What is OCD?

Many of us talking about 'being a bit OCD' when we like things a certain way - pens lined up on a desk, bottles lined up on a shelf etc.  I imagine all of us at times go home to check if we've left the gas on or the back door unlocked.  I suppose all of us can have OCD moments.  But people who suffer with the disorder take it to a new level.

I can literally stand there looking at our cooker, which has a gas hob, and I can see that all the knobs are turned to zero, and while I'm looking at them I'm still wondering if they're really off.  There's a thought: "what if I left the cooker on?" and that thought brings with it anxiety: "it's really dangerous to leave the cooker on - it could start a fire."  The thought is an obsessive one - it won't go away - it just goes round and round and round your head.  So then comes the compulsion - to go downstairs and check the cooker is off.  Which you do... but it only brings temporary relief.  The anxious thought is still there, so you check again...and again...and again.  You know your fear is irrational, because you've already checked the darned cooker five times!  But the anxiety is still there, and only the compulsion relieves it.  I've never had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), but from what I've heard it aims to interrupt this cycle and teach a different response to the anxious thought.  These days my OCD symptoms are so mild they only register when I'm having a bad day, but they can be pretty bonkers when they show up.  If I tell someone what I'm obsessing about, I sound utterly mad.  But maybe this is a good thing.  This morning I heard the first part of Stephen Fry's appearance on Desert Island Discs, and he talked about 'letting oxygen get to' his mental health struggles, so as to allow them to heal.  Sometimes when things remain inside your head they seem huge and terrifying; they can look very different when they're out in the open.  

I don't know if this is common to many or all OCD sufferers, but with me the disorder is related to an excessively heavy sense of responsibility for others.  "If I don't do this, people will get hurt," whether it be checking the cooker or the light switches before going to bed; washing my hands far too many times; or throwing ingredients away when I'm cooking for others because they might be contaminated.  (I'm not good with glass jars, because glass breaks easily, and I once read a Henning Mankell novel where a Chinese assassin uses the ancient technique of putting ground glass in someone's drink.  Clearly food manufacturers are playing fast and loose with our safety, not being sufficiently versed in Chinese assassination techniques).  It's hard work carrying the guilty sense that I could accidentally hurt the people I love with one false move.  I've sometimes reflected on the Christian themes of guilt and forgiveness and asked myself whether they help or hinder someone with OCD.  The problem, of course, is that people with OCD suffer from false guilt - they worry about things they don't need to worry about, and feel guilty for things they don't need to feel guilty for.  I think it was Bonhoeffer who said that no human being is as innocent as they think they are before God but, equally, no one is as guilty as they think they are either.  My tendency to feel responsible in ways that are, frankly, a bit crazy, probably takes my focus off the things of which I really need to repent.  Equally, I feel guilty for things I don't need to worry about, and fail to live in the knowledge that I am completely and utterly loved and forgiven.  

It was only recently that I made the connection between my particular interest in the theology of sin and my OCD.  Healthy or unhealthy?  Hard to tell!