OCD and the number three.

Hello everyone! I am Sophie, a twenty year old with OCD. I am writing this blogpost in the hope that I can raise awareness for the disorder and as a source of help for my fellow sufferers.

When I was around thirteen years old I began to be faced with obsessions and compulsions as a result of OCD. Obsessions are unwelcome thoughts, images, and urges that constantly appear in your brain and compulsions are repetitive things a person does to lesson the anxiety produced by the obsession.

I would repeatedly check a door is locked by holding the handle down and counting to three and repeating three times or until it feels ‘just right’. I would then make my way into my bedroom and examine inside the wardrobe, hold my hand over the windows, scan the curtains, etc. I’d then get into bed but before I could go fall asleep I’d scan my pillows, my duvet, look down the side, look under, look at the top and look at the bottom of my bed until it also feels ‘just right’. I’d do all of this whilst counting to the number three each time.

I’d then tap each foot on my wall, right, left, right, ‘one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three’. Then I’d look up and down each door three times, look up and down my room floors three times, and then finally I can go to sleep. If I leave the room for any reason I feel the urge to repeat all of the checks again. This is just my night time checks, but I didn’t want to bore you with the rest just yet!

To finish this (really bad) attempt at writing a blogpost haha, I’d like to say thank you to WomansHood, and I’d like to send lots of love to other mental health sufferers out there.

‘and here you are living
despite it all’
– rupi kaur

How the ‘cute but psycho’ trend is not so cute.

The phrase “Cute but psycho” is everywhere: its brandished on T-shirts, jumpers, dresses and mugs in our high street stores, our social media platforms are awash with memes, videos and status’ and quite frankly I am sick of it. Lets talk about how un-cute it is to live with a mental illness to really be a ‘psycho’. I live my life daily consumed by my mental health, I struggle with the simplest of tasks, my brain is plagued with constant thoughts of self destruction, self harm and self loathing but that’s cute right? The medication I take daily to be able to function is cute right? Having to open up to a total stranger in the form of a psychologist, therapist or psychiatrist is cute right? Well you get the gist none of it’s cute there is no link what so ever between being cute and being a ‘psycho’.

I want women to think really carefully before they so proudly refer to themselves as a “psycho”. To think hard about labeling themselves as something you’ve never been medically diagnosed with. The thing is those of us who do unfortunately suffer should have nothing to feel ashamed of, we are not those memes waiting with knives for our partners to come home, we do not steal our partner’s phone, we do not have two moods; either cute and cuddly or battering the living shit out of our partners. Is having abusive tendencies whilst in a relationship something to boast about? Is it attractive? Did I miss the memo?

There is nothing flattering or cute about suffering from a mental illness and I can bet you, not just me but the millions of others in the world who genuinely suffer from all different types disorders certainly do not appreciate people who are mentally sound using the term “psycho” so lightly. Personally I do not want to be defined by my mental health, I am so much more than that and I am so much more than ‘cute’ I am strong, I am brave, I am loving and caring, and I am doing my upmost to inspire and support all those other women who are tarnished by the term ‘psycho’. Has it totally slipped the minds of all these girls who proudly refer to themselves as ‘cute but psycho’ that as women we have enough of a struggle in society to be taken seriously and to be seen as equals?

Oh and don’t even get me started on how much of a double standard the term is. These aren’t traits any woman would long for in a male partner – because that would put the fear of god into you (and rightfully so). I doubt the girls who wear the garments or share the memes, would find it amusing or attractive if a lad told her she wasn’t allowed to speak to other males or if her boyfriend saw every other lad on the planet as a threat. When are girls going to wake up and see that calling yourself ‘cute but psycho’ is similar to men referring to themselves as ‘handsome but abusive’? We are never going to be rid of the stigma attached to mental health issues when our own high street stores are feeding the stigma, Topshop and Misguided I’m calling you out. How can such prominent brands be so socially unaware?

Finally can we talk about how detrimental these memes are to girl power, how are young girls who are exposed to these memes expected to realise that viewing other women as nothing but your competitor is harmful not only to girl power but also to their self esteem. How do memes that read ‘when he says you don’t need to worry about her & you know because you already killed her’. Help us as women?

‘You know you’re pretty’

I have suffered with an eating disorder and Body Dysmorphia Disorder (BDD) since I was 13, but I’ve always been considered ‘vain’. I have never been able to pass a reflective surface without gawping at myself, but that isn’t because I love myself and think I look wonderful, instead it’s linked to my constant paranoia, I can look at myself and a split second later I will think my hairs fucked up, my lipsticks smudged, I’ve gained a new spot, etc. When I say I can’t walk past a reflective surface I’m not over exaggerating; mirrors, shop windows, car windows, phone screens, glass, spoons, my boyfriend’s glasses, you get the gist. I will look at myself and cry. To highlight how bad I am, whilst I was on holiday with my boyfriend last week in Paris we went out for a day of sight-seeing, we’d been out around 20 minutes and I caught sight of myself and was so repulsed that I had a panic attack and cried until we found the nearest chemist to buy me hair products so I could sort myself out.

My friends, my family and my boyfriend must be so bored of me constantly asking ‘do I look okay?’ ‘Is my hair alright?’ ‘Are you sure I don’t look vile?’ and I will ask and ask and ask, and always be met with the answer ‘you look lovely’ but I’ll never believe them.

People have always been confused by my social media profile when they find out I suffer from BDD and am recovering from bulimia, I post regularly, and it tends to be photos of myself, photos of my face, and photos occasionally of just my body. But here’s the thing they capture a moment, a moment where I feel not so dreadful, a moment where the light hits my face in a way that makes my features look a little better, a moment where I feel a little better about myself, usually in the morning when I’ve not eaten anything, usually on a day when my hair is sitting just right, usually on a day when my skin looks plumper and less drab cause maybe on the off chance I have actually had a good night’s rest. I cannot even explain how many photos I take or my boyfriend takes, 100s of the same selfie with a slight change in each, my eyes being wider, my chin slightly less tilted, because woe betide someone actually notices that I have a pointy chin and from the side I look like a bloody half-moon. Then there’s the task of picking the correct one, a task that usually baffles my boyfriend with his most frequently used phrases being ‘but they all look the same’ ‘are they the same photo?’ ‘What is the difference between these five?’ You feel his pain. Due to the very nature of BDD I haven’t got the faintest idea what I actually look like, I get told one thing by various people but I see something totally different when I actually look at myself. So I use these images I take of myself as a sort of check on what I actually look like, to help myself internally decipher what my face and body truly look like, cause trust me I don’t have the foggiest.

 

When I started my blog is was intended to be my creative outlet, to distract me from my mental health, to give me a reason to get out of bed, to give me something to put my heart into that would give me a purpose, but it’s done the opposite. I can’t shoot with anyone except my boyfriend and we will regularly shoot and the photos will not see the light of day, I’m so picky, I pick out a flaw that isn’t visible to the naked eye and therefore those photos will never be seen. I have shot with two of my friends, both of whom are fabulous photographers and it isn’t their work it’s simply how I look in them that prevents me from shooting with them regularly. I have passed on endless opportunities to shoot with incredible photographers, as well as working with and modelling for incredible brands.

 

I began making myself sick at 13, I still do now, that is 8 years. I don’t use it as a weight loss technique anymore but more as another form of self-harm, my teeth have always been my favourite feature, but bulimia has caused the thinning of my front two. I have stopped it being a compulsion but it is so second nature that the minute I become worked up I throw up, without having to even make myself. In terms of my day to day living with BDD it isn’t that simple. Body dysmorphia plagues me daily, I can’t online shop because I cannot gauge my size. If I am going to buy any garment it’s a given that I need to try it on first, otherwise I have been known to buy thing that are about 3 sizes too big and I haven’t got a clue what size and shape my body really is. Well that’s a lie, I do, I am a size 8 (when I am being logical and not a total loony tune plagued by mental illness) but I will often pick up garments that are a size eight and I cannot fathom how they will ever fit over my enormous bum or thunder thighs and lord help a shop if there sizes are off and I need to up size on any item. This leads to days and days of self-loathing, self-harm, endless tears and just generally me being a pain in the arse.

To end the post on a slightly more positive note I am waiting to see a psychologist as no other form of therapy as ‘cured’ me as of yet, so I’ve decided to use this blog as a bit of a diary to document hopefully what will be my recovery, I also don’t feel like I have covered half of what it is actually like to live with body dysmorphia but it’s not bloody easy to write about something that you cannot even rationalise in your own mind, so thank you for bearing with me on this one.

XXXX