Are you truly ‘obsessed,’ or are you just happy to see me?
by Tyler Francischine
Animated illustration by Emile
Saying things like “I’m obsessed with your outfit” or “You’re so organized you’re OCD” misrepresents a medical disorder that traps many people in an exhausting, distressing cycle
It happens so frequently that I almost became unfazed by it.
For years now, I’ve heard social media influencers announce how they’re “totally OCD” describing a preference for having their closets look just so. I’ve watched clips from the red carpet in which celebrities talk about how “obsessed” they are with their own outfits. I’ve rewatched episodes of HBO’s Girls to find Lena Dunham’s character receiving talk therapy for her OCD symptoms, though I know firsthand, that modality offers nothing useful to the OCD brain.
Most of the time, I roll my eyes and shrug off these instances of OCD’s misrepresentation as an adjective describing one’s tastes or a personality quirk treatable by merely talking it out. I will admit that I was so incensed I briefly couldn’t see straight after reading this recent New York Post article that falsely claims people who exercise “radical” political behaviors owe their stances to OCD. But ultimately, I figured, people like me with OCD would see these examples, recognize their falsehoods and keep working, relatively unscathed, toward achieving their individual recoveries.
Yet, when I recognized myself in a recent State Farm commercial (its full-length version since removed from the insurance company’s YouTube channel) as the frantic car-owner plagued with panic that something terrible will happen to her wheels, I felt firsthand the detrimental impact of the media both co-opting the clinical language surrounding OCD and inaccurately depicting the disorder and other mental illnesses.
“We’re here for your what-ifs,” Jake from State Farm tells the wild-eyed, worried woman after she rattles off a list of hypothetical concerns, uncertainties that OCD specialists might label intrusive thoughts. Upon hearing Jake’s magic words, she runs off, elated. She calls out to her car by name, assuring Guinevere that the pair are finally going to be safe.
With each time I saw this clip, I began to spiral deeper into reflection on my own obsessions and compulsions surrounding my car. My State Farm plan has yet to assuage the deep-seated obsessive thoughts that occur to me about the safety of my car, which I lovingly named D’Angelo for its understated, sensual curves. My insurance coverage never prevents me from wasting minute after minute on compulsions like jiggling each car door handle, over and over, until they feel like they’re correctly locked.
‘What if that means I’m so far gone, I’ll never experience relief from these crippling symptoms?’ I wondered. ‘What if I’ll only continue to get worse? What if people make fun of me when they witness my OCD symptoms and jokingly suggest I fix myself with State Farm’s new personalized plan?’
For me, the danger inherent in this commercial is its inaccurate message that, if you have obsessive worries about harm that cause you significant distress, your solution is external validation. In reality, for people with OCD, seeking that kind of validation is exactly what will keep you stuck in a distressing cycle of obsession and compulsion.
Emile
A 2018 study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry utilized task-based functional brain scans of hundreds of people with and without OCD in order to pinpoint the specific brain areas and cognitive processes that are engaged when people with OCD get stuck in loops of repetitive obsessions and compulsions. In those with OCD, the researchers saw brains engaged in a hyperactive error-processing mechanism, as well as impairments in inhibitory control, the cognitive process that allows us to restrain our impulses and automatic urges.
Jenna DiLossi, Psy.D., a Philadelphia-based licensed clinical psychologist and program coordinator at Minding Your Mind, says people with and without OCD often experience the same thoughts — even what-if questions — but the difference lies in both the amount of attention someone spends on the thought and the distress the thought causes. For someone with OCD, she says, hearing reassurance from another never quite leads to its intended effect.
“Most people without OCD don’t get stuck on their thoughts. They get some degree of assurance, get disconfirming evidence, and move on. It doesn’t cause them distress. When people with OCD get external reassurance, it may work for 30 minutes, a day, or not at all, and they end up seeking reassurance over and over,” she says. “When you have OCD and have a thought around harm, you don’t respond well to hearing, ‘You’ll be covered. You’ll be fine.’ The brain gets more obsessive. I can see how for a person with OCD, the message of this State Farm commercial wouldn’t work at all.”
As a trained OCD specialist, DiLossi intimately understood the distress I experienced after watching this commercial. Still, I shudder to think of the ad’s potential impact had I seen it in those trying times before I received an OCD diagnosis and treatment.
In late summer 2020, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided COVID-19 was no longer a threat and widely reopened the state’s public spaces and businesses, I developed a nightly compulsion in which I took great care to document that I had locked my car. My talk therapist at the time suggested I assuage my distressful doubts about my car’s status by proving it was locked on paper. Even though I could see my scrawled check marks, sometimes a handful of them, I forced myself to repeatedly return to my driveway, oftentimes pulling myself out of bed into a muggy or even rainy night, to ensure I had locked it “right.” My previous car — a 1990 Oldsmobile made of steel who I called The Beast — had been stolen out of this same driveway four years prior, but the fears of this old trauma repeating itself jumped into overdrive when coupled with the uncertainty of a pandemic not taken seriously by my state government. Standing in my driveway, yanking on door handles, desperately wanting to go lie down but feeling like I couldn’t stop made me writhe in shame. That shame, triggering beliefs that I wasn’t good enough, that I was sick and broken, would fuel yet another round of the same repetitious actions, but this next time, I’d tell myself, I’ll surely get it “right” and earn my rest for the evening.
Another currently airing State Farm commercial from the same campaign paints a scene rife with similar feelings of shame. A woman stands up at a dinner table, presumably filled with her romantic partner’s family members, to announce that she maintains a practice (or as some may interpret, a compulsion) of saving discarded shrimp tails in her pockets. The camera pans around to the other dinner guests, whose faces register expressions of shock, horror or disgust. She sits down, deflated.
Dr. Micah Ioffe, Ph.D., a Chicago-based clinical director, supervisor, and psychologist at Light On Anxiety CBT Treatment Centers, says the feelings of shame this commercial depicts are often the same feelings that prevent real-life OCD sufferers from getting the care they need. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse have come to similar conclusions, as they found societal and media messages around OCD have led to “an unawareness of self, avoidance of treatment and concealment of the disorder” in the young people they interviewed.
Emile
“Shame can be such a barrier to getting treatment. In this State Farm clip, there’s a shamed feeling. If people resonate with the main character, that can promote a feeling of shame in themselves,” she says. “What stood out to me were the facial expressions of the whole family — that disapproving, excluding look. I can imagine, if you’re someone with OCD whose compulsions outwardly look irrational or are atypical, that’s so isolating and discouraging.”
Speaking to experts like Ioffe and studying this pair of State Farm commercials made me consider, perhaps every instance of trivializing and misrepresenting OCD in the media is more detrimental than I thought.
Alegra Kastens is a New York-based licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in OCD and uses public platforms like Instagram to dispel common misconceptions around the disorder. She says casually throwing around words like “obsessed” or “obsession” to describe what’s usually a penchant for organization is a far cry from what it’s like to live with OCD, days spent thinking about scenarios and ideas you would be horrified to act upon to have happen to you.
“It implies that being obsessed with something is a favorable, joyous experience and — more dangerously — that the subject of one’s obsession is desirable. This is the exact opposite of the psychological definition of an obsession, which describes persistent, unwanted thoughts or images that disturb a person,” Kastens says. “The content of obsessions can be taboo in nature, like repetitive, unwanted, sexual or violent thoughts. What’s really important here is to recognize that obsessions of OCD are ego-dystonic: opposite to one’s values, morals, and self-concept.”
When the media and society perpetuate this misrepresentation, a phenomenon that occurs each day on global platforms like Tik Tok, people with real OCD symptoms fail to recognize the disorder with which they struggle.
“This misconception contributes to the average 10-15 years it takes for someone with OCD to access treatment and a diagnosis. This is far too long. Utilizing OCD as a quirky adjective to describe a love of organization is not minor. It massively contributes to the pain and suffering of those with OCD,” Kastens says. “A person can quite literally say what they mean: ‘I enjoy organizing’ or “I love Chipotle!’”
As a 9-year-old, I remember not feeling safe enough to rest my entire feet on my neighbors’ tile floors because it didn’t feel clean. Because no one recognized my obsessive worries around contamination, I wasn’t diagnosed with OCD for another two decades. In fact, I wasn’t diagnosed with OCD until my levels of worry about catching COVID, or giving anyone in my family COVID, began to rip hours of each day from me as I repeated intense cleaning rituals.
One afternoon in late summer 2020, I went to Publix a day or two before I had plans to drive home and stay with my mother and brother, who are both at a higher health risk of serious COVID symptoms. When I got home with my groceries, I feverishly took an alcohol wipe to each item (save the fruit and vegetables). The possibility of touching COVID droplets left by the maskless Publix employees and customers was too dangerous to risk, I thought. Next, I had to wipe off the fridge handles I touched, the light switches and the front door of my home. ‘Don’t forget both handles,’ my brain urged. Finally, it all came back to my car, and I wiped off its door handles and steering wheel. That routine continued in variations until well after the sun set.
After I spent a couple months in fight-or-flight mode virtually every day and night, my boyfriend broke up with me. Feeling I was skirting rock bottom with my mental health, I virtually attended a meeting of a neighboring city’s OCD support group. That’s where I found out about NOCD, an affordable app and service that pairs you with a licensed mental health practitioner specializing in the gold-standard of care for OCD, exposure and response prevention, or ERP. I underwent ERP — twice, over many months — until I grasped the tools to understand obsessions and their resulting compulsions for what they are: just noise I didn’t need to listen to. ERP didn’t “fix” me, and OCD won’t disappear completely, but in recent months, I’ve been able to spend my days how I’d like to, mostly unburdened by thoughts that feel like five-alarm fires.
In addition to being a mental health practitioner, Kastens tirelessly works as an OCD advocate and makes no bones about telling others about her own struggles with OCD. It’s her hope, and one that I share, that when people see OCD depicted more frequently and more accurately in media, the world will learn and understand the truth about the disorder.
“The way I describe it is having the scariest thought or image you could ever think playing on repeat in your mind 24/7. The intrusive thoughts and images come with immense anxiety and often send a person into fight, flight or freeze [mode,] despite the absence of actual danger. The person feels like they must do something, mentally or physically, to get rid of the thought, prevent something bad from happening or alleviate anxiety,” Kastens says. “It’s time-consuming. It’s not cute. It’s not quirky. It’s a debilitating disorder.”