblems tag to joke about straightening pencils or spending 10 minutes editing a photo or color-coding their closet for months. Last night, people with diagnosed OCD took to the tag to talk about their fears of contamination, intrusive thoughts of harming someone by accident or on purpose, their anxieties, how OCD has in some cases come close to destroying their lives. Parents shared about watching their children struggle with severe OCD and being unable to help them. I woke up this morning to see it trending on Tumblr, and when I visited the tag, I was amazed.

   This video created by The Secret Illness highlights some of the tweets from last night. If you are easily triggered, take care when watching it. But to see other people share some of the same fears and thoughts and horrors I have lived with for years? That was incredible.

   I wish I had seen this when my hypochondria and contamination OCD began 16 years ago, or when my harm OCD and scrupulosity began six or seven years ago. But it’s out there now, and hopefully people who are in the same situation — unable to control their thoughts and living with the fear they are secretly a terrible, irredeemable person — will see it now and realize that they are not alone, and there is help out there for them.

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