'Tis the Season for OCD

'Tis the season for cookie baking, tree decorating, and mental illness mocking--among other things. I must admit, I never noticed this trend before this year. If someone had mentioned the ridiculous ways people compare the mental illness of OCD to loving Christmas, I would have scoffed. That is, until I was diagnosed myself.

In September of this year, I was diagnosed with postpartum OCD. I was shocked and confused. I didn't have to have everything in a specific place. I didn't need to count to number five every time I opened or shut the door. I was not what everyone says OCD is. Except that I learned that most people who talk about OCD use it as a joke. Take the following Target sweater for sale this season: 

It likens OCD to loving a holiday very very much. Is that what OCD really means? Or take this meme by @simoncholland and shared by Scary Mommy:

It compares OCD to being a perfectionist when it comes to Christmas tree decorating. I could barely keep the house clean at the time of my diagnosis. There was no way I had OCD. Not if these truly reflected the symptoms.

Well, it turns out they don't. OCD is not the same as being passionate about a holiday or being a perfectionist. My symptoms were not nearly as joyful and pretty. My symptoms came from a much darker place. I worried. All. The. Time. Not normal worries mind you. I worried that my children were going to kill my infant daughter. I kept her hidden away in another room for hours to ensure they couldn't touch her. I also worried that someone would take away my children because I was not a suitable mother. This worry drove me to weeping and shaking, as I could not think of anything else once they showed up. They got so loud and so scary that I sat in my doctor's office rocking and crying, begging her to make the bad thoughts go away. This was all on top of the normal worries, that I turned into obsessions, like whether I had remembered to put all of the children in the car or turned off the coffee maker before I left. My life was filled with so much fear I physically shook on a daily basis. I couldn't control the intrusive and irrational thoughts, and my mind was so broken that it would obsess over every thought that invaded my mental sanity.

But no, I didn't suddenly love holidays more or decorate Christmas trees any better.

I have received tons of support and help since those days, and I am doing much better with the assistance of therapy and medicine. But as these light-hearted jokes have been creeping up this holiday season, it got me thinking. Would we make these kinds of jokes about cancer? A broken arm maybe? Why is it that mental illness is so easy to mock without any feelings of guilt or fear of repercussions? And when someone attempts to call out such bad taste in humor, they're actually shamed for not being able to take a joke, like Scary Mommy whose warning to those offended for any reason is this:

I am not saying I can't take a joke. I am simply saying that my illness isn't funny. It is scary. It threatened my very existence, and changed my life forever. I wish it came with the symptoms of baking lots of cookies or beautifully decorating my home, but alas it does not. OCD is not the same as being particular about how you like this or that. It is a much darker illness that makes it impossible to see Christmas as something beautiful and joyful all together. So please, reconsider how you use the term this holiday season. Because part of this season should include being grateful you don't have OCD, not pretending that you do.