The International OCD Foundation has found that 1 in 100 adults have OCD, or between 2 to 3 million adults in the United States. This is roughly the same number of people living in the city of Houston, Texas.
OCD is not something that is as common as people say...and although there are people who have OCD tendencies and like to organize...it's not something to joke about.
I recently talked to a friend whose daughter is on the front lines of battling OCD. We shared stories of similar struggles and prayed together.
When I got of the phone I felt The Lord say "let me be your obsession". I honestly never thought about that before. Could I replace the fears, obsessive thought and compulsions with Him? I honestly don't know the answer. I have worked so hard to hide this part of me for so long and now that I have come out of the OCD closet, I am realizing how many other people struggle. People have emailed me and called and said I also struggle with anxiety, I feel like the invisible person, and so on. In many ways I feel The Lord is using my struggle to help others but at the same time I don't want this struggle.
This is why I cringe inside when I hear people flippantly say "I'm so OCD" as if its a cool thing. There is nothing glamorous or cool about it. It is a real issue that people and families battle.
This past year one of my dreams came try when I was asked to teach a social work class at Trevecca. One of the first things I told my students is the importance of seeing people first and their disability or diagnosis second. So instead of saying "the skizophrenic" or "the alcoholic" it's important to say the person with skizophrenia or the person who struggles with alcoholism.
So on behalf of all the other people who struggle with OCD please don't joke about having OCD because you don't know who really has it and the very real struggles they are facing.
Facing my OCD giants head on today by being fully present in the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment