How personifying OCD helps you win

Personifying OCD, or conceptualizing it as something that is part of you yet also separate from you, is a key component of a winning OCD-taming strategy. In this blog I’ll share how I’ve personified my OCD over the years, why it can be such an effective part of your ERP therapy, and how you can start using personification to help you reclaim your life.

Separate you from OCD, because it’s hard to fight against yourself

It’s challenging to fight against yourself, and that’s the first reason that personifying OCD is so important. It’s much easier to fight against an opponent you can visualize as being separate from you. In my memoir Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life, my OCD (which I called “my mind” before I knew it was OCD) is the villain and I’m the protagonist/heroine trying to figure out how to escape its grasp. At my very first psychiatrist appointment when I was 16, this is how I personified my OCD:

As I sat on Dr. Prasad’s couch, I could feel my mind stirring. I could tell it was angry. I heard it utter swear words as it readied its most deadly equipment, the weapon it brandished in emergencies. Then I heard a telltale metallic clicking and felt the cold hard barrel of a pistol pressed into my temple.

I tensed. My mind was going to hold me hostage again.

Fear coursed through my veins, rose like molten lava in my chest. I could taste its hot malevolence at the back of my throat.

Certain that it now had my undivided attention, my mind thrust forward its manifesto—words scribed in a Satanic-like font reminiscent of a heavy-metal album cover—and screamed, READ IT! (Fred, p 50).

OCD’s manifesto, otherwise known as its Rule #1, held me hostage for years. But my ability to personify the disorder helped me to eventually understand that it was OCD’s Rule #1, not mine, which brings us to the next benefit of personification.

OCD’s desires and yours are not the same, and this builds insight

While I may not know you personally, I can probably guess that you’d like to have a meaningful life. And while I also may not know your OCD, I’m pretty confident that it has no interest in your life being meaningful. It instead would like you to have the 4Cs: comfort, certainty and control, achieved through compulsions. You and your OCD want different things. Let me share another example of how I personified my OCD in this context:

I thought of my OCD as an entity separate from me, yet always by my side. When upset, it now acted like a child—a sobbing, “the sky is falling!” Chicken Little—instead of like a goth teen rebel. When it wasn’t worried, I imagined it to be quietly knitting, miniature needles clicking away.

The more I envisioned my OCD as a pathetic little creature waddling along behind me, whining about all the things that could kill us, dragging the tissue it used to wipe its runny nose, the more it seemed to have the characteristics of one of Lily’s favorite dog toys. A bright orange squeaky rubber ball with big clownlike feet, it perfectly personified my OCD. Years after my time in Dr. Wilson’s group, I even purchased a sunglasses-bedecked version of the toy for my desk. I taped a tissue to it; my mom fashioned a blue, half-knitted blanket attached to a teeny ball of yarn; and my dad produced pint-sized knitting needles to insert into the blanket’s top. My OCD’s new personification was complete. (Fred, p 172)

In this personification, my OCD isn’t interested in helping me live a fulfilling life. It whined and cried (thus the tissue) because any time it was triggered, it wanted the 4Cs. Personifying OCD highlighted how pursuing what OCD wanted was only going to make me feel just like OCD, like a pathetic orange ball who is scared of life, not enjoying it.

Understanding that OCD’s desires are different and often directly opposite from your desires builds your insight that you are not the disorder. This insight helps you make non-compulsive choices that support reclaiming your life through exposure and response prevention therapy, ERP.

Your relationship with and personification of OCD can change over time

I’ve personified my OCD in a variety of different ways in the course of my life and recovery. For instance, sometimes my OCD could transform…

from a harmless, whimpering orange ball into my adult version of the goth-like, heavy-metal-loving rebel of my youth, which I now not so affectionately called the Triad of Hell. As I conceived it, the Triad of Hell spun three characters into one: Gollum from Lord of the Rings, obsessed with his precious ring—or in my life, with anything that could bring harm; the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil, hypervigilant, whirling around searching for the next thing that could kill us; and a Harry Potter-styled dementor, utterly preoccupied with scenes of soul-destroying death and destruction. (Fred, page 184)

When I personified my OCD as being the aggressive Triad of Hell, that was an indicator I needed to pull out all the ERP weapons I had at my disposal to be just as aggressive with it as it was being with me (see Making OCD Pass Out for another example). I wanted to match or exceed my OCD’s power with my own ERP empowerment. When I personified my OCD as the orange ball, I still used ERP but not with the same intensity I’d use with the Triad of Hell. In some cases, I even offered OCD compassion while I was practicing self-compassion during ERP.

How to personify your OCD

It’s easy to personify your OCD:

1. Come up with a character or characters that you think represent it. You can even use AI to help you come up with visual representations.
2. Print the picture of what your OCD looks like, or you can create a physical model like I did with the orange dog toy, and keep the picture or model somewhere you’ll see it when you’re doing your ERP.
3. Talk back to the character to remind yourself that OCD is not you, its wants are different than yours, and doing what it wants keeps you stuck. When a trigger comes up or when you’re doing ERP, talk to OCD as if it is the one having the issues with uncertainty, because it is! For instance, “I know you’re triggered right now, OCD, but we’re going to do ERP and face this fear” or “I know you want certainty, OCD, but we’re going to embrace not knowing on purpose” or “I know you want me to do that compulsion, but I’m not going to, OCD,  because I want a meaningful life and what you’re worried about may or may not happen.”